Literature

In this short video, Lill Tove Fredriksen, Associate Professor in Sámi Literature at UiT The Arctic University of Norway, discusses the Sámi language pre-, during and after Norwegianisation, taking four generations of her family’s women as a starting point.

The work of the Swedish poet and novelist Rut Hillarp is best known for its honest portrayal of female sexuality and desire.

The Swedish poet Karl Vennberg, who was awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1972, published collections that contained various messages, including criticism towards Western culture and romanticism, and the lauding of everyday life as central.

Much of the work of writer Ulla Isaksson focuses on the lives of women and their relationships, but also includes screenplays and autobiograhpical and biographical literature.

Lars Ahlin was a Swedish writer whose work explores aestheticism, degradation and the loss of dignity, as well as equality and democracy.

Poet Gunnar Björling flouted conventional grammar and syntax rules and is recognised as a radical, modernist in Sweden.

Swedish poet Sonja Åkesson advocated the use of colloquial language and themes from everyday life, and her style and humour influenced the next generation of particularly women writers and feminists.

Sámi literature's history can be traced from the 1600s and the course of this history can be interpreted in the context of important Sámi, national and international political movements. Sámi literature is literature written by authors who are Sámi, who are members of the Sámi people. In this short article, the Sámi socio-political development will be illustrated as well as the expression of an independent Sámi voice through literature.

Winner of the 2011 Nobel Prize in Literature, Tomas Tranströmer was one of those rare poets who is both acclaimed by scholars and critics as well as beloved by a broad readership in Sweden and internationally. Translated into over 60 languages, his poetry is characterized by powerful imagery, and focuses particularly on the human interface with nature and psychological and emotional isolation.

Post-war Nordic prose fiction forms a diverse literary landscape, starting with existentialism and a renewal of modernism, and developing with both Nordic and international currents, including realism, postcolonialism, and autofiction. A number of authors from the period are well known both in the Nordic countries and internationally. Among the most important are William Heinesen (the Faroe Islands), Klaus Rifbjerg (Denmark), Kerstin Ekman (Sweden), Herbjørg Wassmo (Norway), Einar Már Guðmundsson (Iceland) and Sofi Oksanen (Finland).