CHAPTER 3
Rats and anthills
The First World War in the Scandinavian spy novel
The spy novels that were published in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden during the First World War are of interest as a documentation of the war’s mental impact on neutral Scandinavia. They should not only be considered a passive impression of the war, however, since they also actively contributed to the formation of public opinion. The prelude to the war and the German invasion of Belgium are recurring themes in the novels of the first year of the war, later to be followed by variations on the dominant theme of foreign intelligence activities in Scandinavia. The novels are largely adapted to the conventions of formula fiction. As a consequence, they have many common traits on the level of plot structure as well as on the thematic level. Nevertheless, they express contrary and competing interpretations of the political course of events. These interpretations can be compared to the political propaganda distributed in other media; to pro-German or anti-German sentiment; and to conservative, liberal, or socialist opinions. The object of this chapter is to relate the Scandinavian spy fiction of the war years to the discursive war that was fought in the neutral states as elsewhere, actively supported by the belligerent powers. Different ideological positions will be discussed, and different ways of conveying the political message will be examined. In popular literature, this message was sometimes stated explicitly, but it could also be implicitly indicated.
In Sweden, voices were heard calling for the country to enter the war, but, as in Denmark and Norway, such a scenario was feared by an overwhelming majority. Nevertheless the war split public opinion in two. In Sweden, sympathy for Germany were stronger than in Denmark and Norway, but even in these two countries there were advocates for a benevolent attitude towards the Central Powers.
The rapid expansion of intelligence activity in Europe in the years immediately preceding the war was closely connected to the dramatically increasing attention paid to spies in the press and in popular literature. During the war, more or less paranoid ideas prevailed among all the belligerents, claiming that military failures were the consequence of infiltration, espionage, and treason rather than inadequate preparation or miscalculation. There were common patterns of national chauvinism directed against the culture of the opponents or against individuals with an ethnic attachment to the enemy, but there were also local variations in the manifestation of spy mania.1 In more than one case, notably in Great Britain, the establishment of a professional intelligence organization was realized only after the publication of a number of successful literary accounts of operations by foreign intelligence agencies—fiction once more demonstrating its persuasive capacity.2
This climate of suspicion and anxiety certainly influenced attitudes towards the stream of foreigners arriving in Copenhagen, Kristiania, and Stockholm. In Sweden, reports of supposed espionage by Russian travelling saw-doctors had appeared in the press since the turn of the century. A Swedish intelligence agency, Underrättelsebyrån (UB), had been established in 1905, and in the last years before the outbreak of war rumours of foreign secret agents working in Sweden had caused a marked increase in the activities of Swedish counter-intelligence.3 In addition, new espionage legislation was passed in 1913. In August 1914, the Norwegian Storting passed the Act on Defence Secrets, commonly known as the ‘Spy Act’, authorizing the police to intervene against all espionage, regardless of the target of the activity.4 Even in neutral Scandinavia there was in the summer of 1914 a sense of being involved in secret international machinations, unavoidably leading to war. This atmosphere is well expressed by the detective Asbjørn Krag in the novel Tindebestigerklubben (1915) by Stein Riverton (Sven Elvestad):
Krag was standing in the open front door of the hotel … listening to the yells of the newspaper boys. Their cries hit him like rocks, and he suddenly experienced an unsettling and sickening feeling that the menacing stillness of Central Europe … was about to give way to a dreadful advance of great, fateful events.
One of the newspaper boys called out as he walked past: ‘Austria and Serbia! The latest telegrams!’ Further down the street came the cry: ‘Austria wants war! The World War is coming! The World War is coming!
Krag closed the door. He was beginning to see clearly the undercurrent in world events that had brought all these mysterious and dangerous people to this neutral capital. Like rats sensing approaching catastrophe, they had fled the sinking ship. Peace was about to be broken out there in the big world.5
The individual perspective confronts that of international politics when Krag listens to the cries of the newspaper boy. This narrative device was not restricted to popular literature, as the well-known example of Sigfrid Siwertz’s novel Eldens återsken (1916) shows. In Tindebestigerklubben the function is more specific. The war that is announced is not only waged on the Continent. The many spies at work demonstrate that Kristiania is also a battlefield, as are the other Scandinavian capitals. The foreigners, characterized as ‘mysterious and dangerous people’, are in the service of one of the great powers, competing for intelligence and trying to exert influence. Asbjørn Kragh is no ordinary Norwegian, but in this passage he nevertheless represents the anxiety of the general public. As a writer of fiction, Riverton/Elvestad is building up suspense, but at the same time he is planting suspicion. Who are these peculiar foreigners who can be seen everywhere in the city? What intrigues are they involved in? Is the country at risk?
