Hunger

Issue 14 of Absinthe is out, with among other things an essay by Thomas E. Kennedy recalling his first acquaintance with Knut Hamsun's Hunger, after seeing Henning Carlsen's 1966 film of the novel:

The film led me to read an SAS Airline bilingual publication (Scandinavian Words 15) of the first chapter, written by Hamsun in the late 1880s and later expanded to the novel.

Kennedy compares Hamsun to Conrad, perceiving a journey to darkness at the heart of each author's work.

Gunnar Harding poems

Salt magazine has published a selection of poems by the Swedish poet Gunnar Harding in translations by Roger Greenwald, who also provides an introduction.

Divided or united?

Swedish Book Review now remains the only English-language periodical that's focused exclusively on translations and reviews of Swedish literature. Books from Finland, with its coverage of Finnish and Finland-Swedish writing in English translation, is a close rival, but earlier this year discontinued print publication, and now concentrates all its energies on a WordPress-engined website. After a promising start, the site has recently shown some signs of uncertainty, with updates becoming less frequent (the last new item appeared on July 16), and it's to be hoped that the demise of the magazine's print version won't lead to a dissipation of the Web effort, too.

One big difference between the SBR and BfF sites is that the Finnish site offers some interactivity to its readers, with online comments boxes and the possibility of discussion. SBR's site, by contrast, is of the old-fashioned static kind, with plenty of text and information, but not much in the way of feedback and debate.

In some ways it seems a pity that Books from Finland has had to give up its print version entirely. If run concurrently with the online version, the magazine in its old paper format, even if it only appeared once or twice a year, would probably have a greater impact, and reach more readers.

Or is there perhaps an argument for thinking about the merging of both journals - SBR and BfF - into a single Nordic literature magazine project? This has been tried before, but didn't work out for various reasons. Maybe it's time to try again.

00-tal - Finland-Swedish issue

The Swedish literary quarterly 00-tal has just published a Finland-Swedish issue. According to one claim on the internet, Finland-Swedish literature is often met almost with silence in Sweden. If this is indeed the case, it is a pity. Because two Finland-Swedish prose authors are publishing new novels this autumn.

This is significant because Finland-Swedish literature has always had more of a reputation as a literature where poets abound. Even short stories were part of the canon, but Finland-Swedes often used to complain that they had no real novelists. The situation has changed gradually over time, but it is nevertheless encouraging that Kjell Westö (pictured) and Monika Fagerholm will be adding Finland-Swedish novels to the pile this year. There will also be recent poetry by Tua Forsström.

Another interesting feature in this issue is a questionnaire where major Swedish authors are asked about their favourite Finland-Swedish writer. And Merete Mazzarella describes the breakthrough of radical prose.

See also in this blog: The book harvest

Poems and noems

Courtesy of Martin Aitken over at The Interlingual Zoo, some links to online publications of Danish poetry: Calque, a companion blog to the literary magazine of the same name, has posted some of Martin's translations of poetry by Per Højholt, and World Voices, the Web-based chapbook series edited by TLR's Walter Cummins and Thomas E. Kennedy, presents an entire collection of poems by Niels Hav, in translations by P. K. Brask, Patrick Friesen and Martin Aitken.

It's encouraging to find literary blogs that make room for translations of work by Nordic writers and poets, and the two blogs mentioned above have now been added to our growing Blog List (scroll down the page to see it).

Norwegian literary websites, events, organisations

Thanks to the Lillehammer Norwegian literary festival website, my attention has been drawn to a Norwegian online poetry magazine called Nypoesi. There is also a site called Forlaget Attåt, which has links to what is termed the Tekstallianse 2009. This website states (my tr.):

During the weekend of 21st and 22nd August, over 120 small presses from Scandinavia and beyond, festivals, magazines, organisations and networks will meet at Litteraturhuset (Oslo). Tekstallianse is a book fair and festival that aims to show the breadth and variety of small, medium-sized and more or less independent and idealistic players within the field of literature, music, the visual arts and theatre. Common to all exhibitors is the wish to establish an alternative to the cultural community represented by the larger publishing houses and newspaper editors.

