I May Have Been the Wrong Audience for the Ethics of "Nisser" ("Elves")

[dawn_felagund]

Bobby and I just finished the new Danish-language Netflix series Nisser (Elves) last night. It is a Christmas-themed horror series about a family taking a Christmas vacation on a remote island with a populations of ravenous elves walled behind a sinister fence. These are not curly-toed Christmas elves; they're not even hack-happy Noldorin Elves. No, these are the old-school creepy-as-fuck elves of Nordic tradition.

There was a lot I liked about the series. (Which I suspect Bobby suggested specifically for me and as a kinda-sorta-homeopathy for the seasonal affective disorder that is raging through my brain right now. I do love dark fiction, whereas the spun-sugar pop cultural confections of this time of year, perhaps counterintuitively, often make me feel like I have a sliver lodged in my corpus callosum.) The atmosphere was creepy and dark. The creatures themselves--at least the adult ones*--were unusual: They humped up from the earth itself and weren't jump-scare ugly with bulging eyes and clawed hands but bizarre in the way of a twisted root that, if you look long enough, begins to bear resemblance to a face. You found yourself peering into the landscape, trying to tease out a texture or movement out of place. The worldbuilding contributed to a theme of humankind vs. nature--perhaps the oldest literary theme there is. The locals do not cut Christmas trees because they believe trees belong in the ground. Details like this make one wonder if this isn't a sort of appeasement to the supernatural beings populating the earth around them. At the center of the fenced area is a sawmill, apparently so swiftly deserted (presumably because of the elves, angered at the felling of the forest) that the carcasses of long-slain trees still lie under inert blades.

* The "baby elf" that the girl Josephine steals, setting off the events of the story, falls into a different category: in the aesthetic style of Baby Yoda but too cutesy all the same and prone to one of my biggest pet peeves when shows and films feature an animal: the constant burbling noises that script writers or directors or someone decides that animals make. Animals are actually quite quiet, by necessity. Except Hermione, when she yawns. She squeaks when she yawns.

Then there is the wall itself. In the Epic of Gilgamesh, the wall upon which Gilgamesh stands and scribes his story symbolizes civilization and the triumph of humankind over nature, a literal division between the civilized and wild. (I like to say that everything is Gilgamesh fanfiction.) The wall here is less grand. It is ugly, utilitarian, brutal, frail. But it plays the same role. It is the uneasy coexistence of humankind and the natural world.

This is where the ethics become tenuous to me. As the family drives to their rented cabin, they strike something with their car that leaves a strange ichor on the fender. They are confronted by a local man, who unequivocally tells them that they are on a private road and need to get out. The wall, at this point at a mysterious distance, is in sight. Nonetheless, the girl, Josephine, later returns to the area and finds her family's car has wounded a baby elf, which she decides to take and nurse back to health in a barn behind the family's cabin. When the locals try to return the baby behind the wall, Josephine pursues it, setting loose the adult elves that normally feast on whole cows upon unsuspecting people.

The result is the deaths of several local residents. As Josephine clings to her mother, feeling an appropriate guilt for what she's done, the mother insists, IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT.

Horror films often characterize rural settings and especially rural people as frightening. To an extent, this plays on archetypes likely as deep-rooted as story itself, such as sinister forests. I remember first becoming cognizant of this as a young adult, when The Blair Witch Project eclipsed cult status into mainstream fame. So much of the terror of that film hinged on fear of the forest, but the forest was home to me. I'd lived on its edges since I was born and played in its shade throughout childhood. Rural people, too, are often depicted as aberrant and terrifying. Deliverance, The Hills Have Eyes, and The Texas Chain Saw Massacre all vilify people who are not just rural but whose ruralness is understood as aberrant. The isolation of people who choose otherwise than constantly butting elbow to elbow with their fellow human beings is understood as what allows their deviance to fester and grow. Elves is no exception. Karen, a grandmother who is something of the island's wisdom keeper, eventually attempts to use Josephine to bait the escaped elves back into their enclosure. Before this, she challenges Josephine's mother that the girl wasn't to blame. We are supposed to believe that Karen has gone unacceptably far, that her ruralness has produced a kind of justice that follows that of nature, always verging on cruelty.

Karen suffers, gruesomely, for her transgression. Josephine and her family escape unharmed, last seen on the ferry back to Copenhagen.