The growing cosmopolitan element in neutral Scandinavia is depicted as even more sinister in the novel by Radscha (Iwan Aminoff), De ljusskygge. En spioneriroman från huvudstaden (1917). In the following passage, the Swedish capital is apostrophized in order to be blamed for not having stood the moral test of the war:
The Stockholmers have had to yield the way to the cosmopolitan element. Dozens of tongues are spoken on your streets, in your squares, in your hotels. His Highness Gold rules more or less openly. You sacrifice to the profiteers, to the golden calf. Your blood has become unhealthy, contaminated, and yet livelier than ever before.
Stockholm has become an immense anthill with an addition of foreign intruders. You have sacrificed morals, codes of honour, and customs in exchange for the bountiful gifts of mammon. Yet inside the anthill schemes and stratagems are being plotted, often of the most complicated nature—an abundant field of study. The many-armed polyp of the World War has put out not one but several arms over the city, sucking greedily wherever it can.6
The international element is not only described as mysterious, but as menacing. The foreign presence is not only politically dangerous; the ‘many-armed polyp’ of war is also threatening the economy and, not least, the morals of the country. Using an imagery of sickness and disease, Radscha suggests that traditional Swedish morals are disintegrating, suborned by filthy international lucre. Here, as in Riverton/Elvestad’s novel, foreign spy rings are described. The spy is a threat to peace as well as to the economy and morals of the neutral country, but at the same time he serves another purpose; he permits the neutral but nevertheless curious Scandinavians to be a part of the great course of events.
From invasion stories to spy fiction
At the turn of the century, increasing concern caused by international industrial competition and an escalating arms race had already created a market for historical novels illustrating the clash of nations. At the same time, a new genre developed where thrilling political plots were placed not in the past, but in the future. These stories rapidly became extremely popular after the Franco-German War, starting with The Battle of Dorking (1871), where the Prussians, having defeated France, successfully invade England. During the following decades, a great number of short stories and novels of this type were published all over Europe, relating local, hair-raising details of invasion.7 A parallel genre also developed; the spy story situated not in the past but in the present, often extending into the immediate future. The invasion story and the spy story are in fact inseparable. In the invasion novel, the enemy’s attack is regularly preceded by espionage. In an atmosphere of mental militarization, the spy novel on the other hand very often describes clandestine activities that are preparing for a war that appears to be unavoidable. A French novel of 1905, La future invasion prussienne et l’espionnage à la frontière, led with both topics to be on the safe side.8
Both genres were continuously developed in close connection with international politics as well as with current mentalities. Franco Moretti has pointed out that the British invasion novels are located in the same south-eastern part of England that Sherlock Holmes prefers to visit when leaving London. Even more interesting, the murder cases are much more frequent here, among ‘parks and country-houses and estates’, than in the city, and so is the proportion of foreign perpetrators.9 This pattern can be found all over Europe, the invasion novels being in many cases set in rural parts of the country, and particularly in places connected to national history and thus likely to appeal to patriotic sentiment. A typical Swedish example was Hvarför vi förlorade slaget vid Upsala den 18 maj 1900 (1890).10
After the outbreak of war, the international and political polarization sharpened. The invasion novels of the pre-war period had in most countries portrayed several nations as potential invaders. These alternative scenarios were now replaced by a stable cast corresponding to the roles played in the real war. Naturally, Germany played the part of the villain in British and French spy novels published during the war.11 In the neutral Scandinavian countries, the political situation was more complicated. Different national histories provided different points of departure. In the case of Denmark, the harrowing experience of the Second Schleswig War in 1864 provided an interpretative frame that resulted in widespread anti-militarist sentiment. The Swedish pre-war invasion novels invariably expressed a Russophobia deeply rooted in history.12 The Russian threat was also depicted in Norwegian novels such as Vilhelm Nagel’s Et skjæbnesvangert dokument (1905), or Kaptein Skugge. Fantastisk forteljing um krigen millom Russland og Noreg i 1950 (1911), by Olav Gullvåg writing as Johan Visionary. Several Norwegian adventure novels featured espionage related to the dissolution in 1905 of the union between Sweden and Norway: Ludvig Larsen’s En spionhistorie fra 1905 (1909), Engebret Amundsen’s Spionen paa Fredriksten (1910), and Olaf Wilhelm Erichsen’s Naar lænkene brytes (1915).13 The spy story was a flexible form that could easily be adapted to changing political circumstances. Amundsen had previously written a historical spy novel, Bonaparte og den østerrigske spion (1909). Erichsen, using the signature ‘Kaptein Munk’, moved on from the dissolution of the Union to the world war. In Den hvite races selvmord (1915), the course of events corresponds roughly with that of the ongoing war, with the exception that it is explained as a part of a Japanese scheme for dominion over the West.