A worthy aim. Let's see what it means in practice. One link here is to Litteraturhuset itself. This has a regular programme, a book café -- "Kafe Oslo" -- and a bookshop.

Another organisation is Norsk Forfattersentrum. From their website:

The Norwegian Writers' Centre" is an organization of Norwegian poets and fiction writers, founded in 1968 on the initiative of young Norwegian writers, in order to act as a linking body between writers and the general public. The Centre is not a writers’ union.

It is non-commercial. By granting an amount of 8 million NOK a year, the Ministry of Culture covers most of the operating costs. It

·works out its own arrangements and tours all over the country.

· keeps an office in Oslo and in 4 other cities (Bergen, Stavanger, Trondheim, Tromsø).

Finally for this time, the website of the Norwegian PEN Club is here. This organisation awards the annual Ossietzky Prize that aims to promote freedom of expression.

Swedish Book Review 2009:1

The first issue of the Swedish Book Review for 2009 contains a variety of articles and came out just in time for the London Book Fair.

The first extract follows comments about translating Jonas Hassen Khemiri into English by translator Rachel Willson-Broyles. Some of the difficulties encountered involve his idiosyncratic use of compounds, some of which are neologisms.

David Lagercrantz has written a novel Syndafall i Wilmslow / Fall from Grace in Wilmslow about the Enigma code-breaking machine. Extract introduced and translated by Marlaine Delargy.

Tyst hav / Silent Seas is a book about overfishing, written by Swedish Green Party activist Isabella Lövin. Extract translated by Peter Linton.

Other extracts are from books by Fredrik Sjöberg, Maria Ernestam, Elin Wägner, plus an overview article, first published on the Eurozine, about recent Swedish books by DN editor Jonas Thente, intriguingly entitled Beyond Crime Fiction, Handbags and Designer Suits.

The Bookshelf section contains 15 short reviews of works by for instance Carina Burman, Theodor Kallifatides, Bo Carpelan, Per Wästberg and Robert Åsbacka.

Out of Beta

The new Books from Finland website, which replaces the print version of the magazine, is now out of beta, and online. The editors write:

Our idea of what it is to read, and to read literature, has always been – and for many of us remains – bound up with the invention that made the development of western literature possible, the Gutenberg printing press and its successors.

In making this website, we have tried hard to fashion it as a place of repose as well as excitement, a location where the spirit and the imagination, as well as the intellect, can engage with what in the old days was called the printed word.

Apparently the intention is to publish new posts and articles every 7 days or so, which is quite a step up from the frequency that necessarily prevailed under the old quarterly print-based system. New material so far has included a dispatch from a Finnish TV journalist on "learning how to give and receive in the Russian way", though the report seems to focus on a bunch of nouveau-riche St Petersburg nightclubbers. Still, there's plenty of room for discussion there, and the BfF website comments section, though moderated, is open to all comers. There wasn't a comments section in the print-based version of the magazine...

Horisont 1/2009 - Inga-Britt Wik

The Ostrobothnian-based literary magazine Horisont has been around for decades, and still now in 2009 four further issues are planned after the first, which appeared recently. The theme of this issue is the Finland-Swedish poet Inga-Britt Wik who died last year. To give some idea who she was, I will translate the small biographical note from Horisont:

Inga-Britt Wik was born 18th December 1930 in Vasa. Both parents were brought up in the countryside, her father as the son of fisherfolk and smallholders from the island of Replot in the Vasa archipelago. Her mother was the daughter of a so-called "America widow" from Vörå. (An America widow was similar to a "grass widow", except that the husband was living in America.) Her father Arvid Wik worked as a customs officer during the 1930s, while her mother ran a small grocer's shop. During the war years, her father was called up, and spent time in the army first in Hangö then, during the Continuation War, in the Karelian Isthmus.

