The Meaning of Snow

Peter Høegs virtuoso thriller about the conflict between Denmark and Greenland during the "new liberalism" of the 1990s

By : Søren Schou

With his first three books Peter Høeg has pulled off a coup among the critics and readers alike. His debut novel from 1988, Forestilling om det tyvende århundrede (The History of Danish dreams) is the eminently fantastical chronicle of Denmark, which made it clear that Høeg is the foremost storyteller of his generation. Fortællinger om natten, (Tales of the Night), which followed in 1990, is a collection of artful yarns about Danish dreamers and people of our grandparents" generation determined to improve the world; all of the stories are set during the crisis year of 1929. The tales might be called pastiches, in that Høeg takes a few sidelong glances at the works of Karen Blixen, twisting and turning her mask and marionette philosophy with cheerful disrespect. And yet the stories all possess their own validity and depth that go beyond any label of pastiche. With his opus number three, Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne (Smilla´s Sense of Snow), which will be published in English translation early next year, Høeg launches himself into a new genre, but with his entire virtuoso storytelling ability intact: the imaginative, socially critical thriller genre.

Between two cultures
Smilla Jaspersen is a 37-year-old woman of half Danish, half Greenlandic extraction. She has studied glacial morphology and participated in a number of Artic expeditions. But nothing has ever come of her scientific career, Smilla is just not suited for it; she is too split between two cultures. She lives alone, emotionally attached only to a little Greenlandic boy, Esajas, who lives in the same Copenhagen housing complex.

One day Esajas falls off a snow-covered roof and is killed. The police call it an unfortunate accident, wanting to close the case swiftly. But Smilla who knows everything about the ability of Greenlanders to move in snow is convinced that there is something behind this "accident". And she turns out to be right, of course!

To uncover the circumstances surrounding Esajas´s death, Smilla and the reader set out on a head-over-heels search through Copenhagen´s underworld and high society, across the North Atlantic, and out to mysteries a la Jules Verne on the icy island of Gela Alta off the coast of Greenland.

The first breakthrough occurs in the dim archives of a large corporation. Smilla gets wind of secret Arctic expeditions that took place in 1966 and 1991 (the novel is set in 1993). Her stubborn pressure on the authorities makes certain decent bureaucrats and doctors reveal confidential information and then Smilla takes off to do detective work in various Copenhagen settings. She meets yuppies who are so wealthy that, for them, a house on the fashionable Strandvejen north of Copenhagen is socially declasse; and they are so unscrupulous that they´re prepared to kill a child for their own personal gains.

Gambling casinos, exclusive clinics, and the "liberal appeal to greed in all of its aspects" flourish in Høeg´s satirical depiction of Denmark. Smilla has memories of a much more benevolent society from her childhood in Greenland, the land she is on her way to revisit in the second part of the novel. She bluffs her way on board the Kronos, a ship outfitted with the latest high-tech equipment, which is on a secret mission to the North Atlantic.

This part of the book unleashes dramatic descriptions of the tense confrontation between the passengers and the crew members. But the elements of the thriller genre are not allowed to overpower the warning signals of the book: the Arctic region is in imminent danger of losing out to an unholy alliance between unscrupulous money-mongers and obtuse nature researchers. Europeans appear once again in their age-old colonial role.

Scenarios for catastrophe are what truly ignite Høeg´s imagination. He fantasizes about Glastnost-era Russia, Danish capitalistic interests, and the Greenland Home Rule Government all joining forces to construct a giant drilling platform, dubbed the "Joint Venture Warrior", no less! But Høeg then goes on to show us how a huge immovable iceberg collides with technological delusions of grandeur.


The post-colonial lie
Smilla´s Sense of Snow is an account of imperialism during the period which we have euphemistically dubbed the "post-colonial era". With its blend of imagination and social protest, the book has similarities to the South American novels about present-day cultural conflicts between those in the center and those in the periphery of society.

It´s not difficult to declare your sympathy for the underdog; it´s much harder to transform this solidarity into art. It takes more than technical skill and politically correct opinions to make the experience of modern-day oppression real. It´s here that Høeg demonstrates how much he has grown as a writer. With all its contradictions, his portrayal of a woman caught between two cultures is both moving and wonderfully three-dimensional. Smilla is the rebel, the one who will find a way to strike back even if they cut off her arms and legs. In her, indignation and analytical cogency are united with the primeval feeling for nature implied in the title.

Snow is the fundamental substance of the book. There is an element of brilliant abandon in Høeg´s fascination with snow and ice of all forms and color as a dimension of experience and object for analysis. The novel contains an entire course on "reading" snow in the Arctic regions. You would have to go all the way back to Herman Melville´s Moby Dick, with its ambitions to tell the reader everything about whales, to find such a vast display of enthusiasm for systematization in a literary work. What is the difference between grease ice, new ice, and "rotten" ice and what do they reveal or conceal? The reader learns everything about them in a learning process that is so absorbing because the "reading" of snow is integrated into the exciting and well-constructed intrigue of the thriller.

You might wonder where the boundary actually lies between magical realism and the presentation of true facts about Arctic conditions in Høeg´s novel, but this ambiguity simply adds to the book´s charm.

But there is no doubt that Peter Høeg has written a thriller of international stature without imitating any precursors. Smilla´s Sense of Snow is a completely original work with the consistency of a particular kind of Greenlandic ice called ivuniq: intractable, structurally strong, and dancing with colors.


Søren Schou is an instructor in the Department of Language and Culture at Roskilde University and a critic for Information.

The article was first published in Danish Literary Magazine 3, 1992

Translated by Tiina Nunnally