Besides Russia and the Yellow Peril, Germany also appears in a threatening role in the Norwegian spy fiction of the war years, which can be seen in Finn Lie’s Naar krigsfaklen luer (1915) and Aksel Akselsson’s Undervandsbaatens hemmelighet (1918).14 Denmark also had its share of invasion novels with Germany in the role of the invader. There are striking differences on more than one level between Karl Larsen’s Dommens dag (1908) and Emil Bønnelycke’s Spartanerne (1919), but in both novels Denmark is invaded by Germany.
In Sweden, the traditional fear of an imminent Russian invasion led to a series of misjudgements at the outbreak of war, in fiction as well as in politics. Axel Kerfve’s novel Allt för fosterlandet (1914) was published in the first week of the war, launched with the hastily added subheading Krigsutbrottets roman (‘A novel of the outbreak of war’). The plot, dealing with Russian espionage culminating in an invasion of Sweden, was soon overtaken by the course of events in Europe.15 After this, the traditional Russian enemy lost much of its popularity, but no other nation took over the part of villain in the invasion stories published during the war. The danger of Sweden’s close relations to militarist Germany was a recurrent theme in the liberal and socialist press, but this threat had no impact at all on popular literature. Even in socialist papers, it was rarely expressed in an invasion scenario, but rather as unease at the spread of militarism to Sweden or the potentially disastrous consequences if Sweden entered the war on Germany’s side.16
In Sweden as well as in Norway and Denmark, political persuasions often corresponded with attitudes towards the belligerent powers. Socialists and liberals, inclined to sympathize with the Allies, judged the German invasion of neutral Belgium as a heinous crime and accused the German army of repeated acts of cruelty against Belgian civilians. In Britain, the same version of the story was often used to justify the decision to go to war, as in Asquith’s graphic image: ‘It is impossible for people of our blood and history to stand by … while a big bully sets to work to thrash and trample to the ground a victim who has given him no provocation.’17 In the opinion of writers and debaters such as Marika Stiernstedt and K. G. Ossiannilsson in Sweden, Johannes Jørgensen and Kr. Nyrop in Denmark, and Johan Bojer in Norway, the German invasion was regarded as an anti-democratic act and a violation of international law. The same interpretation was also expressed in fiction, as in Erich Erichsen’s novel Den tavse dansker (1916), in which a soldier from Schleswig bears witness to his complicity in war atrocities committed against Belgian civilians.18
Meanwhile in the pro-German camp, often but not always corresponding to a conservative political standpoint, the German invasion was described as the unavoidable and legitimate prevention of a long-planned and impending attack on Germany by the united strength of Britain, France, and Belgium. A number of spokesmen for this theory, and thus for Germany, were to be found in Scandinavia: in Sweden, Per Hallström and Fredrik Böök; in Norway, Knut Hamsun; and in Denmark, Karl Larsen. In both camps, the rhetoric of ethos was much used, portraying the Belgians either in a favourable light or as sly criminals.19 In her pamphlet Från Berlin till Brüssel (1916), Annie Åkerhielm idealizes the Germans and paints a very black picture of the Belgians, characterized as a ‘bigoted, ignorant, and backward race’. The German occupation of Belgium is consistently described as ‘an act of selfdefence forced by bitter necessity’.20 Marika Stiernstedt, in contrast, depicts German soldiers as bestial in Den grymma läxan (1915),21 while exerting herself to make it possible for Swedish readers to identify with the Belgians. This she achieved by stressing that both countries were neutral and by discussing the emigrant Walloons, ‘the ancestors of many of our most prominent Swedish families, and thus binding us with ties of blood to the valiant Belgian people’.22
Scandinavian spy novels
Kanonernes sjel (1915), written by the Norwegian writer of suspense fiction Øvre Richter Frich, is not a traditional spy novel, but it includes espionage and the first half of the plot takes place in Belgium. Frich criticizes parliamentarianism and socialism, and repeatedly describes war as a badly needed purge for modern civilization. Nevertheless, his analysis of the hidden motives for the war resembles that of the socialists, and he repudiates nationalist propaganda. Frich’s ideal is in fact a radical, individualistic vitalism. Modern war is described as a threat to individuality because it turns men into soulless machines. Conversely, the fight between individual men is proclaimed as one of life’s greatest virtues. One effect of Frich’s individualism is that he does not side with any of the two competing representations of the Belgians.23
Willy Dahl has characterized the ideology of Frich’s novels as fascist, pointing out that Norway in particular provided all the necessary prerequisites of the anti-capitalist variety of fascism.24 Kanonernes sjel certainly contains passages that could be described as proto-fascist. An ideological position such as this often leads to a pro-German standpoint, but Frich differed from this pattern, keeping his distance to the controversial issue of Belgium.
