Per Faxneld 2026. Tre varv motsols. Albert Bonniers Förlag.

Per Faxneld, Professor of Religious Studies at Södertörn University, is a widely recognised scholar. His doctoral thesis Satanic Feminism: Lucifer as the Liberator of Women in Nineteenth-Century Culture was awarded the Donner Institute’s prize in 2015. Tre varv motsols is his debut novel.

The historical novel is set in 1929. Edda Erlenstam, an archival assistant at the Institute for Language and Folklore in Uppsala, receives a parcel containing a few leaves from a seventeenth-century book of black magic. She sets out on a field trip to the province of Jämtland, cycling from village to village and from house to house, collecting legends about the owner of the book, one Mr Ola. Along the way, Erlenstam experiences strange coincidences and unsettling episodes that may either have supernatural origins or be caused by the medication she takes for insomnia.

At the same time, it becomes clear that someone else is searching for the same book of magic. With its help, Sebastian Sorgenfrei, a docent at Uppsala University, hopes to restore his tarnished reputation in academic circles and finally prove the thesis of his doctoral dissertation: that the sixteenth-century alchemist Paracelsus was strongly influenced by Swedish folk belief.

The novel forms an intriguing whole from the perspectives of esotericism, folk tradition, and religion. The narrative establishes an atmosphere of Gothic horror, in keeping with Faxneld’s earlier work of fiction, Offerträdet (Volante, 2020), which likewise drew on folklore and contained short Gothic horror tales.

At the end of the book, Faxneld sets out the background to the novel and the sources on which it is based. The fictional narrative draws on research into Swedish folk belief, and the cast of characters includes several real historical figures. The principal inspiration was the folklorist Ella Odstedt (1892–1967), who, like the fictional Edda Erlenstam, suffered from insomnia, feared spiders, and travelled on research trips with a revolver in her pocket. Edda’s bicycle journeys through Jämtland can be traced on the map printed inside the book.

A soundtrack has also been released for Tre varv motsols, intended to accompany the reader while reading the novel: https://hexvessel.bandcamp.com/album/the-bones-of-the-dead-or-three-turns-counterclockwise

Tiina Mahlamäki, University lecturer and Docent at the University of Turku