Beware of polar nights: The vampire figure in Nordic cinematography

This article aims to identify the traces of vampire presence in Nordic cinematography. The author examines examples from traditional literature and points to the fact that even Viktor Rydberg’s Vampyren – for many years, the only representative of Nordic vampiric literature – does not depict a ‘canonic’ vampire. Wajda tries to answer a question: is it possible to find a vampire figure among rare examples of Nordic horror films from the twentieth century? In 1932, Carl Theodor Dreyer depicted the figure of a vampire in an unorthodox way. The author of this article indicates that vampirism was not a source of superpower as in American cinema. The presented study advances an understanding of vampire presence in Nordic cinema and proposes an analysis of selected films that can be deciphered as examples of ‘a vampire unseen’on-screen. Furthermore, the author compares ‘vampire unseen’ creations with the modern approach to vampires.