A departure from the standard opinions on Belgium’s fate can also be found in another Norwegian novel, Den gule marquis. Ei soga fraa storkrigen 1915 (1915) by Kaare Gullveng (Olav Gullvåg). This is definitely a pro-Belgian novel, but at the same time, a highly individualistic brand of opportunism is portrayed in a sympathetic light. Captain Falk of Svanhild carries on business with the British and the Germans alike, declaring that he keeps a neutral position. He is soon provided with a twofold reason for turning against the Germans: a growing liking for an eccentric, exiled Belgian millionaire who is waging a private war on the Germans, and his love for a Belgian woman. His increasing dislike of Germany has dramatic consequences when he decides to get himself and his ship out of a difficult situation by ramming a German submarine escort, causing it to go down with all hands.
In Belgium, Falk joins the resistance led by the Belgian millionaire, the ‘Yellow Marquis’. The anti-German position is now much more evident, with German lootings and rapes strengthening the motivation. The much-debated question of whether the behaviour of the Belgian francs-tireurs justified the German’s harsh treatment of civilians is also settled, the Germans being described as suffering from hysterical paranoia and the Belgians as completely innocent victims. Nevertheless, the Yellow Marquis and his men are doing exactly what the Germans accused the Belgian francs-tireurs of: not only do they spy and carry out sabotage, sometimes disguised as Belgian farmers, sometimes as German soldiers,25 they even carry out proper attacks on German troops. Gullvåg’s novel is highly biased, but his message is undermined not only by the protagonist’s profiting by the war, but also by the inconsistent portrayal of the relations between Germans and Belgian francs-tireurs.
Interesting points of comparison are offered by three spy novels, two Swedish and one Norwegian, that deal with the German invasion of Belgium: Spionernas mästare (1915) by Radscha (Iwan Aminoff); Mannen från Liège (1914) by Frank Heller (Gunnar Serner); and, already quoted, Riverton’s Tindebestigerklubben (1915). In Heller’s novel, we enter a world of secret German preparations for the invasion, a plot reversed by Radscha, who writes of a Germany threatened by imminent attack. In Riverton’s novel, the partiality is not as outspoken: hidden conspiracies certainly exist in Tindebestigerklubben, but it is only in the very last sentence that he finally comes down on one side. These particular novels illustrate the two main explanations of the outbreak of the war, thus entering the controversy about the responsibility for the war that was formulated in many different media. They also demonstrate that popular literature can shape public opinion in more than one way. It can be heavily biased, but it can also deliver its message in a more subtle way. Read in isolation, Riverton’s novel does not provide us with an explanation to the mystical agreement deciphered by the detective Asbjørn Krag. The pattern only appears if we use the German propaganda as cipher key. In the pro-German press, there was much speculation about a secret plan for an attack on Germany signed by Britain, France, Belgium, and, sometimes, Russia. In an effort to make this theory more credible there were often references made to ‘well-informed sources’, claiming to have first-hand knowledge of the document.
The role of the villain may be played by different nations, but there are nevertheless many similarities between the plot structures of the three novels. In Spionernas mästare, secret plans for an invasion of Germany are exposed; in Mannen från Liège, a secret plan for a German invasion of Belgium. Radscha makes use of several techniques to make the pro-German story credible.26 One of these is to avoid using a German protagonist. Instead, the action is carried forward by the French spy Croz, who is loyal to his country, but nevertheless has access to secret information making it possible for him to see through the Allied propaganda. In 1916, Germany was to have been the victim of a secret and long-planned invasion; the German invasion of Belgium in 1914 was therefore a legitimate and necessary attempt to forestall the Allies before they were fully armed.
An altogether different scenario is used in the anti-German fiction. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s short story, ‘His last bow’ (1917), in which Sherlock Holmes outwits a German spy, is a typical example. The combination used to open the lock of the German’s safe is ‘August 1914’, and we are told that this combination was chosen in 1901! The plot of Mannen från Liège is similar, featuring a young Swede who is drawn into a life-and-death struggle between the Belgian intelligence service and a band of German spies. The clues consist of a mysterious figure drawn on matchbox and a coded message in a stolen letter. The letter concerns classified information about Belgian fortifications and is in the process of being smuggled over the border into Germany.27 The mysterious drawing finally proves to be a map of the fortifications protecting Liège— the target of an attack planned by a treacherous industrialist.
