Sherlock Holmes in Scandinavia

I'm constantly surprised by the odd items that I find in my Sherlock Holmes files, collected over the course of several decades. For example, I recently encountered a typed half-page on "Sherlock Holmes in Scandinavia." It was so old it was printed out on a dot-matrix printer.

The page consists of seven paragraphs, each independent of the others but all related to Sherlock Holmes. I must have accumulated this during the research for No Police Like Holmes more than 20 years ago. One of the characters in that book is a Swedish publisher named Lars Jensen.

Here's what I found in my files on Sherlock Holmes in Scandinavia:

Between 1814 and 1905, Norway and Sweden were united under a King of Scandinavia, Oscar II. Holmes did service for the king on possibly two occasions, referred to in "The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor" and "The Final Problem."

Holmes posed as a Norwegian, Sigerson, during his travels in Tibet.

The elder Neligan was on his way to Norway when he was killed in "The Adventure of Black Peter," and Holmes and Watson were on their way there at the end of the Peter Carey case.

Sherlock Holmes at Elsinore, by Carl Muusmann, published by the Baker Street Irregulars in 1956, was originally published in 1906 as Sherlock Holmes at Marienlyst. In it, Holmes solves a baffling mystery while on a visit to a Danish seaside hotel.

In 1910-1911, two misadventures were published in the Danish periodical Maaneds-Magasinet: Severin Christensen's "The Vanished Footman" and the anonymous "A Match for Sherlock Holmes."

In  Sweden, Sture Stig (Oskar Wagman) published the short-story collection Sherlock Holmes in a New Light in 1908 and New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1910.

In the 1930s, Robert Storm Petersen wrote three parodies about Mr. Holm and Dr. Madsen.

The first three points obviously come from the Canon. My personal library includes a copy of Sherlock Holmes at Elsinore. But I have no idea where the fnal three points came from. It's fascinating, and instructive, that pastiches were appearing in Scandinavia before the Canon had even been completed.

I post this page from my files with trepidation, knowing that my Swedish friend whose image appears below will immediately spot all my misspellings and factual errors. Plus, he will know so much more in general about Sherlock Holmes in Scandinavia. My hope, however, is that even Mattias might find this of some interest.

Mattias Boström