Inga-Britt Wik moved to Helsinki in 1950, and graduated in philosophy in 1956. In 2003 she returned to Vasa. She was principally a poet, and all her books appeared with the Schildts publishing house in Helsinki. Key themes in her poetry are various women's rôles, love, feminism, the environment, but the basic tone of her poetry reflects nature.

She was married to the author and film producer Jörn Donner from 1954 to 1962, later marrying the children's psychiatrist Gustav Amnell. The marriage and separation from Donner caused her to write the books Ingen lycklig kärlek (No Happy Love; 1988) and Bryta upp (Breaking Up; 1996). She was also the editor of poetry by Solveig von Schoultz and Lars Huldén.

I shall be translating a couple of her poems from this issue of Horisont later in a new thread.

Estonian Literary Magazine

The Estonian Literary Magazine is already listed in the Links column to the right of the screen on this blog. But I feel it merits a small introduction. Because when you first access the website you are confronted with a bare list of 19 issues. This doesn't immediately reveal the full scope of this magazine.

Firstly, it's in English, which makes it widely accessible. Secondly, it cover classics, modern classics and contemporary Estonian literature. So anything written by any significant Estonian author between about 1890 and the present day could feature in an article or two. Prose excerpts and poetry, biographical articles, poems, a list of translations into other languages, and so on. And both exile Estonian authors and those that lived in the ESSR are discussed, plus all those that have emerged since independence. Articles are written both by Estonian scholars and foreign translators.

Only issues 8-27 are available online, starting with Spring 1999 and up to Autumn 2008, but that is more than enough to be getting on with.

For example, Issue 14 has an article about Swedish translations of Estonian literature, which is of course one way for Scandinavianists to access that literature, if an English translation does not yet exist. And Issue 17 mentions the biggest history of Estonian literature available in any larger European language: Geschichte der estnischen Literatur by Cornelius Hasselblatt, Walter de Gruyter, 2006.

The best way to find out the range of topics and authors is to click each issue and look at the various articles listed in the left-hand column. But the website does also have a search function, if you know what you're looking for.

Hjärnstorm - Swedish literary magazine

Hjärnstorm is one of those Swedish literary and cultural magazines that have survived against all odds. Smaller circulation literary magazines do not always last for more than a decade, but owing to a combination of subsidy and good editorship, Hjärnstorm (i.e. Brainstorm) has been going since 1977.

The issues of the magazine tend to be theme-centred, the latest (issue 96-97) being focused on the topic of suicide, which I hope does not presage an imminent departure from the Swedish literary scene. But the themes have been many, including psychedelia, Duchamp, Nietzsche, art criticism, pessimism, photography, Finland, the Sixties, Folkhemmet, the Weimar Republic, plus quite a few others. As can be seen, the magazine has an international outlook, but by no means neglects Sweden itself. So it can be a good windvane for translators who want to keep up with Swedish cultural trends.

As you can see from their website, it is sold at a number of outlets, scattered throughout Sweden, but mainly in Stockholm.

Norvik Press

Norvik Press, which moved in August 2008 from the University of East Anglia in Norwich to University College London, must surely be the only publishing house of its kind in the UK. It publishes a variety of literature from the Nordic countries.

Looking at the list of authors on the website, you can see that there are ones from different countries, genres and epochs. The press also published two periodicals: the more scholarly Scandinavica, and the magazine that is the shop window for what books are available and being published in the Swedish language, Swedish Book Review.

The website sections entitled Authors, Special Offers and Out of Print give you an overview of what is, and has been, published by the press. Even the Baltic countries are represented:

In 1994, a book of several short-stories from the Scandinavian and Baltic countries, edited and translated by Christopher Moseley was published: From Baltic Shores. Authors include Arvo Valton, Romualdas Lankauskas, Alberts Bels, Bo Carpelan and Suzanne Brøgger.

