May 30 2017-June 4 2017
Norway

NORLA's activities at the Norwegian Festival of Literature in Lillehammer

We are looking forward to the Norwegian Festival of Literature, Sigrid Undset Days in Lillehammer and also our own exciting programme!

Read more about our translators seminar and the annual international publishers seminar below. NORLA will also take part in a Nordic debate as part of the festival program, as well as in the festival event “Success abroad – flourishing literature at home?”.

2017 lillehammer logo

Translators seminar

For the 22nd time NORLA has invited a group of translators to take part. As part of the prelude to Norway as Guest of Honour nation in Frankfurt in 2019, this year we are inviting 10 translators who translate books for children and young people from Norwegian into German. It will be the first time we hold a seminar dedicated to literature for younger readers. Participants will enrich their knowledge of the discipline of translation and take part in workshops involving in-depth study and sample translations of relevant texts.

The translators will meet Sigbjørn Mostue, one of the authors whom NORLA has included in the programme New Voices. All the translators will work on a translation of an excerpt from Tomorrow Everything Will Be Dark (I morgen er alt mørkt – Brages historie), and discuss various challenges found in the text.

Minister of Culture Linda Hofstad Helleland wants to meet the translators and hear about translators’ practical work, and the challenges and issues specific to translating Norwegian into German. The importance of a trans-national translators’ network and NORLA’s funding schemes will also be illuminated.

We are looking forward to a seminar that we hope will be useful for the translators’ ongoing work for an important target group!

International publishers seminar

Every year NORLA and The Norwegian Publishers Association invite foreign publishers to take part in a seminar about Norwegian literature during the Norwegian Festival of Literature. The interest in coming to Oslo and Lillehammer is growing all the time and this year publishers from Germany and English-speaking countries have been invited. On the first day, the publishers will meet Norwegian publishers of children’s literature at a gathering at Holmen Fjordhotell in Asker. The next day they will be taken on a round of visits to a number of central Norwegian publishers, and then take the train to Lillehammer. Along with a cultural programme, at this time they will meet a group of Norwegian authors of literature for children and young people of current interest.
The seminar has been made possible by funding from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

NORLA also takes part in the festival event “Oversatt eller oversett?” (Translated or Overseen?)

31 May, 10-10.50 am, at Cafe Stift, Lillehammer.
The event is open to the public and will be in the Nordic languages. Entrance fee: NOK 120.

The most important market for the translation of Nordic literature for children and young adults has been the Nordic countries. Is this still the case? Has the appetite for reading the children/YA literature from our neighouring countries changed since the establishment of the Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize in 2013, or are there other factors that make it easier or perhaps harder to succeed across borders?

Introduction by the Norwegian Minister of Culture Linda Hofstad Helleland. In the panel: Jorodd Asphjell (chairman The Nordic Council’s Committee for Knowledge and Culture in the Nordic Region, Norway), Tiia Strandén (director Finnish Literature Exchange/FILI, Finland), Niels Jákup Thomsen (director Bókadeild Føroya Lærarafelags, Faroe Islands), Elin Algreen-Petersen (editor in chief Gyldendal, Denmark) og Margit Walsø (director NORLA, Norway). Moderator: Sigurður Ólafsson (The Nordic House/Nordens hus, Reykjavik, Iceland).

Link to the event

Bakground information in English
the Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize.
Translation subsidies between Nordic languages.

NORLA will also be taking part in the festival event “Success abroad – flourishing literature at home? (Suksess ute – blomstring hjemme?)”

Thursday 1 June, 2 pm, Lillehammer Library (Bibliotek).
The event is open to the public and will be in English.Tickets: NOK 120

Nordic literature is popular abraod and all things Scandinavian are more attractive than ever. Does the world wide successes of Karl Ove Knausgård, Carsten Jensen, Sara Stridsberg and Jussi Adler-Olsens also increase the limelight on other Nordic authors? If so, in which way does the success abroad contribute to a bloom at home? Which literary elements are necessary in order to make oneself noted abroad? And how do bestsellers influence the growth of new literature?

In the panel: Ane Farsethås (cultural editor in Morgenbladet), John Freeman (critic and editor of Freemans Own), Annette Orre (Oslo Literary Agency) og Halldór Gudmundsson (formerly publisher in Iceland and project manager of Norway as Guest of Honour in Frankfurt 2019). Moderator: Margunn Vikingstad.
The event is organized in cooperation with Foreningen Norden.

Link to the event.

About the Norwegian Festival of Literature

The festival programme is available here (so far only in Norwegian).

The Norwegian Festival of Literature at Lillehammer was recently named one of the 20 best literature festivals in the world by Penguin Random House The Writers’ Academy.
Read more.

Visit the festival’s website.