Previous activities

Norway is this year’s country in focus at the Tbilisi International Book Fair in Georgia!

A seminar for Georgian students of Norwegian as well as Georgian translators will be held Wednesday May 24. Organizing the seminar are TSUs Centre of Scandinavian studies and NORLA. Approximately 40 participants will take part, including four translators from Baku in Azerbaijan.
The main organizer of the seminar is translator Tamara Kvizhinadze, who is also NORLA’s Translator of the Month in May. If you happen to read Norwegian, you will enjoy our interview with her here.

All four authors in NORLA’s authors’ programme “New Voices” will speak at the seminar:
Roskva Koritzinsky: “The short story in Norwegian contemporary literature”
Nils Henrik Smith: “Dag Solstad and the Norwegian”
Sigbjørn Mostue: “Back to the roots – the revival of popular beliefs in Norwegian fantasy literature”.
Simen Ekern: “The battle for the soul of Europe: The growth and the future of right wing populism”.

The seminar participants will work in groups discussing the translation of the four authors’ texts.
After the seminar the participants are invited to a reception along with Georgian publishers and contacts, hosted by Norwegian embassies in Tbilisi and Baku.

The Netherlands have long been an important market for Norwegian books. Recently there has also been an increase in the number of non-fiction books translated into Dutch. In collaboration with the Norwegian embassy in The Hague and translator Paula Stevens, NORLA is organizing for the fifth time an exclusive half-day seminar at the embassy that is designed for a select group of publishers from the Netherlands and Flanders This year’s seminar will focus on non-fiction. The four previous seminar have introduced Norwegian fiction, non-fiction, literature for children and young adults and crime fiction.

See a listing of Norwegian books available in Dutch here.

And enjoy the covers of Norwegian books recently published in Dutch through NORLA’s translation subsidies here.

6 of the best Norwegian Nordic Noir authors appear at CrimeFest

The Nordic Noir genre has been hugely successful with authors such as Jo Nesbø, Stieg Larsson and Karin Fossum influencing international literature. On May 18-21, CrimeFest takes place in Bristol, featuring Norwegian authors Hans Olav Lahlum, Gunnar Staalensen, Jørn Lier Horst, Torkil Damhaug, Thomas Enger and Kjell Ola Dahl. Read more.

Read more.

NORLA’s offices are closed Wednesday May 17, due to Norway’s Constitution Day.
We wish everyone a Happy 17th of May!

Read more about the Norwegian celebration here and here.

Meeting of NORLA’s committee of experts for fiction (for the consideration of applications for translation subsidies with deadline 1 April).

Read more about the translation subsidy here.

We are looking forward to welcoming four new translators of Norwegian literature to NORLA’s Translators Hotel in Oslo, at Hotell Bondeheimen.
This spring is the sixth season of our popular programme.

The four translators are:
Mariia Tkachenko (Russian)
Anja Majnaric (Croatian)
Miluse Jurickova (Czech).
Sotiris Souliotis (Greek) will be joining the group next week.

Meet the translators and read more here.

Read more about NORLA’s translators hotel and previous guests here.

In the beginning of May, NordLit (the Nordic literature offices and representatives for the autonomous regions), is arranging a seminar for translators from the Nordic languages into English in cooperation with British Centre for Literary Translation, a research centre within the School of Literature, Drama and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia in Norwich.

The seminar will focus on Nordic literature for children and young adults, on Nordic noir and literary fiction.

Twelve international publishers from Germany, the United Kingdom and USA will visit Oslo May 2 – 5.
All of four editors of Karl Ove Knausgård’s books are invited to attend the opening of the Munch exhibition «Towards the Forest» (“Mot skogen”) which has been curated by Knausgård.
(Read more here).
The guests will visit Norwegian publishing houses, museums and institutions and they will meet Norwegian authors, editors and literary agents for a full three days.

We look forward to welcoming our guests to Norway, and to offer them some of the best program available!

NORLA annually hands out an award to a translator of Norwegian literature. The award is given for translations directly from Norwegian.
In 2017, the award will be given to a talented young translator of fiction as an encouragement towards continued efforts.