A more recent Baltic addition is the poetic Estonian novel by Viivi Luik, The Beauty of History (translator: Hildi Hawkins; 2007). This novel has been translated widely, and this translation was launched at the Estonian Embassy in London. It deals with an Estonian country girl who goes to Riga to visit her boyfriend during the Prague Spring in 1968, when the boyfriend risks being called up to go to Czechoslovakia as part of the Soviet troop contingent. He goes off to Moscow to get his exemption certificate, and the Estonian girl is left behind with his mother in the flat in Riga, where this atmospheric novel, full of observation and mood, is set.

But Scandinavia forms the trunk of the tree, including such names as Victoria Benedictsson, August Strindberg, Gunnar Ekelöf, Hjalmar Söderberg, Johan Borgen, Knut Hamsun, Jens Bjørneboe, Suzanne Brøgger, Svend Åge Madsen, Edith Södergran, and Runar Schildt.

The press was started by James McFarlane and Janet Garton, and is now run by Neil Smith.

Ny Tid & Kontur revisited

Issue 12-13 of the Finland-Swedish cultural weekly "Ny Tid" is a double one, plus 1/09 of the occasional insert or supplement "Kontur". There is an exceptional amount of literary material this time round.

Ny Tid

- Two items about the Swedish Nordic Council nominee Johan Jönson and his mammoth 800-page mixed genre work entitled Efter arbetsschema. Article by Lorna Bertram; review by poet Heidi von Wright.

- A review by Otso Harju of the first volume of Hjalmar Bergman's letters.

- An excerpt from Finland-Swede Kira Nalin's first novel Bultar som ett bläckfiskhjärta.

- An article by Claes Andersson entitled 'Navelskådning à la Norén', in effect a review of Lars Norén's En dramatikers dagbok.

- A review, entitled ' "Zur Judenfrage" - Randanmärkningar till ett filosemitiskt livsprojekt', of a book of essays by Mikael Enckell called Om konsten att älska skriften.

- A review by Kristina Rotkirch [pronounced: ROOT-cheerk] of Russian author Olga Slavnikova's prizewinning novel 2017.

- Irmelin Sandman Lilius writes an essay about King Arthur, Merlin and Guinevere.

- Emma Strömberg discusses a poetry forum on the internet.

- A review by Emelie Enckell of the poetry collection Muntliga dikter by Swedish author Andreas Björsten.

- Poems by Finland-Swede Torsten Pettersson.

- Two theatre reviews by Isabella Rothberg of the plays Blaue Frau by Mia Hafrén and Villans hemlighet by several women author-actors: Freja Appelgren, Kontur editor Malin Kivelä, Åsa Nybo and novelist Hannele Mikaela Taivassalo. The latter play is described as a "tvärkonstnärlig föreställning", and as Rothberg says, is full of absurd humour, mysterious women, with the smell of coffee all around. There is Gothic, Sylvia Plath and Jane Eyre among the associations raised.

- A debate article by regular contributor Trygve Söderling (who doubles up as editor of the Finland-Swedish literary periodical 'Nya Argus') about repressive legitimacy in the Finland-Swedish press and Merete Mazzarella's blog.

- A review by former editor, Peter Lodenius, of Czech author Jáchym Topol's new novel in Swedish translation Den gyllene huvudet.

Kontur

- Malin Kivelä discusses a new Swedish translation of Proust.

- An essay-article by Sven-Erik Klinkmann about death and Johnny Cash.

- Poetry by the Estonian author Elo Viiding in Peeter Puide's Swedish translation.

***

Dag og Tid

Just a quick introduction to a newspaper that has been added to the links to the right of your screen. Dag og Tid calls itself "...den einaste riksavisa på nynorsk". It is by no means entirely devoted to literature, but is a mouthpiece for those people who want write and read in nynorsk. Obviously, language politics, something that is of importance to literary translators, also features. But if you use the search facility on the website, you can find quite a lot of reviews, available online, of authors, mainly ones writing in nynorsk, such as Jon Fosse, Tarjei Vesaas and Kjartan Fløgstad.