This ethical stance is where the show lost me. I am a rural person and a heathen--ripe fodder as a horror villain, in other words--and I would like to see horror stories and films assume the perspective of people like me. Because declarations of IT'S NOT YOUR FAULT seem pretty common among people who gleefully assert that they can't differentiate between a tomato and a weed and who would die without supermarkets and the gas and electric company yet gulp down more than their share of resources (but they always vote Democrat!). These are the people who come to places like where I live, trespass where they don't belong (so that they can get Instagram-worthy pictures, most likely), feed and interact with wildlife that now poses a threat to humans and often dies as a result, and leave people and places damaged by their presence. They are the Josephines who have gotten their ideas about nature from animated Disney films and who assume that their lofty ideals will supersede the realities of nature. They are Joesphine, declaring to a baby animal that she has stolen--unthinking of what it will grow into--that they just wanted it to be free. As though freedom, in nature, is measured in the same terms as in the heart of Copenhagen.

I want to see horror from the perspective of someone who has achieved a tenuous harmony with nature only to see it trampled by those convinced of their superiority: They have, they think, much like Gilgamesh on his wall, conquered nature. The perspective of someone who only fades into existence when the tourist arrives and who disappears once more when they leave: the horror of knowing you matter so little that a girl can set bloodthirsty monsters upon people like you and be coddled and reassured because she just felt sorry for them. She just wanted the monsters to be free.

Comments

[ranunculus]

I'm not a huge fan of horror, but you are so right. Nature in and of itself is often feared. As a person who grew up 3 miles from the nearest neighbor nature holds few terrors for me. Be sensible and you won't get hurt. Try and cuddle up to the bear cub and you will. Learn to hear the alarm calls of the animals around you and you will be alerted to danger. Don't and you walk blind.
One of the things that really bothers me is the tendency of some forms of "music" to mimic alarm calls. I'm pretty sensitive to certain tones and intervals, and find that, often, music that is supposed to "rev you up" has such items in it. Those pieces wear me out fast as I'm always looking around for the danger.
On a different note: think I saw a pair of bald eagles yesterday. We don't see many, but what drew my attention was their call. Different from more common local hawks. Big dark birds and I glimpsed a white rump two or three times.

[dawn_felagund]

We've been seeing a lot of bald eagles around here the past few years, enough that they are starting to become a little "eh." I'll don't think they'll ever be fully "eh," having grown up in an era where it seemed The Ol' National Bird might go really and truly extinct and where I didn't see one for real until late into adulthood.

We had a pair of them in the area about two years ago. Unfortunately, my puppies were small, so they were a source of constant anxiety and terror for me. Many a day I spent while the puppies peed, scanning the sky and treeline.

That's interesting about the music--something I'd never noticed!

[anna_wing]

I understand and sympathise with your views about ignorant and arrogant stragners who come into a place without knowing anything about it, while assuming that everything in the world is just like home, and then make a fuss when they mess up. Oh yes.

On the other hand, in a civilised country with a functioning government, which I assume Denmark has, one really has no reason to expect ravenous monsters, especially without warning or information from an appropriate municipal authority, or even Tripadvisor. Were the monsters actually sentient, by the way? Your review doesn't say.

[dawn_felagund]

They are sentient, yes! Part of what sets them off is that, in stealing the baby, the girl Josephine has drawn them to follow her ... because she has their kid! So there is the sense that they have an instinctual need to reunite with an infant, even if not the emotional.

one really has no reason to expect ravenous monsters

The issue is, though, that the family 1) took a shortcut and 2) was told they were on private land and needed to use the appropriate road (that they'd been told to use in the first place). This is where the encountered the wall that contained the elves, where the locals had the problem well under control.

But the girl chose to return on land where she'd been explicitly told she was not welcome. She took an animal that she didn't understand what it was. When the locals attempted to fix her mistake by returning the animal to its kin, she persisted in pursuing it, thus unleashing the contained threat upon the island.

If the family had done what they were told, they would have enjoyed their holiday and all would have been well, and there would have been no encounter with the elves. Unfortunately, they acted as a particular class of tourist tend to do: They do not listen to people who know better than they do, they are ignorant yet bold at the same time in that ignorance, and they act like a natural space exists only for their entertainment. Then they go home and leave their mess for the people who live there to clean up.

