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''Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow'' (), published in America as ''Smilla's Sense of Snow'', is a 1992 novel by Danish author
Peter Høeg Peter Høeg (born 17 May 1957) is a Danish writer of fiction. He is best known for his novel ''Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow'' (1992). Early life Høeg was born in Copenhagen, Denmark. Before becoming a writer, he worked variously as a sailor, ...
tracing the investigation into the suspicious death of a Greenlandic boy in Denmark. A global bestseller, it was translated into English by Tiina Nunnally (credited as "F. David" in the British edition).


Title

During her
Greenland Greenland is an autonomous territory in the Danish Realm, Kingdom of Denmark. It is by far the largest geographically of three constituent parts of the kingdom; the other two are metropolitan Denmark and the Faroe Islands. Citizens of Greenlan ...
childhood, Smilla developed an almost intuitive understanding of all
types of snow Classifications of snow describe and categorize the attributes of snow-generating weather events, including the individual crystals both in the air and on the ground, and the deposited snow pack as it changes over time. Snow can be classified ...
and their characteristics. As an adult, she worked for a time as a scientist whose speciality was snow and ice. Her certainty about the manner of a child’s death is due to this visceral "feeling for snow".


Background

The novel is ostensibly a work of detection and a thriller, although beneath the surface of the novel, Høeg is concerned with rather deeper cultural issues, particularly Denmark's problematic post-colonial history, and also the nature of relationships that exist between individuals and the societies in which they are obliged to operate. The protagonist Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen is a sympathetic and useful vehicle in this respect, her deceased mother being a Greenlandic
Inuk Inuit (singular: Inuk) are a group of culturally and historically similar Indigenous peoples of the Americas, Indigenous peoples traditionally inhabiting the Arctic and Subarctic regions of North America and Russia, including Greenland, Labr ...
and her father a rich Danish doctor. Having been brought in childhood from the poverty and freedom of Greenland to the affluent and highly ordered society of Denmark, Smilla's relationship with Denmark and Danish society is strained and ambivalent. Smilla investigates the death of a neighbour’s child whom she had befriended—a fellow Greenlander, with an alcoholic, neglectful mother and a mysteriously deceased father. The story begins in
Copenhagen Copenhagen ( ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a population of 1.4 million in the Urban area of Copenhagen, urban area. The city is situated on the islands of Zealand and Amager, separated from Malmö, Sweden, by the ...
, where the child has fallen to his death from the snowy rooftop of an old warehouse. The police refuse to consider it anything but an accident—there is only one set of footprints (the child's) in the snow leading to the edge of the roof—but Smilla believes there is something about the footprints that shows that the boy was chased off the roof. Her investigations lead her to decades-old conspiracies in Copenhagen, and then to a voyage on an icebreaker ship to a remote island off the Greenlandic coast, where the truth is finally discovered. But the book ends unresolved, with no firm conclusion.


