Jo Nesbo - Medicine For Melancholy - The Telegraph
Master of Nordic noir Jo Nesbo says rock climbing has shown him how a healthy jolt of fear and adrenaline can sharpen the mind
When Jo Nesbo – the former professional footballer, stockbroker and chart-topping musician who has now sold 40 million crime novels worldwide – isn’t conjuring up twisted plots to traumatise his readers, he likes to terrify himself by climbing towering walls of rock. Perhaps counter-intuitively, he credits these nerve-fraying vertical adventures with a surprisingly positive impact on his mental wellbeing.
“My love of climbing is more of a mental thing than a physical thing,” explains the 59-year-old author, whose gory thrillers featuring the brilliant but damaged detective Harry Hole have been translated into 50 languages. “It is about turning off the creative brain muscles I use for writing and learning to concentrate on something completely different.
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"I still have this slight fear of heights which makes it impossible to think about anything but the next move and just being on that wall. So it is a 100pc break from writing – and everything else in life. Climbing is my recommended medicine. It is a recipe for melancholy.”
Nesbo relishes the thrill of climbing in the same way adrenaline junkies enjoy downhill mountain biking or extreme skiing. “Climbing is a way to have an interesting dialogue with yourself and confront your fears,” he reflects. “It is objectively quite safe but never completely safe; it still requires you to prepare and stay concentrated. So it is an opportunity to be afraid and safe at the same time. Being at height goes directly to your fear centres so even though your brain knows it is safe your body thinks it is a really bad idea to climb 20-30m – and it will tell you. You have that fight between your brain and your body. I get a bit addicted. If I don’t climb, I get restless. I need my adrenaline shot.”
Climbing encourages him to narrow his concentration and plan a sequence of moves in advance – a skillset which he believes helps him to focus more productively when writing. But that is not his primary motivation. Nesbo climbs because clinging precariously to a cliff forces him to let go of the comparably smaller stresses of work and everyday life. “I need to switch off because when I am in that writing mood I am in my book all the time,” he admits. “I am not good at conversation in that mood. People can tell I am distracted. I am there all the time – except when climbing. Really this is the only way I can switch off.
"If I am happy with the book it is like being in love with a girl who is in love with you. When it is not working, it is like you are breaking up. Sometimes I think there are more important things in life. Then I realise: no, writing is the most important thing in life.”
Nesbo’s new thriller Knife – the twelfth edition in the Harry Hole series, featuring a sadistic rapist and a devastatingly personal murder for Harry – follows the chart-topping success of The Leopard, Phantom, Police and The Thirst. In 2017 his novel The Snowman was adapted into a movie starring Michael Fassbender and Rebecca Ferguson. But before achieving international success as an author (he began writing his first book, The Bat, on a 30-hour flight to Australia in 1996), Nesbo already had an extraordinarily eclectic CV. He played professional football for Molde FK – the Norwegian club managed by Ole Gunnar Solskjaer before he took charge of Manchester United – and dreamed of playing for Tottenham until a ligament injury forced him to retire. He joined the air force, became a stockbroker then formed a rock band, Di Derre, whose debut album topped the charts in Norway.
He still plays gigs today. “Writing is very lonely work. There is no response when you write a beautiful sentence. It brings a balance in your life if you can pack your gig bag, bike to the city, play at a club and get some closure before you go to bed.”
It was the bass player in this band who first introduced Nesbo to climbing. “I was going to visit him in Thailand but this peninsula – which back then was just a few bungalows around Railay Beach and Tonsai Beach – is now the best climbing area in south-east Asia.” Nesbo’s twin passions for writing and climbing are now intertwined. At home in Oslo he habitually takes a break from writing by cycling to a nearby climbing wall. And he enjoys annual writing and climbing escapes to the Greek island of Kalymnos and southern Thailand, where he wrote Knife.
Nesbo is so addicted to climbing that his publicist has to carefully pencil in time for climbing around his media schedule. “I have been accused of choosing the countries I visit not for what is good for promoting the book but what is good for climbing and there is some truth in that,” he admits. “I have climbed in more than 20 countries but never outdoors in England so I have big plans for this visit. I have found a crag just outside Exeter. I will also be in Harrogate for the Crime Writing Festival and there are lots of crags around there. The Westway climbing centre in London is also very good.”
Confronting and dissecting his darkest fears – whether through climbing or other visceral life experiences – helps to intensify the emotional power of his writing. “When I am writing I go back to my childhood as that is the source of real fear in all of us. Fear of the dark. Fear of getting lost in the woods. I lost that fear when I grew up – until my daughter was born. I remember taking my daughter to kindergarten and at the red light I found myself looking at the cars coming towards her. I reached out for her hand, without looking at her, and I couldn’t find her hand. For those two seconds, I was a child again. I was in total panic. White fear. I realised: wow, it has been a while since I was afraid like that.
"Climbing gives me that fear. I was climbing in the Czech Republic in a place I had never been and I got into trouble. It started raining and with no real security you just have to climb to the top. Falling is not an option. It is a strange mix of: ‘Never again,’ and ‘This is a big thrill.’ I can’t think of any other sport like that.”
Admirably trim with his 60th birthday on the horizon next year, Nesbo likes the way climbing keeps him lean, toned and agile without having to do other exercise. “I am not into organised fitness regimes so the good thing about climbing is I don’t have to consciously think about fitness,” he says. He admits his daily diet is not especially healthy. “In Norway I go out in the morning and have a sandwich or a brioche, a double Americano and an orange juice at the coffee shop. I start writing in the café. Then I go home and make a bowl of muesli and yoghurt with fresh blueberries, strawberries and bananas. That is the healthiest part of my day.
"At night I eat out in restaurants. About 20 years ago people in Oslo would only go out for a special occasion. Now on my bike within a radius of 15 minutes there are amazing Thai restaurants with Michelin stars. Oslo has more restaurant seats than Copenhagen which is twice the size. So if you are into food, Oslo is a good city to live in.”
He remains a lifelong Tottenham fan but, unlike when climbing, he hates feeling fear and anxiety during matches. “I get frustrated when Tottenham go 1-0 down and I turn off the TV. Ten minutes will pass and I will turn it back on. I like to watch my team winning 3-0. That is the only time I can enjoy a match, otherwise I am suffering. So I am a bad supporter. I am not there when they need me.”
Having earned international acclaim as an author, would he swap it all to play one season for Tottenham? “I don’t know,” admits Nesbo. A long silence follows while he thinks it through. “It is easy to say yes. Rod Stewart and Elton John said they would give up their music career to play a cup final at Wembley. It is hard. But I probably prefer writing. You can do that for longer. And the upside to being injured when you were young is that people remember you as a better footballer for each year you have been away. You are the tree they never saw come into fruit. So this way I can write books and be a hugely overrated soccer player.”
Knife by Jo Nesbo (published by Harvill Secker) is out now in hardback priced £20 and ebook priced £9.99
(C) The Telegraph
Link: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/health-fitness/body/jo-nesbo-rock-climbing-medicine-melancholy/