Jostein Gaarder? Is he Norwegian?
Yes indeed, and he is not alone. Norwegian fiction authors have now stepped out onto the world literature stage.
Norway is famous for its writers, especially when it comes to drama. Henrik Ibsen (1828-1906) is often referred to as the father of modern drama, and his works revolutionised the development of dramatic techniques in Europe and the USA. His plays remain popular today, and he is said to be the second most performed playwright in the world, after Shakespeare. Ibsen’s dramas offer social analysis and critiques, as well as the masterful portrayal of existential and psychological conflict.
Norway has three Nobel laureates in Literature. Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1903 as ‘a tribute to his magnificent and versatile poetry’. Knut Hamsun received the Nobel Prize in 1920 for Growth of the Soil, and his earlier breakthrough novel Hunger remains one of the most important classics in Norwegian literature to date. Sigrid Undset was awarded the prize in 1928 for her compelling description of life in the Middle Ages. Her trilogy Kristin Lavransdatter has become an international classic, and her books have been translated into a great number of languages.
Modern Norwegian literature continues to receive a lot of attention abroad. Jon Fosse is the most frequently performed and most hotly debated Norwegian dramatist since Henrik Ibsen, and he has achieved great international recognition for his dramas, which are characterised by literary minimalism. In recent years, he has returned to writing prose, with great success. His beautiful novel Trilogy has now been sold to more than twenty countries.
Norwegian contemporary literature has in the last few decades entered a new golden age, and a number of fiction authors are making their mark internationally.
Erik Fosnes Hansen was one of the first Norwegian authors to make an international breakthrough. His novel Psalm at Journey’s End (1990), which tells the story of several fictitious musicians working on board the RMS Titanic, was an enormous success and has been on a victory lap around the world.
Per Petterson has been translated into 50 languages. Out Stealing Horses has received a number of prizes in Norway and abroad, and it was for this novel that Petterson became the first Norwegian author ever to be awarded the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize and The International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Two other writers well known for their narrative talents are Lars Saabye Christensen and Roy Jacobsen. Saabye Christensen became internationally renowned for books like Beatles and The Half Brother; his current book Echoes of the City, in what is to become a trilogy, is an atmospheric story set in post-war Oslo. Roy Jacobsen writes about a completely different environment in his trilogy of books set on a small island in northern Norway, where one family live all alone. His first novel in the trilogy, The Unseen, led to Jacobsen becoming the first non-English-language writer to be nominated for the Man Booker Prize. He was also shortlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award.
Linn Ullmann is one of the bestselling Norwegian authors abroad, with five publications translated into a total of 34 languages. Her novel The Cold Song was hugely successful when it was published in English in the USA in 2014, and was included on several prestigious lists of the best books of the year, including in the New York Times. In his review in the New Yorker, the famous literary critic James Wood described the book as ‘an excellent, formidable novel’, concluding that Ullmann herself ‘is a very exact writer, who is unsparing of her characters: a tonic, sharp, lyrical, intelligent novelist who deserves to be better-known in English’.
Hanne Ørstavik is one of Norway's most acclaimed and award-winning contemporary authors. In her early novels she investigates close family relationships. Love, from 1997, about the relationship between a mother and son, has been translated into 22 languages with new translations being created to this day.
Norway’s brightest star in the fiction heavens is probably Karl Ove Knausgård. The publication of his six-volume series My Struggle has really made waves. Knausgård’s project is highly representative of one of the strongest trends in modern Norwegian literature: the blurring of the lines between fantasy and reality, between fiction and non-fiction. Paul Binding wrote in the Times Literary Supplement that ‘Knausgård belongs to an identifiable Norwegian tradition – Ibsen, Knut Hamsun, Edvard Munch, Tarjei Vesaas, Per Petterson – in his ability to achieve the frank, unfettered concentration on naked personal experience’. With Knausgård’s success, Norwegian literature has secured its position as a visible and prominent force in the literary landscape, and Norwegian authors are considered an important part of world literature.
Maja Lunde is another author who has achieved major international success. Her novel The History of Bees has been translated into 34 languages, and sat for more than a year on the bestseller lists in Germany, including thirteen weeks at number one. Her next novel, Blue, also went straight into the bestseller lists.