Plot

Smilla Qaaviqaaq Jaspersen, 37-year-old product of the stormy union of a female Inuk hunter and a rich urban Danish physician, is a loner who struggles to live with her fractured heritage. Living alone in a dreary apartment complex in
Christianshavn Christianshavn () is a neighbourhood in Copenhagen, Denmark. Part of the Indre By District, it is located on several artificial islands between the islands of Zealand and Amager and separated from the rest of the city centre by the Inner Harbour, ...
, Copenhagen, she befriends Isaiah, the neglected son of her alcoholic neighbour, because he too is Greenlandic and not truly at home in Denmark. Smilla's friendship with Isaiah, recounted in the novel in flashback, gives some meaning to her otherwise lonely life. Isaiah’s sudden death is explained officially as a fall from the roof whilst playing, but Smilla’s understanding of the tracks the child left on the snowy roof convinces her that this is untrue. She complains to the police and quickly encounters obstruction and hostility from the authorities and other sources. Working with Peter, a mechanic neighbour who had also known and liked Isaiah, and with whom she begins an affair despite her fear of dependency, Smilla discovers that there is a conspiracy centred on Gela Alta (a possible reference to the Latin verb gelo, "to freeze", and the places called Alta in North Norway or Alta Lake in Canada or the feminine Latin adjective alta, "high, deep"), an isolated glaciated island off Greenland. Previous expeditions have found something there (Isaiah’s father was a diver who died on one of them, allegedly in an accident) and now plans are afoot to return for it. Isaiah’s death is linked to this conspiracy in some way. After a long journey of discovery in Copenhagen, during which she learns that the mechanic is not who he says he is, Smilla braves intimidation and threats and eventually gets on board the ship chartered for the mysterious expedition to Gela Alta, ostensibly as a stewardess. The final action takes place on the ship and the island. Smilla is held in deep suspicion by the ship's crew—who turn out to be all in some way compromised and in the pay of the mysterious Tørk Hviid, who is the expedition's real leader. Despite repeated attempts on her life by crew members, who assume she is from the authorities, Smilla doggedly pursues the truth, even when she discovers that Peter has deceived and betrayed her. The secret of the island is revealed to be a meteorite embedded in the glacier, certainly uniquely valuable—perhaps even alive in some way. However, the water surrounding it is infested with a lethal parasite related to the
Guinea worm ''Dracunculus medinensis'' (Guinea worm, dragon worm, fiery serpent) is a nematode that causes dracunculiasis, also known as Guinea worm disease. The disease is caused by the female which, at around in length, is among the longest nematodes ...
, which is what really killed Isaiah’s father. Isaiah was forced off the roof because he had accompanied his father on the previous expedition and had evidence of the meteorite’s location—and the parasite itself was actually dormant in his body. When Smilla learns that Tørk Hviid had chased Isaiah off the roof to his death, she pursues him out onto the frozen sea. He tries to reach the ship and force it to sail away, but Smilla chases him, using her intuitive ice-sense to head him off, out into isolation and danger. Here the novel ends.


Reception

The New York Times called the novel a "publishing sensation" that "was America’s gateway drug to a long-term dependency on Nordic noir." It was named the 1993 Best Book of the Year by both ''Time'' and ''Entertainment Weekly'' and spent twenty-six weeks on the
New York Times best-seller list ''The New York Times'' Best Seller list is widely considered the preeminent list of best-selling books in the United States. John Bear, ''The #1 New York Times Best Seller: intriguing facts about the 484 books that have been #1 New York Times ...
. The novel was translated into seventeen languages, and published in over thirty countries. As a genre novel, the book won the Crime Writers' Association Silver Dagger Award for Fiction in 1994, and was shortlisted for an Edgar Award from the
Mystery Writers of America Mystery Writers of America (MWA) is a professional organization of mystery and crime writers, based in New York City. The organization was founded in 1945 by Clayton Rawson, Anthony Boucher, Lawrence Treat, and Brett Halliday. It presents the E ...
in 1994. It also won the 1994
Dilys Award The Dilys Award was presented every year from 1992 to 2014 by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. It was given to the mystery title of the year which the member booksellers have most enjoyed selling. The Independent Mystery Booksell ...
, chosen by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association as the mystery title of the year that member booksellers most enjoyed selling. Literary critics have since considered its cultural themes, such as viewing it as a response to the "greed is good" spirit of the 1980s that pervaded Denmark and other western countries, showing "Danish society in terms of its limitations and injustices, particularly in relation to its treatment of Greenland and Greenlanders." Or as a nation coming to grips with its colonial past, showing "a number of puzzles that a colonial, and later a capitalist,
hegemony Hegemony (, , ) is the political, economic, and military predominance of one State (polity), state over other states, either regional or global. In Ancient Greece (ca. 8th BC – AD 6th c.), hegemony denoted the politico-military dominance of ...
and subordination" set up.Somdatta Bhattacharya, “Imagined Geographies and Colonial Marginals in Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow,” ''Crime Fiction and National Identities in the Global Age: Critical Essays''. Julie H. Kim (Ed.) 2020.


