The 2023 Nordic Literature Reading Challenge is underway, and one of the prompts for the challenge is to read a winner of the Nordic Council Literature Prize. Awarded since 1962 to a work of fiction written in one of the Nordic languages, the mission of the Nordic Council Literature Prize is to “generate interest in the literature and language of neighbouring countries, and in the Nordic cultural community”.
This is a somewhat tricky prompt because not all of the winners have English translations, and of those that do, they aren’t always readily available. Of course you can read a winner in the original language, but here’s a list of winners with English translations in case that’s not possible. In planning my own reading for this year’s challenge, I picked out the following books from each of the Nordic countries to consider for this prompt.
DENMARK – The Prophets of Eternal Fjord: A Novel by Kim Leine, translated from the Danish by Martin Aitken (novel, 500+ pages)
About the winning piece from the Nordic Council (2013):
“Kim Leine’s great epic, ‘Profeterne i Evighedsfjorden’, is the story of the Danish priest Morten Falck who travels to Greenland at the end of the 1700s. Through this unfolds the tale of Danish colonisation as a completely crazy and meaningless project. The Danish officials try to keep hold of power and customs but are plagued by homesickness and resignation. Grief and anger smoulders amongst the Greenlanders, and some of them seize Christianity and the European ideas of freedom as an inspiration for rebellion against colonial power. But as well as being a critical, historical novel that reminds us of Denmark’s problematic past as a colonial power, the book is also a depiction of dirt as mankind’s basic element.”
Why I’m considering it: I’m intrigued by this selection due to the time and place of the setting, both of which are new to me, and I have no familiarity with this story of Denmark’s past. On top of that, it’s a multiple prize-winning book. Besides winning the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 2013, it won the Danish literature prize De Gyldne Laurbær in 2012. It also made the shortlist for the Dublin Literature Award in 2017. This book would be an option for two of the prompts for the Nordic Lit Reading Challenge!
FINLAND – Purge: A Novel by Sofi Oksanen, translated from the Finnish by Lola Rogers (novel, 417 pages)
About the winning piece from the Nordic Council (2010):
“Her [Sofi Oksanen’s] third novel, Purge, is about the Soviet occupation of Estonia and its consequences. Unfortunately, it is also very much of current interest with its stories about human trafficking around the Baltic. The book’s two time levels are 1992 – one year after Estonia won its independence – and the 1940s – when tens of thousands of Estonians were deported to Siberia and agriculture was collectivised. On a summer morning in 1992, old Aliide Truu finds an exhausted and confused young woman in her vegetable garden. This Zara has been tricked away from her home in Vladivostok to work as a sex worker in Berlin. On the way to Tallinn where she was supposed to start selling her body to Finnish sex tourists, she manages to escape.”
Why I’m considering it: Sofi Oksanen is a Finnish author (Finnish father and Estonian mother) who first appeared on my radar for her latest novel Dog Park (2021 in translation by Owen Frederick Witesman). The Soviet occupation of Estonia is a little known topic to me, and I always enjoy a good dual-timeline novel.
ICELAND – The Blue Fox: A Novel by Sjón, translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb (novel, 130 pages)
About the winning piece from the Nordic Council (2005):
“The Blue Fox is a novel about an Icelandic pastor and a fox hunt. Sjón makes use of the Icelandic folktale to tell his story. One of the principal characters is the pastor Baldur Skuggason. He has an evil, dark side to his character. Another key figure is the strange offspring of a cat and a fox following the story – Sjón’s style has elements of a very unique Icelandic sense of humour. The Blue Fox is a short novel with a few sections. Some pages only consist of a single written line, surrounded by large white surfaces calling to mind the Icelandic expanse. This concreteness can be said to balance on the line between prose and poetry. ‘Skugga-Baldur’ is also a contemporary novel which brings up some of today’s ethical questions. Are the weak, deformed babies with developmental disorders welcome in a world where they could have been discarded already prior to birth?”
Why I’m considering it: I’ve been curious about Sjón for a while. Besides writing novels, he’s a poet, screenwriter, and involved in the music scene. In 2016, he was the third writer chosen to contribute to the Future Library project.
NORWAY – The Ice Palace by Tarjei Vesaas, translated from the Norwegian by Elizabeth Rokkan (novel, 144 pages)
About the winning piece from the Nordic Council (1964):
“The Ice Palace is a novel with two 11-year-old girls as the protagonists: extrovert Siss and quiet, introvert Unn. The day after a meeting of the girls at which Unn revealed that she is carrying a dark secret, Unn travels to the ice palace. This is a huge ice formation which builds up at a waterfall in winter-time. As it turns out to be made up of several ice rooms, she walks into the palace. Unn is enthralled by the beauty of the rooms, but in the seventh room she loses her way and cannot find her way out. She freezes to death with Siss’s name on her lips. The novel concludes with the story of Siss’s life and her reaction to Unn’s death. Siss now becomes the quiet and lonely one. She goes into an inner ice palace until she is finally redeemed and can move on into adulthood with a profound insight.”
