Old Masters

If you're in the mood for reading older translations of classical Nordic literature, the online Open Library project is a useful port of call. Here it's possible to browse scanned facsimile editions of -the collected works of Ibsen in the translations of William Archer and Edmund Gosse (Scribner's, 1907), John Martin Crawford's 1888 translation of the Kalevala, or the plays of August Strindberg in the versions by Edwin Björkman -- to take just three examples from a voluminous store that's accessible free of charge.

The Open Library differs from the by now widely familiar Project Gutenberg in that it offers a listing of every book, not just text files of out-of-print and out-of-copyright titles. Older books, like the one above, are often scanned in their entirety, while those that are still in copyright are simply listed, usually with a photo of the cover, and the bibliographical details. There are at present 22,845,290 titles, 1,064,822 of which are full-text.