Film adaptation

The film, '' Smilla's Sense of Snow'' starring Julia Ormond,
Jim Broadbent James Broadbent (born 24 May 1949) is an English actor. A graduate of the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art in 1972, he came to prominence as a character actor for his many roles in film and television. He has received various accolades ...
,
Gabriel Byrne Gabriel James Byrne (born 12 May 1950) is an Irish actor. He has received a Golden Globe Award as well as nominations for a Grammy Award, two Primetime Emmy Awards and two Tony Awards. Byrne was awarded the Irish Film and Television Academy L ...
,
Richard Harris Richard St John Francis Harris (1 October 1930 – 25 October 2002) was an Irish actor and singer. Having studied at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art, he rose to prominence as an icon of the British New Wave. He received numerous a ...
,
Jürgen Vogel Jürgen Peter Vogel (; born 29 April 1968 in Hamburg) is a German actor and producer. One of the most successful character actors in German cinema, he first broke out in 1992 with his role in ''Little Sharks''.Jürgen Vogel i"German Who is Who"/ ...
,
Mario Adorf Mario Adorf (; born 8 September 1930) is a German actor, considered to be one of the great veteran character actors of European cinema. Since 1954, he has played both leading and supporting roles in over 200 film and television productions, am ...
and Tom Wilkinson, directed by
Bille August Bille August (; born 9 November 1948) is a Danish director, screenwriter, and cinematographer of film and television. August's 1987 film ''Pelle the Conqueror'' won the , Academy Awards, Academy Award and Golden Globe Awards, Golden Globe Awar ...
was released in 1997. There were some changes to the plot, especially having a more conclusive end in which the villain Tørk Hviid gets killed, instead of the book's deliberately ambiguous ending. In the
United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Northwestern Europe, off the coast of European mainland, the continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...
it was released as ''Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow''.


Awards and nominations

* Winner of the
Crime Writers' Association The Crime Writers' Association (CWA) is a specialist authors' organisation in the United Kingdom, most notable for its "Dagger" awards for the best crime writing of the year, and the Diamond Dagger awarded to an author for lifetime achievement. ...
Silver Dagger Award in 1994. * Winner of the Dilys Award for 1994 by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association. * Shortlisted for an
Edgar Award The Edgar Allan Poe Awards, popularly called the Edgars, are presented every year by the Mystery Writers of America which is based in New York City. Named after American writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849), a pioneer in the genre, the awards hon ...
in 1994.


See also

* ALH84001 – a meteorite which shows structures that some scientists think could be fossilised bacteria-like life forms when observed through an
electron microscope An electron microscope is a microscope that uses a beam of electrons as a source of illumination. It uses electron optics that are analogous to the glass lenses of an optical light microscope to control the electron beam, for instance focusing it ...
. *
Greenlandic people in Denmark Greenlandic people in Denmark (; also known as Greenlandic Danes) are residents of Denmark with Greenlanders, Greenlandic or Greenlandic Inuit heritage. According to StatBank Greenland, as of 2020, there were 16,780 people born in Greenland livin ...
* Scandinavian noir


References


External links

* ''Miss Smilla's Feeling for Snow'' (UK translation – ) * ''Smilla's Sense of Snow'' (US translation – ) by Peter Hoeg *
"A Tale of Two Smillas"
(Google doc) Kirsten Malmkjær, Centre for Research in Translation, Middlesex University * ''Poddar, Prem and Cheralyn Mealor (1999) 'Danish Imperial Fantasies: Smilla's Feeling for Snow' in Translating Nations, Aarhus University Press.'' {{The Glass Key award 1990s Danish novels 1992 novels 1992 in Denmark Danish novels adapted into films Dilys Award–winning works Novels set in Copenhagen Novels set in Greenland Novels set on islands Searchlight Pictures franchises