Both Heller’s and Radscha’s novels were published after the German invasion of Belgium and the subsequent international outcry, making Heller’s version of events the more marketable one. In time, Radscha’s urgent efforts to convince his readers of Germany’s innocence became increasingly unfeasible. Yet for all that, political developments were not the only reason behind the Swedish publisher’s decision in the autumn of 1915 finally to stop the series. More important was a general and growing war-weariness, making war novels more difficult to sell, irrespective of their political message.28
A political subtext is also often much in evidence in novels published after the dramatic first year of the war. Witness three Danish novels: Jørgen Bast’s Spioner (1916, published under the pseudonym Willy Stone) and Det elskelige København (1917), and Erik Hansen’s Det nevtrale hjerte (1918). In Spioner, Copenhagen is depicted as one of the neutral capitals where a merciless struggle for intelligence is fought under the unconcerned surface. The German spy Moses Auerstein and his accomplices confront a Russian organization using the Danish capital as a centre for the collection of information. The Russians are confident that they will soon be able to put an end to Germany’s economic influence in Russia.29 To achieve this, they bring pressure to bear on a French businessman as well as on a Danish officer. In this secret struggle between Russia and Germany, Denmark is far from neutral. To start with, the Russians are aided as a matter of course by a captain Hage of the Danish secret service. Another mysterious helper acting behind the scenes is eventually recognized as ‘the head of secret intelligence in a country whose credentials we respect’.30 The German spy ring is defeated and forced to leave Denmark. The friendship between Denmark and Russia is then symbolically confirmed by the love between Prince Ivan Trubetskoj and Else Marker, a young Danish woman initially duped into running the Germans’ errands.
In Spioner, the anti-German position stems not from any sympathies with Britain or France, but with Russia; a very unusual position in Scandinavia during the First World War. Bast’s next novel, Det elskelige København (1917), has no Russian connection, but the political undertone is the same as in Spioner. The role of the villain is once more taken by a German Spy called Moses, and once more the novel ends when this sly creature is defeated and forced to flee—this time not to Germany but to Malmö. The objective this time is different too: the smuggling of bombs (‘helvetesmaskiner’, or infernal machines) to Norway to blast Norwegian ships, an extension to a blockade of Denmark trying to stop all exports to Britain. Russia is once more threatened, when the Germans smuggle anthrax to Finland via Norway. These spectacular episodes can be seen as typical of the creative sensationalism of popular literature, but they are based on reality. There are close points of similarity between them and two episodes much discussed in the press in 1917 and discussed by Nik. Brandal and Ola Teige in their contribution to the present volume. The first case was an attempt to smuggle anthrax from Germany to Finland via Norway by a Swedish citizen acting as a German spy; the second that of another German spy, this time a Finnish citizen, caught in the act of smuggling explosives, described in the press with the very word ‘helvetesmaskiner’, to a hiding-place in Kristiania discovered by the Norwegian police. The possible reason may indeed have been to smuggle them to the Finnish resistance.31
In both novels, Spioner as well as Det elskelige København, the connection between espionage and the economy is underlined. Profiteers who made a killing selling tinned food (‘gulaschbaroner’) are often satirically portrayed in comical popular fiction during the war. Bjarne S. Bendtsen has pointed out that they nevertheless represented far smaller returns than those made by speculating on the stock market, where shipping companies were particularly lucrative.32 In this respect, the spy novels display a better sense of economic essentials. Det elskelige København uses two parallel plots, the one concerning the smuggling of explosives and anthrax by the German spies, the other dealing with speculation on the stock exchange, the two plots eventually merging when the sabotage of the Norwegian merchant vessels causes a dramatic fall in shipping shares. In the novel the Danish police are described as incompetent; the Norwegian police force, on the other hand, stands out as energetic and efficient. The censure of the Danish police is related to criticism of the Danish preference for ‘Neutrality at any price’, a position maintained even after the German blockade: ‘Any nation not opposing this unparalleled injustice would simply be doomed.’33
Erik Hansen’s Det nevtrale hjerte brings ingredients from the traditional adventure novel and early science fiction to the spy novel. The adventure is based on spectacular elements: a hidden German submarine equipped with an epoch-making radioactive accumulator, a giant German ocean liner bound for home after the outbreak of war, long marches across the Greenland icecap, and a Japanese spy disguised as a woman. The novel’s sympathies lie plainly with France, the anti-German sentiment being as evident as in Jørgen Bast’s novels. One example of this is the heavily biased and evidently authorized summary of the course of the war provided by one of the Danish protagonists.34 An important role is given to a secret document providing ‘a complete plan for Germany’s secret intelligence activities in Japan, France, England, and the Baltic provinces of Russia’.35