We would very much like to hear from you about deserving candidates!

The conference, followed by a reception, will be held at Sentralen in Oslo Wednesday 26 April, 1 – 7 PM.

Hear – about what it means to be the Guest of Honour at the world’s largest book fair.
See – all the exciting opportunities found in the cultural programme surrounding the fair.
Meet – people from the Frankfurt Book Fair, key German stakeholders, professionals from the book trade and culture sector, and Margit and Halldór who will be responsible for the entire endeavour.
Come – and bring your own ideas!

Click here to see the programme.

Register through 20 April here.

Read more about Frankfurt 2019, including the Norwegian bid book, here.

NORLA’s offices are closed for Easter as of Monday April 10. We open again Tuesday April 18.

If you happen to read Norwegian, you may enjoy our reading tips for Easter – “påskekrim” – here.

Curious to learn more about that strange Norwegian tradition of “påskekrim”, i.e. reading/watching crime stories at Easter?
Read more.

Happy Easter!

NORLA attends the children’s book fair in Bologna, Italy, April 3-6.
Please contact us if you would like to book a meeting at stand 30 C 18!

Have a look at our selected Norwegian titles for the spring 2017 here.
You may also enjoy our Highlights and Backlists in different genres from 2016/2017 and previous years, here.

See the book covers of Norwegian books for children and young adults published through translation subsidies from NORLA since 2011 on Flickr.

Read more about the translation subsidy for Norwegian fiction here.

For many years, Norwegian authors have put their mark on the Leipziger Book Fair, but this year the Norwegian presence is larger than ever. The Norwegian Embassy in Berlin invites seven Norwegian authors to the fair: Jostein Gaarder, Maja Lunde, Øyvind Torseter, Ole Thorstensen, Gudrun Skretting, Erika Fatland and Håkon Øvreås. They will all perform at different venues during the book fair; Jostein Gaarder, Maja Lunde and Ole Thorstensen will also be performing at the famous Nordische Lesenacht on Friday March 24th.

In addition the authors on the NORLA’s program New Voices (Nye stemmer) will also come to Leipzig: Simen Ekern, Roskva Koritzinsky, Sigbjørn Mostue and Nils Henrik Smith will have a seminar with the German translators who have made sample translations of their texts, and together they will meet the audience at the Nordic pavilion, Hall 4, D300.

Håkon Øvreås and Øyvind Torseter will be awarded the «Leseluchs des Jahres 2016» prize, by Radio Bremen and Die Zeit, for «Brune» («Super-Bruno») in Wednsday evening.

On Thursday March 23, NORLA invites German translators to a gathering at the Grieg Begegnungsstätte to exchange information and ideas about Norway as Guest of Honour in Frankfurt 2019. The seminar will be followed by a reception where German publishers also are invited.

State Secretary for the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Laila Bokhari, will be part of the Norwegian delegation to Leipzig this year, along with chairman of NORLA’s board Aslak Sira Myhre, NORLA’s Project Manager Frankfurt 2019 Halldór Gudmundsson and Coordinator Literary Programme Frankfurt 2019, Andrine Pollen, together with NORLA’s Director Margit Walsø and Senior Advisers Dina Roll-Hansen and Oliver Møystad.

See the Nordic program here.

And the complete festival program here.
Download PDF’s with the program day by day here.

Visit the bookfair’s website.

Their Majesties The King and Queen host the state visit from the President of Iceland, His Excellency Mr Guðni Th. Jóhannesson and Ms Eliza Reid, 21- 23 March.

In focus during the visit will be the two countries’ cooperation within the cultural field, education, science and innovation. And also the shared cultural heritage and the Icelandic-Norwegian cooperation in the Nordic countries and in Europe.
As part of the programme Tuesday 21 March the party will visit the offices of NORLA, Norwegian Literature Abroad.

Read more about the visit (in Norwegian) here.

Click here to see the book covers of Norwegian literature recently translated into Icelandic through translation subsidy from The Nordic Council of Ministers, administered by NORLA.

Read more on the The Nordic Council of Ministers’ programme for the translation of literature and drama from one Nordic language to another here.