Where I live, they are the kinds of people who ignore warnings about weather and trail conditions or the kinds of gear needed for a particular outing who then get into trouble and endanger the lives of the first responders who have to rescue them.

It was a strange ethical stance. It would have made more sense if the family walked into a situation they did not know about and that unwittingly exposed them to danger, but nope, it was all about a girl's bond with a supernatural animal being more important than respecting local land, customs, and knowledge.

[spiced_wine]

I was reading about this. Is this called folk horror? It can be very effective, but as you say, it depends who’s watching.I was born and lived in a tiny rural village. It was gentle country, (Hobbit country) but stuffed full of tumult, stones, ghost stories and folklore, so that it always felt liminal to me.

Blair Witch terrified me because the US has so many more wilderness areas and forests than the UK, at home it was always the ghosts in the old house round the village who crossed the street or the headless horseman on a particular road, etc.

Horror films often characterize rural settings and especially rural people as frightening.

Yes, that’s true. That was the chill factor of the Wicker Man, which I still find really effective.

[dawn_felagund]

Yes, the Wicker Man also crossed my mind as one in this class of Scary Rural People with the addition of Scary Heathen/Pagan People. I haven't seen the original (only the remake).

I found this one effective, even though I don't think the forest is scary. (What's scary to me? A five-lane highway where people drive 90 mph and a car-length from the bumper in front of them!) I just didn't like the ethical turn it took. It was a bizarre stance to take, I thought.

[hhimring]

I suppose there is a tendency to represent the perspective of the city dweller because often the majority of people who make movies and shows are city dwellers and their target audience is, too. Although, really, there should be more scope for other angles now, given there is less need for large studios.

How does Nisser end with regard to the elves? Presumably, the baby elf and adult elves are not on the ferry, accompanying the family to Copenhagen? Do they continue to roam the island or are they back behind the wall?

Because if they end up behind the wall again, then despite the points you raise, it seems to me the plot itself rather functions as a cautionary lesson against those disneyfied ideals?

Have you seen Princess Mononoke? I wonder what you would think of how these issues are treated there. It is not strictly horror, of course, although some bits are actually pretty horrific.

This also, somehow, reminded me of the real-life trauma on a Scandinavian island, the terrorist attack on a summer camp in a nature reserve on Utøya in Norway in 2011, which is in such total contrast to this story. Maybe that is just in my head, because I had encountered an account of it again, recently, but I believe it badly shook everyone in Scandinavia, at the time.

[oloriel]

I was going to ask, does the series paint Karen's gruesome death as Right and Just (TM), and is the return of the family to Copenhagen triumphant? Or could it illustrate precisely what you describe, the invasion of tourists into a place where they upset the natural balance, even get people killed, and then return home as if nothing happened, as if the place they visited became irrelevant as soon as hey left? It would be in-character for Josephine's mum to assert her daughter's innocence (I think we've all met that kind of parent); that doesn't mean that she's meant to be right. It would also, unfortunately, be in-character for the tourists to mess where they shouldn't, and then just go away leaving the mess behind. Again, that doesn't necessarily mean the story sympathises with them; as hhimring says, it could also be cautionary. Not having seen the series (nor am I likely to) I obviously can't judge, but from the description it sounds as if both readings are possible...

[dawn_felagund]

Yes, Karen is depicted as having Gone Too Far in using Josephine (presumably) as the bait to reestablish order on the island. Her death becomes the just consequence of her cruelty. Her granddaughter is instrumental in freeing Josephine, establishing that the mainstream islander perspective does not support Karen's approach.

And for the record, I am against sacrificing children! But at no point did I get the sense that the family--or the audience--was meant to think critically about the girl's role in the incident or in the larger issues of privilege that city people/tourists feel in rural spaces that they've paid money to visit.

As I told Himring, there is clearly meant to be a Season 2 (the baby elf was clinging to the bottom of the car as the family escaped on the ferry), and it may be that there is a wider arc that is more ethically complex, but taking Season 1 on its own? Oof.

[oloriel]

Ah. Yeah, in that case I understand where your frustration comes from!

I wonder, tbh, if part of the issue is the current trend in Skandinavian media to shake off the "Nordic idyll" that's still very prevalent in the rest of Europe (where we generally associate Skandinavia with peaceful islands, scenic fjords, little wooden houses in cheerful rural villages, IKEA, dancing around the midsummer tree, fanciful elves and trolls, and of course Father Christmas). As a sort of reflex, a lot of Skandinavian (export) media is very grimdark. Sweden and Iceland like to produce violent crime thrillers, and Danish comedy displays the blackest of black humour. So far they haven't been able to shake off the power of Hygge, but they keep trying. Nisser might be part of that movement.