Germany is cast as the arch-enemy, but there are other threats against Denmark. Just as ‘Kaptein Munck’ in Den hvite races selvmord, Erik Hansen warns against ‘the Yellow Peril’. The Japanese spy accordingly delivers a hateful monologue in which he expresses his joy at the European powers’ mutual destruction, making Japanese dominion so much easier to accomplish.36 In the last part of the novel a young Dane goes to France in order to join the resistance against the Germans, a device for linking a neutral country to the shooting war that was also used by Olav Gullvåg in Den gule marquis. In Jørgen Bast’s analysis, despicable Danish neutrality resulted from naïvety and a widespread fear of repeating the catastrophic mistakes of 1864. Erik Hansen adds an anti-democratic flavour by stressing ‘the parliamentary gelatine’ that results not only in neutrality, but in irresponsibility and amateurism as well.37
The uses of popular literature
The spy novels under consideration here build on a dualistic conception of the world. They are adventure stories that align themselves with either pro-German or anti-German ideology, the latter being the dominant pattern in neutral Scandinavia. Reader identification with the protagonists was facilitated by the novelists’ black-and-white political map—a map used by Kaare Gullveng in Den gule marquis as well as in Frank Heller’s Mannen från Liège, where several factors guide the reader into sympathizing with Belgium and repudiating Germany: the insistence on the deceitful attack on a small neutral country, the physical and moral repulsiveness of a Belgian traitor of German descent, the protagonist’s falling in love with a young Belgian woman. The political message may be spelled out in Gullveng’s and Heller’s novels, but next to Aminoff’s pro-German Spionernas mästare they could be described as positively restrained. Stein Riverton’s Tindebestigerklubben, on the other hand, appears to be completely neutral; that is, until the very last sentence of the novel, when the sudden appearance of the secret German invasion plan makes it an irrefutable fact. In this novel at least, Riverton’s conception of the world appears to be pro-German. Nevertheless, Tindebestigerklubben is not a book with a purpose; many readers were not sufficiently well informed to decipher the hidden pattern, and were thus likely to miss the point altogether.
The communication of unity and a sense of belonging is a fundamental function of popular culture, particularly important in a time of crisis. Kim Salomon has characterized the Swedish magazines as ‘an arena where cultural community is created and maintained’, and Lina Sturfelt adopts a similar perspective in her thesis on the coverage of the First World War in Swedish magazines.38 Nevertheless, there was no dominant ideological position in the Swedish media during the war. The situation could rather be described as a discursive struggle in a transitional period. Radscha’s novels propagate conservative and pro-German beliefs deeply rooted in civil service departments as well as in the officer corps. The novels of Frank Heller represent the rival, liberal, anti-German ideology, growing stronger with every passing year. Neither in Denmark nor in Norway was there a political polarization as sharp as that in Sweden. The Danish and Norwegian spy novels discussed in this chapter demonstrate a certain political variation, from the liberal position adopted by Kaare Gullveng to the anti-parliamentary message of Erik Hansen. Despite these differences, they all have the same pronounced anti-German tendency, the one exception being Stein Riverton’s sophisticated staging of the secret invasion plan used in German propaganda.
The spy novel was used by all combatants in the discursive war fought in the neutral nations to convey liberal opinions as well as conservative and anti-parliamentary messages. In Spionernas mästare, Radscha invites his readers to join a much more exclusive cultural fellowship than that proposed by liberal writers such as Frank Heller and Kaare Gullveng. The ideological appeal of the spy novels was an integral part of a discursive war, but the conditions varied according to media and genre. In contrast to the guardedness of most magazines, the spy novels in many cases explicitly took sides. This does not agree with Sofi Qvarnström’s conclusion that the anti-war literary fiction of the First World War problematized the war to a greater extent, whereas non-fictional anti-war writing was in many cases programmatically biased.39 Unlike the novels discussed by Qvarnström, the spy novels fall into the category of popular literature, which means that they reflect a set of much more stable genre conventions, favouring an unequivocal political message. Nevertheless, popular literature does not differ from ‘serious literature’ in its capacity for public debate as well as for escapism.40 The proportions may vary, but both tendencies can certainly be found in all of the spy novels discussed in this chapter. Yet behind the apparent similarities at the level of the plot structure, there is great variation in the political message.
Notes
1 See Thomas Boghardt, Spies of the Kaiser: German Covert Operations in Great Britain during the First World War Era (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); William C. Fuller, The Foe Within. Fantasies of Treason and the End of Imperial Russia (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2006); Matthew Stibbe, German Anglophobia and the Great War, 1914–1918 (Cambridge: CUP, 2001).
2 See David Trotter, ‘The Politics of Adventure in the Early British Spy Novel’, in Wesley K. Wark (ed.), Spy Fiction, Spy Films and Real Intellligence (London: Frank Cass, 1991), 31; Boghardt 2005; Philip Knightley, The Second Oldest Profession: Spies and Spying in the Twentieth Century (London: Pimlico, 2003), 17; Michael Smith, Six. A History of Britain’s Secret Intelligence Service, i: 1909–1939 (London: Dialogue, 2010), 20.
