THE SUN DOES ACTUALLY SHINE IN SKÅNE

I’ve just caught up with the second programme in the final British Wallander series, starring Kenneth Branagh, and I was wondering if I had got the colour adjustment on my TV set wrong.  In fact, looking back on the previous episodes of the late Henning Mankell’s novels, the same thing happened, and it raises the same question – does the sun ever shine in Skåne?

Well, it did last month at least.  Every day we were in southern Sweden.  We’d left Cumbria to catch the plane from Manchester in a snow storm.  The omens weren’t good.  When we arrived in Malmö, the weather was looking up.  Waking up the next morning in our son’s home in Ystad, we saw clear blue skies.  During our ten-day visit, we ventured north to Stockholm and then on to Uppsala.  It just got brighter and hotter.  We were visiting the latter two locations for scenes I’m putting in Menace in Malmö.   Both are fascinating places.  We stayed in Stockholm’s old town, Gamla Stan, which is a warren of medieval streets.  What makes the city so photogenic is that you are always near water, which is a great way of setting off iconic buildings like the City Hall, where the Nobel prizes are given out, the huge royal palace and the Swedish Parliament.  Little ferries scurry from harbour to harbour taking commuters and tourists to the different islands, while giant ferries barge their way in and disgorge passengers from across the Baltic ­– places such as Helsinki, Riga and St. Petersburg.

Uppsala is equally beguiling.  A university town with a castle and a twin-spired cathedral on a hill – it reminded me of Durham, where I grew up.

The point is that the weather was fantastic.  And it wasn’t a one-off.  We’ve had some wonderful warm summers in Sweden over the last sixteen years.  Yet the makers of Wallander would have us believe that the landscape of Skåne is as miserable as the tortured souls who inhabit this godforsaken countryside.  Even Alison Graham in her preview of the programme in the Radio Times wrote: “After last week’s sunny South African instalment, we’re back in Ystad, Sweden, and the flat, grey landscape that rolls as far as the eye can see.”  It’s not a description I recognise even though I know some of the locations used.  Skåne in the summer is a place of bright colours, lush vegetation, rolling farmland, pretty harbours and attractive coastline.   Ystad is a beautiful little town.  It’s contrary to the image that is put across in the Wallander films.  We seem to enjoy an image of Sweden being snow-swept, dreary and desolate with serial killers running amok.  To be fair, a number of Swedish writers seem to happily trade on this image too.  It just seems a pity.  That’s why I’ve set some of my novels during warm summers as an antidote to this distorted picture of Sweden.  Midnight in Malmö was set around Midsummer – Menace in Malmö takes place during August.

Of course Skåne looks bleaker in winter.  Most places do.  But many of the Wallander films were shot during the summer months.  Yet everywhere still appears downright dismal.  I can’t vouch for the middle and north of Sweden, as I’ve never been there and the landscapes may well live up to the stereotype.  But not Skåne, which has a touch of Normandy about it in the spring and summer.

So, don’t be put off visiting Sweden because you think it might be a drab experience.  It won’t be.  And I’m pretty sure there aren’t that many serial killers about either.