Vattenskräck

John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Människohamn and the Terror of the Ocean

Abstract

This study shows how John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Människohamn (2008) belongs in contemporary Swedish (and Nordic) water writing through an entanglement between theocentric and geocentric aquatic modes (see Frank 2022). Instead of grappling with climate change through speculative fabulation,  the novel espouses an entire aquatic cosmology that sidesteps the rational and instead imbues natural forces with terrible, targeted powers that reframes our cultural understanding of the Swedish skärgård. By incorporating elements of cosmic horror, Lindqvist creates an alternative Nordic water writing embedded in a disruption of nostalgic idyll. In the novel, the ocean emerges as an antagonist, bent on crushing humanity through motives known to neither characters nor the reader. Using speculative elements belonging to ghost stories and the fantastical weird, Lindqvist conjures a creative storyworld wherein the benevolent or neutral natural force of the ocean is framed in hostile terms, and pierces the depths of the universal fear of drowning. At the same time the novel is beholden to a rich cultural history of water writing and classical tropes, and employs such motifs as the katabasis and the great Deluge. Through these intertextual and canonical motifs, Lindqvist achieves an alternative mode of water writing.