Website: http://www.dagogtid.no/index.cfm

Recently (20th February 2009), they had an interesting article on "Den beste boka i Norden":

http://www.dagogtid.no/nyhet.cfm?nyhetid=1471

Ny Tid

If you want to keep abreast of cultural events in what is termed "Svenskfinland", i.e. the areas of Finland where Swedish is still spoken as a first language, the magazine Ny Tid still exists. I say "still" because it first appeared back in 1944, when it was a mouthpiece for left-wing politics.

Nowadays, it is much more focused on the arts. The latest issue that I have received through the post is 10/2009. This contains articles on, for instance, the sculptor Angela Oker-Blom, the bilingual Viirus theatre group, a review of the Swedish translation of Irène Némirovsky's Châleur du sang, a review of Charlotte Svensson's book Pli på pojkar, which discusses the role of men and masculine role models in children's literature, and other items from Sweden.

Every now and again, Ny Tid publishes a supplement entitled Kontur which is wholly devoted to literature as such. The Finland-Swedish publishing houses such as Schildts and Söderströms advertise new Finland-Swedish books there, and articles vary from ones about Finland-Swedish literature to ones about, for instance, Doris Lessing or a review of Le Clézio. In the latest issue, there are a number of poems by the Estonian poet Elo Viiding in Peeter Puide's Swedish translation.

Another interesting occasional supplement is Ikaros, which contains academic articles by people attached to the university Åbo Akademi. These supplements tend to have a wide range of themes from psychology to philosophy, art to science.

Specifically literary articles in the main Ny Tid paper over the past few months have included a large double one about Victoria Benedictsson; a review of Merete Mazzarella's "essäroman"about Zacharias Topelius Ingen saknad, ingen sorg; poems by Claes Andersson; a review of Robert Åsbacka's latest novel Orgelbyggaren.

Their website is at: http://www.nytid.fi/start/

Scandinavian Newsletter

Since the demise of the annual publication "Nordic Literature - Nordisk litteratur", the gap has to an extent been filled by the "Scandinavian Newsletter". This 100-page annual magazine is published in the English language in the northern Dutch city of Groningen, where Nordic languages and Estonian are taught at the local university.

Twelve issues have now been published by a group of editors attached to the Scandinavian Translation and Information Bureau there. It is financed by grants from the Danish Arts Agency, Mentanargrunnur Landsins in Tórshavn, FILI in Finland, the Fund for the Promotion of Icelandic Literature in Reykjavík, NORLA in Norway, and the Swedish Institute.

The magazine is slightly broader in focus than for literature alone, although authors and books are certainly the main focus. While the bibliography at the back tends to focus on translations of Scandinavian books into Dutch, all the articles are of international scope.

The latest issue, number 12, 2008, contains some Faroese material, as one of the editors, Roald van Elswijk, specialises in that language. So there are articles on the major prose author Heðin Brú, the state of literature on the Faroes, postmodernism in Faroese poetry, the first Faroese opera, and so on. But all the other Scandinavian or Nordic countries are well represented, with articles on and reviews of, for instance, Aki Kaurismäki, the Finnish magazine "Nuori Voima", Astrid Lindgren, Henrik Wergeland, Herman Bang, Alexander Ahndoril, Alva Myrdal, Werner Aspenström, and lots more. Contributors are Dutch, but also from the Nordic countries themselves.

If you wish to subscribe, the 12th issue costs €12.50, excluding postage, and back issues and bank details for payment can be obtained by sending an e-mail to: svin@svin.nl .

Their website is at: http://www.svin.nl/en/newsletter_en.htm

For those of you who are wondering where the "svin" comes from, this porcine pun is an abbreviation of the Dutch "Scandinavisch Vertaal- en Informatiebureau Nederland".