Why I’m considering this: I have not read any of Tarjei Vesaas’ works yet, but he is arguably one of Norway’s greatest writers. His authorship spans from 1923 to 1970. He won many awards during his lifetime and was even nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature 57 times. The Ice Palace and The Birds are his most famous works.
SWEDEN – Blackwater: A Novel by Kerstin Ekman, translated from the Swedish by Joan Tate (novel, 448 pages)
About the winning piece from the Nordic Council (1994):
“Blackwater is a detective novel set in the town of Svartvattnet in Norrland. It depicts a woman from Stockholm, who moves in with her boyfriend in the town to work as a teacher in a commune. However, events revolve around a double homicide that remains unsolved and the consequences of this trauma for the people in the town. Kerstin Ekman’s story invites many reading styles; it can be read as a Bildungsroman, as a critical analysis of gender roles, as a mythical story with symbolic elements, but, of course, also simply as a thrilling detective novel.”
Why I’m considering it: I read Kerstin Ekman’s God’s Mercy a few years ago. I enjoyed the descriptive setting of rural northern Sweden in the early 1900s. Blackwater also takes place in a remote, northern setting, but in the later part of the 1900s. I’m intrigued by the many ways that Blackwater can be read, but most of all by its crime novel aspect. Besides winning the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1994, it received the prestigious Swedish August Prize and the Best Swedish Crime Novel Award in 1993.
Which of these would you read first? Are there other Nordic Council Literature Prize winners that you’ve read and would recommend?
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At 9 years old, Elsa, a Sámi girl from a reindeer herding family, witnesses her reindeer calf being killed and is threatened to silence by the perpetrator. The event has a deep and lingering effect on her. As time passes, the Sámi community continues to experience crimes against their reindeer. The police do nothing; the crimes are just marked as theft with no investigations. The story jumps ahead 10 years when Elsa returns to her Sámi community after high school in town. Nothing has changed in regards to discrimination and prejudice towards the Sámi, and Elsa becomes active in the fight for justice. So many issues facing the Sámi are touched upon in this book. In addition to the discrimination and prejudice they face, there’s the effect of climate change on reindeer herding, mental health of Sámi people, and expected gender roles within the Sámi communities. It was an engaging and powerful read that left impressions that will stay with me for a long time.
I loved this book, such a heartwarming story! The story is told from the perspectives of three characters all with such unique personalities – Tova, a woman in her 70’s whose son died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 18 and whose husband recently died of cancer; Cameron, a young adult who never had a father and was raised by his aunt when his mother left him at an early age; and Marcellus, an octopus nearing the end of his life, who has a keen eye and is not a fan of humans. I cared and rooted for all the characters, including the octopus. I loved how the storylines intertwined over time. I chuckled throughout and even teared up at the end. And a little bonus for me, Tova’s family emigrated from Sweden when she was a young girl, so the occasional mentions of her Swedish heritage were fun for me. Also, I attended a panel at the recent LA Times Festival of Books where the author and three others spoke about their recent books, which was a real treat. Highly recommend it! The audiobook narration by Marin Ireland and Michael Urie was fabulous.
This book had been on my TBR list for a long time. I was intrigued by the historical setting – 1953 in Tehran, Iran, when the government was overthrown and the Shah reinstated. It’s about Roya, a teenager who falls in love and is engaged to be married, but the political upheaval disrupts those plans abruptly. She ends up moving to California and continues her life in the US. Sixty years later she is reunited with her lost love and learns what actually happened. I greatly appreciated and enjoyed the insight into Iranian history and culture (especially the food!). My favorite part of the book was when the story was set in Iran. However, I found the story of Roya in the US to be lack-luster. I had great hopes for her, but she just didn’t come off as a very strong character.
I started this book by listening to the audiobook but the narration wasn’t working for me. I didn’t want to give up on it; I was too intrigued by all the hype about it, so I switched to the ebook. There I found the writing to be without quotation marks which is normally not to my liking, but luckily, I quickly got used to it and it didn’t bother me. The story takes place in the near future. So much mirrors contemporary times — children taken from parents, book banning, Asian hate, lockdown due to a crisis. Ng’s writing is wonderful, poetic at times, but I found the whole book bleak with no joy. I did admire the non-violent protests using art and the role of libraries. I was hoping for a more hopeful or satisfying ending.