3 Gunnar Åselius, ‘Militärattachéerna i S:t Petersburg. En undersökning av det svenska underrättelseväsendets professionalisering 1885–1917’, Militärhistorisk Tidskrift (1990), 7–44; cf. Jan Ottoson & Lars Magnusson, Hemliga makter. Svensk hemlig militär underrättelsetjänst från unionstiden till det kalla kriget (Stockholm: Tidens Förlag, 1991), 42 ff.
4 See Nik. Brandal & Ola Teige in this volume.
5 The novel by Stein Riverton (Sven Elvestad), Tindebestigerklubben, was serialized in a Norwegian paper in 1915 and was not published as a novel in Norway until 1940, under the title De excentriske herrers klubb. A Swedish translation of the novel published in 1915 has been used here: ‘Krag stod i den öppna hotellporten … och lyssnade till tidningspojkarnas skrän. Dessa rop träffade honom liksom stenar och han erfor plötsligt en oroande och beklämmande känsla av att den hotande stillheten i Mellaneuropa … var nära att brytas och ge plats för en ohygglig frammarsch av stora ödesdigra händelser. En av tidningspojkarna ropade när han gick förbi: “Österrike och Serbien! Sista telegrammen!” Längre bort på gatan hördes skriken: “Österrike vill ha krig! Världskriget kommer! Världskriget kommer!” Krag stängde porten. Nu började han klart förstå, den underström i världshändelserna som hade fört alla dessa mystiska och farliga människor hit till denna neutrala huvudstad. Liksom råttor, vilka ana katastrofens närhet, hade de flytt från det sjunkande skeppet. Freden, var nära att brytas därute i den stora världen.’ (De excentriska herrarnas klubb (Stockholm: Dahlberg, 1915), 248)
6 Radscha (Iwan Aminoff), De ljusskygge. En spioneriroman från huvudstaden (Karlskrona: K. L. Svenssons, 1917), 7, ‘Stockholmarna ha fått vika tillbaka för det kosmopolitiska element[et]. Dussintals tungor talas på dina gator, dina torg, dina hotell. Hans höghet guldet reg[er]ar mer eller mindre öppet. Du offrar åt gulaschen, åt den gyllene kalven. Ditt blod har blivit osunt, nedsmittat och dock livligare än någonsin tillförene. Stockholm har blivit en oerhörd myrstack med ett tillskott av utländska inkräktare. Moral, hedersbegrepp, plägseder har du offrat i utbyte mot mammons rika gåvor. Men inom myrstacken utspinnas ränkor och intriger, ofta av den mest komplicerade beskaffenhet, ett rikt fält för studier. Världskrigets mångarmade polyp har sträckt ej blott en utan flera armar över staden och suger girigt, där sugas kan.’
7 See I. F. Clarke, Voices Prophesying War 1763–1984 (London: OUP, 1966); Cecil Degrotte Eby, The Road to Armageddon: The Martial Spirit in English Popular Literature, 1870–1914 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1987); Johan A. Höglund, Mobilising the Novel. The Literature of Imperialism and the First World War (diss.; Studia Anglistica Upsaliensia, 99; Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 1997), 94 ff. Swedish invasion novels are discussed by Claes Ahlund, ‘Den svenska invasionsberättelsen – en bortglömd litteratur’, Tidskrift för litteraturvetenskap, 32/3 (2003), 82–103.
8 Edouard Rousseaux, La future invasion prussienne et l’espionnage à la frontier (Mayenne: C. Collin, 1905); see Margaret H. Darrow, French Women and the First World War: War Stories of the Home Front (Oxford: Berg, 2000), 304.
9 Franco Moretti, Atlas of the European Novel 1800–1900 (London: Verso, 1998), 137 ff.
10 [Christian Gernandt], Hvarför vi förlorade slaget vid Upsala den 18 maj 1900 (Stockholm: Henrik Sandberg, 1890).
11 See John Buchan, The Thirty-Nine Steps (1915) and Greenmantle (1916); Gaston Leroux, Rouletabille chez Krupp (1917); and Léon Daudet, La Vermine du Monde. Roman de l’Espionage Allemand (1916).
12 Ahlund 2003.
13 Bjørn Carling, Norsk kriminallitteratur gjennom 150 år (Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1976), 79.
14 Ibid. 81.
15 Ahlund 2003, 95–6.
16 This can be seen in an invasion story published in Brand in 1916, describing Sweden’s gruesome fate having entered the war on Germany’s side and consequently being invaded (‘Sverige i kriget’, Brand, 2 September 1916).
