Scandinavian Authors

I love reading books written in other languages* and set in far off places. They're more challenging to read because many of the expressions, words, places, and cultures are so unfamiliar. I can't really pinpoint why, but books written by Scandinavian authors are especially captivating. For my purposes, "Scandinavia" would include Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland.

ICELAND: My Scandinavian journey began by reading everything I could find by Halldor Laxness, winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature, after discovering Independent People (at the Aurora library of all places - this is still shocking to me). Bjarter, Reverend Gudmunder, "little" Asta Sollilja... amazing characters making sheep farming in Iceland fascinating. How heartbreaking are the consequences of Asta's choices? Tear.

"When a man looks at a flowering plant growing slender and helpless up in the wilderness among a hundred thousand stones, and he has found this plant only by chance, then he asks: Why is it that life is always trying to burst forth? Should one pull up this plant and use it to clean one's pipe? No, for this plant also broods over the limitation and the unlimitation of all life, and lives in love of the good beyond these hundred thousand stones, like you and me; water it with care, but do not uproot it, maybe it is little Asta Sollilja."

Who would have thought I would love a book about SHEEP. Okay, so it's not really about sheep, but it does talk about them A LOT. I can't say that Halldor's books make me want to visit Iceland. For one thing, it sounds very cold. Although Denver is way too hot for me in the summer, I don't think I'm ready for ICELAND.

NORWAY: A few years ago, I read Shyness & Dignity by Dag Solstad and LOVED it. Although I think S&D could have been written about anyone at their wit's end in any country, it did make me want to read other Norwegian authors. My favorite passage:

"He had pressed the button that would cause the umbrella to open automatically, but nothing happened. Not that, too, he thought, indignant. He gave it a third try, but with no success. Then he tried to force the umbrella open with his hands, but that didn't help either; the umbrella resisted, so that he just barely managed to make it spread out, and even that cost him a great effort. Then he couldn't contain himself."

I feel like that all the time. Like if ONE MORE THING goes wrong, I will just lose it. I also love that this book is written in such an unusual style; it's not your typical one-day-in-the-life-of book.

It wasn't until I recently started reading Jo Nesbo's Harry Hole books that I really became interested in Norway as a country. The way he describes the streets, the pubs, the people... it just sounds like a place I'd really like. Although this passage from The Redbreast does not exactly make me want to pack my bags:

"The first spring offensive came late. It wasn't until the end of March that the gutters began to gurgle and flow. By April all the snow had disappeared as far as Sognsvann. But then the spring had to retreat again. The snow came swirling down and lay in huge drifts, even in the centre of town, and weeks passed before the sun melted it again."

Maybe not one of my favorite books ever, but I completely enjoyed it, ran out and bought Nemesis, and can't wait to get the next one. Also, could someone who understands Norwegian please translate the first two books and send them to me. Please? WTF (Don Bartlett) is up with translating the 3rd and 4th books in the series and not the first two. What is wrong with you people? I had to make an exception to my absolute rule of starting from the beginning of a series (of books, of a television show, of a blog, of ANYTHING). I cannot stand to jump into something in the middle. It is cheating. Plus you miss all of the inside jokes, and inside jokes are the BEST THING EVER (miss you BtVS).

SWEDEN: I am completely obsessed with Stieg Larsson's The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. You can call me unsophisticated if you want to, and I do love a good "classic", but this book is CRAZY GOOD. It's dark, and it's funny, and it's disturbing, but it's CRAZY GOOD. Got it? Good. Now go out and buy it immediately. It's the first of a trilogy finished just before Larsson's untimely death.

[A messy legal battle is currently going on over his estate, and it sounds to me (and I think everyone else) like his long time partner Eva is getting royally screwed - both by Sweden's intestate laws and the fact that they never married because of Sweden's requirement that they make public their address (I think Larsson probably wanted to avoid angry Neo-Nazis showing up on his doorstep).]

Anywaaaaay, this book is amazing. So is The Girl Who Played with Fire. I can't wait for the The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest - why, why, why do books come out first in the UK and take forever to be released in the US. What is up with that?  Although I know that these books would be great even if they weren't set in Sweden, they certainly wouldn't be as interesting to me. And, can I just say that Lisbeth Sander is EPIC. She is so badass, and then people keep breaking her little already-broken heart again and again and again. She is who I am most excited to see again in the new book. I really hope it does her justice.

DENMARK: Peter Hoeg's book Smilla's Sense of Snow was made into a pretty good film starring Julia Ormond (I Know Who Killed Me? With LiLo? Seriously?), but the book was hugely different in my opinion. I didn't read it until after I became obsessed with Scandinavian authors. I would NEVER have picked up this book on it's own due to its terrible cover. I realize that very good books can have poorly designed covers (and many do), but I won't buy a book unless I find its cover aesthetically pleasing (I might still buy it on Kindle or something but it wouldn't be sitting on my bookshelf).

Again with the cold (I suppose I will have to get used to that if I want to continue to read books set in Scandinavia or, even colder, Greenland) and snow, but the snow is such a major part of this story (obvz) that it really becomes a major character. Kind of like the sheep in Independent People. The parts of the book set in Greenland might have been set on the moon they were so foreign to me (love that!).

I have The Quiet Girl and plan to start reading it as soon as I finish Lisa See's Flower Net**, but I've heard it's very different from SSoS. I'll report back and let you know what I think.

FINLAND: Unfortunately, I haven't read any books by Finnish authors. At least I don't think that I have. Finland is home to at least one recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, so you know I'll check that out eventually. My OBSESSION with reading at least one work of every Nobel Prize winner will have to wait for another post...

*Ummm... once they're translated into English obvz. I can't actually read anything written in another language. I have very limited Spanish skills (thanks a helluva lot, 10th grade Spanish teacher!), but that's about it. I may need to take a few Norwegian classes before I, like, totally move there.
**Although very good so far and set partially in China, the author is American and writes in English.