Colombia in the 1990s was a time of unrest and violence when the country was under the influence of drug lord Pablo Escobar. In this novel, the main character, 7-year-old Chula, and her older sister are safe in their gated community in Bogotá, but their world begins to unravel when a live-in maid, 13-year-old Petrona from the city’s guerilla-occupied slum, begins to work for them. The story is told in alternating perspectives by Chula and the maid, a structure that I really enjoyed. It was a bit slow to begin with but the pace did pick up as the story went on and I finished quickly. Once again, another eye-opening glimpse into a country whose history I had little familiarity with.
My middle grade reads were inspired by a reading challenge that my elementary school hosts every winter in which students are encouraged to read certain books and vote for their favorite. Parents, faculty, and staff are invited to join, and I’m participating with the 6th grade booklist. All are genres I don’t normally read. Besides being middle grade books, they are a novel-in-verse (partly), a fantasy, and a graphic novel. This past month, I read the graphic novel and novel-in-verse. I’m currently reading the fantasy one.
This middle grade graphic novel is a modern day Breakfast Club story. A group of students seen by most as all the same, just five Spanish speaking kids, find themselves stuck together with nothing in common other than having to complete community service hours. I had mixed feelings about this one. I enjoyed getting to know the individual students and their personal stories and I liked how they came together to help someone. However, I was not a fan of how it was framed with the beginning and end as they were. I also didn’t like how the adults at the school were portrayed. I did, however, really appreciate the dual language aspect and liked reading the Spanish passages when they were offered. And the illustrations were fabulous.
I’m so impressed with how the structure of the novel contributed to the plot. The story begins in regular prose as a daughter and father head out on a road trip to hike a canyon. They are getting over the death of the mother and find peace and safety in nature. Suddenly, a flash flood comes barreling through the canyon. At this point, the story switches to verse from the perspective of the daughter as her father is swept away with the gushing water after lifting her to safety. The story continues in verse as she perseveres fighting to survive and looking for her father. The verse isn’t all uniform but changes according to what’s going on in the story. A very impressive and engaging middle grade read.
I had the physical copy of this book on my shelf, but I decided I would listen to the audiobook as well, which I believe turned out to be the optimal way to read this book for me since it is in standard Norwegian as well as “
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Christmas cookies are an important part of a Norwegian Christmas. The baking starts early and long standing tradition calls for syv slag, or seven varieties. The number seven was believed to bring luck and is an important religious number often symbolizing completion or perfection. The seven types are chosen based family preferences. Norwegian Christmas cookies all generally have the same basic ingredients (butter, flour, sugar, eggs) and are either baked, fried, or made with a special tool. My favorite type is 
A popular food during Christmastime is risengrynsgrøt or rice porridge. It is served with butter, cinnamon, and sugar on top, and during Christmastime, it is traditional to hide a peeled almond in it. The person who finds it receives a marzipan pig as a prize (though my family is not a fan of marzipan so we have Norwegian chocolate as prizes instead). You can 
Paper heart baskets are popular not only in Norway but also in Denmark and Sweden. During Christmas time, they are used as decorations on trees or in garlands and may even hold candies and small treats. They can be simple and extremely complex. All you need is paper, scissors, and a little tape for the handle. Single color wrapping paper and construction paper work fine for this. 
I wasn’t sure about this book when it was suggested for book club and I wasn’t enamored by it to begin with when I started listening. However, when their journey across the country finally began, I was all in and went for longer walks and didn’t mind long, slow drives. I loved the characters, both human and animal, and their road trip was full of adventure meeting all sorts of people along the way, both good and bad. Based on 
Anne Holt is a prolific Norwegian crime author who’s been on my TBR list for a long time. I started with her debut novel, the first in the Hanne Wilhelmsen series (published in Norway in 1993), which was about drug trafficking and corruption. What’s unique about this series is that it features a lesbian protagonist. I liked the Oslo setting and the police investigator Hanne. However, I was not a fan of the writing style in which mystery and suspense were infused by referring to characters in the third person instead of by name. There were also too many characters to keep track of which made it confusing at times.
I read the first in this series, Alt er mitt, in Norwegian two years ago before it was available in English (it’s now available in translation, 
Blood Ties was another pageturner and didn’t disappoint. It continues the story of Clara, now a single mother to twins about 8 years old, who has just been appointed Minister of Justice but doesn’t have much time to accomplish anything before her boys disappear. I had to suspend disbelief for a couple of things (lack of surveillance/supervision on the boys and a character’s lapse in judgment), but it still worked for me. The story is written from different perspectives, including one of her boys, which provided interesting insight into the plot. I had both the audiobook going for drives and walks (great ensemble narration) and the ebook for bedtime reading. I’m looking forward to the final installment because there are definitely elements that need wrapping up. (
This debut novel by a French Korean author was left over from 