Of course that rebellious aspect would get lost in translation, because the "creepy backwoods" and their "scary rural people" is already very much a staple in American horror stories.

[dawn_felagund]

That's a really good point because I am, of course, seeing the series through my U.S. lens, where rural places and people are still subject to open contempt by many who consider themselves progressive. Even my own students, who are rural kids, often come from conservative families, and cheerfully call themselves rednecks! This week, I had to have a talk with my classes about the n-word, and in considering how language is used to dehumanize, my 8th graders asked if there were examples of dehumanizing language used against groups who are mostly white. I used the example of Appalachia, where poor white communities were often deprived of their land so that it could be handed over to logging companies, and words like "hillbilly" are used to negatively characterize those groups of people. And my students launched into a giggly aside about people from Alabama being inbred! ARGH!!!

I see it in my own [progressive] friends, who have often grown up here, and anything that comes from Sherbrooke or Montreal is undeniably superior even as they disparage their own communities and the people who live here.

And U.S. progressives scratch their heads about why they always lose the rural vote even as they offer policies that would help rural voters ...

[dawn_felagund]

The series ends with the two remaining locals ready to "handle it as we do," i.e., using their wisdom to contain the threat. Except! One of them is a young woman (a love interest of the boy in the family) ... and she jumps on the ferry at the last moment to go with the family. She was the heir of her grandmother's knowledge. So there was an element of rural spaces existing for young people to escape as well, which also irritated me.

There are, at this point, adult elves still roving the island, but in the final twist at the end, the camera pans under the car ... and the baby elf is clinging there. So there is going to be a Season 2, and it might be that Season 2 complicates the ethical stance of Season 1, but as far as a standalone, Season 1 had what read, to me, as a bizarre perspective, as it seems to openly absolve the tourist family of blatantly egregious behavior.

I have seen Princess Mononoke, many years ago now (I was still teaching at the alternative school), and I think I must have fallen asleep during it or something because I remember it not at all. I need to watch it again, not on a school night!

[pandemonium_213]

All righty! Just watched the first 2 episodes, and I have been drawn in. It's very atmospheric! The trope of the country folk who Have Ancient Wisdom and Know Secret Sinister Things is strong in this series. I'll keep watching and report back. :^)

I do like horror stories/movies/series, but they must to be of a certain type, not "slasher" bloodfest horror. More recent offerings that I have really liked are listed below:

Lamb - strange, creepy, also very atmospheric, and darkly funny at times.

Director, Ari Aster
Hereditary
Midsommar - OMG, so unsettling. Aster did a brilliant job with the use of unrelenting sunlight to illuminate the terror.

Director, Robert Eggers
The VVitch: A New England Folktale - I re-watch this every Halloween and and have various paraphernalia related to the movie (like a Black Phillip Funko figure).
The Lighthouse - isolated lighthouse off the coast of New England with a couple of increasingly strange guys. Not overt horror, but it creeps up on you.

Director, Jordan Peele
Get Out and Us - fantastic films that brilliantly fuse classic horror with the real-life horrors of racism. Not surprisingly, he also had a hand in the excellent Lovecraft Country (same themes) as the producer.

[dawn_felagund]

Oooh, I remember seeing the previews for Lamb when we saw something at the theater in October! I'll have to remind Bobby of it; we were both interested.

Aside from Hereditary (which I think is on our to-watch list ...) and Lovecraft Country, I've seen them all and agree that they're excellent choices! We rewatched The Witch this year on Halloween, having just taken a webinar together on teaching the supernatural.

[anerea]

I think one of reasons we see don't see horror-fiction like what you say you'd like to see is because the unknown is scary, and unsanitised nature (what am I saying, unsanitised anything!) has become so unfamiliar that the urbanised population is terrified of it. But more than that, they need to defend and reinforce and project their sanitised worldview because it's all constantly falling apart at the seams but they don't want to acknowledge why.

I don't handle horror-fiction well (there's too much of the unavoidable non-fiction version as it is) so thanks for the heads-up, I won't watch Nisser!

I really like your term "wisdom keeper" and would borrow it, if I may...