Literature

One of Denmark’s most daring experimental twentieth-century poets, Inger Christensen pushes language to its extreme limits while also engaging with philosophical concepts and political issues such as gender, ecology, and nuclear war.

Mikael Niemi is a novelist, poet, playwright and short-story writer often focusing on the Tornedal region of Sweden where he lives. His work is steeped in fantasy, folklore, and science fiction, and expressive of a place and people at the margins of the Swedish national culture.

A wide-ranging and prolific social commentator and provocative essayist, Sven Lindquist focused on questions of environmentalism, colonialism, war, social justice and racism.

Gunnar Ekelöf was considered one of Sweden’s leading and most important twentieth-century poets who produced deeply intellectual and challenging works that weave in many different languages and cultural influences. A lifelong outsider, he is known for introducing surrealism and modernism to Swedish poetry, and for his late-career Byzantine trilogy, beginning with D?w?n över fursten av Emgión (1965) (Divan on the Prince of Emgión), which received the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1966.

The modernist Finnish writer Pentti Saarikoski became famous for his revolutionary sensibilities and anti-authoritarian Christian faith.

The versatile Finnish author Paavo Haavikko is highly regarded for his modernist poetry and his work in many other genres.

Works such as 'Wonderful Women by the Water' established Finnish Monica Fagerholm as a feminist writer.

Writing in Swedish, the Finnish writer-illustrator Tove Jansson is most famous for her creation of the mythical creatures The Moomins.

Norwegian writer Jo Nesbø is well known in- and outside the Nordic region for his many books on crime, some of which have been adapted for film.

Since 1990s, Nordic crime fiction has been a significant sub-genre within the global genre of crime fiction. Usually characterised by social realism, gloomy locations and morose detectives, crime novels and TV series from across the Nordic region provide puzzling mysteries and thrilling stories that use the crime plot to investigate the state of justice, equality, vulnerability and current debates specific to the Nordic welfare societies. The genre includes modern TV classics such as the Danish Forbrydelsen (The Killing, 2007-2012), the Danish/Swedish co-production Bron/Broen (The Bridge, 2011-2018) and global bestsellers by the Norwegian Jo Nesbø and the Swede Stieg Larsson, but it also includes dark and critical images of the underbelly of the Nordic states, which extend further back in history, even to literary works from the nineteenth century.