17 Quoted in Niall Ferguson, ‘The Kaiser’s European Union. What if Britain had “stood aside” in August 1914’, id. (ed.), Virtual history: Alternatives and Counterfactuals (London: Picador, 1997), 231.
18 Erichsen’s novel is discussed by Bjarne Søndergaard Bendtsen, ‘Mellem fronterne. Studier i Første Verdenskrigs virkning på og udtryk i dansk kultur med særligt fokus på litterære skildringer 1914–1939’, Ph.D. diss. (Syddansk Universitet, 2011).
19 See Sofi Qvarnström, Motståndets berättelser. Elin Wägner, Anna Lenah Elgström, Marika Stiernstedt och första världskriget (diss.; Skrifter utgivna av Avdelningen för litteratursociologi vid Litteraturvetenskapliga institutionen i Uppsala, 58; Hedemora: Gidlunds förlag, 2009), 309.
20 Annie Åkerhielm, Från Berlin till Brüssel (Stockholm: Hugo Gebers förlag, 1916), 107, 85. See Claes Ahlund, ‘Krig och kultur i konservativ och radikal belysning. Annie Åkerhielm och Frida Stéenhoff från sekelskiftet till första världskriget’, Samlaren, 126 (2005), 97–150 at 132, ‘en bigott, okunnig och efterbliven ras’, and ‘en af den bittraste nödvändighet framtvingad akt af själfförsvar’.
21 Qvarnström 2009, 327.
22 Marika Stiernstedt, Den grymma läxan (1915), quoted in Qvarnström 2009, 324, ‘från vilka många av våra duktigaste nu svenska släkter härstamma, och som sålunda också med blodsband knyta oss till det tappra belgiska folket’.
23 Øvre Richter Frich, Kanonernes sjel (Kristiania, 1915), 92, 149–50, 89, 33, 289, 63.
24 Willy Dahl, Blå briller og løsskjægg i Kristiania (Oslo: Gyldendal Norsk Forlag, 1975), 70.
25 Kaare Gullveng (Olav Gullvåg), Den gule marquis. Ei soga fraa storkrigen 1915 (1915), 139.
26 Spionernas mästare is discussed by Claes Ahlund, Underhållning och propaganda. Radschas (Iwan Aminoffs) romaner om första världskriget 1914–1915 (Skrifter utgivna av Avdelningen för litteratursociologi vid Litteraturvetenskapliga institutionen i Uppsala, 61; Uppsala: Uppsala universitet, 2010).
27 Mannen från Liège was serialized in 1914 and published as a novel in 1915, then with the title Monsieur Jean-Louis Kessels papper.
28 Ahlund 2010, 167 ff.
29 Willy Stone (Jørgen Bast), Spioner. Billeder fra de sidste dages København (Copenhagen: Steen Hasselbalchs forlag, 1916), 24.
30 Stone 1916, 137, ‘Chefen for det hemmelige Efterretningsvæsen i et Land, hvis Legitimation vi respekterer her.’
31 Brandal & Teige in this volume.
32 Bendtsen 2011, 126 ff.
33 Jørgen Bast, Det elskelige København. En roman fra dette aar (Copenhagen: Nyt Nordisk Forlag, 1917), 158, ‘Neutraliteten for enhver Pris’; ‘Den Nation, der ikke rejste sig som een Mand mod dette uhørte Overgreb, vilde simpelthen være dødsdømt.’
34 Erik Hansen, Det nevtrale hjerte. Roman (Vamdrup: O. Sparre Ulrichs Forlag, 1918), 93–4.
35 Ibid. 101, ‘en fuldstændig Plan for Tysklands hemmelige Efterretningsvæsen i Japan, Frankrig och England og de russiske Østersøprovinser.’
36 Ibid. 123–4.
37 Ibid. 188, ‘denne parlamentariske Gelatine.’
38 Kim Salomon, En femtiotalsberättelse. Populärkulturens kalla krig i folkhemssverige (Stockholm: Atlantis, 2007), 36, ‘en arena för skapande och upprätthållande av kulturella gemenskaper’; Lina Sturfelt, Eldens återsken. Första världskriget i svensk föreställningsvärld (diss.; Lund: Sekel Bokförlag, 2008), 217.
39 Qvarnström 2009, 347 ff.
40 Dag Hedman, ‘Samhällsdebatterande förryttare eller eskapistiska eftersläntrare? Populärlitteraturens status exemplifierad med sekelskiftets brittiska invasions- agent- och spionfiktion, främst av William Le Queux’, Tidskrift för Litteraturvetenskap, 30/1 (2001), 95, 108.