Irwan Syahrir – Translator of the Month

The government is investing in Norwegian children’s literature and is making a major contribution to Norway’s Guest of Honour appearance in Italy this coming spring.

We are very pleased to welcome Marit Borkenhagen as the new Chair of the Board at NORLA. The Director of the Norwegian Festival of Literature – Sigrid Undset Days in Lillehammer – succeeds Arne Vestbø, who has held the position for four years.

According to initial evaluations, Norway’s role as Guest of Honour at the Leipzig Book Fair was a major success, especially in terms of media visibility.
During the fair, more than 4,000 print articles were published, with a total advertising value equivalent of 659,290 €. The campaign achieved broad reach, not only featuring well-known authors like Karl Ove Knausgård, Maja Lunde or Vigdis Hjorth but also highlighting voices like Kjersti Anfinnsen, Wencke Mühleisen and Oliver Lovrenski, showcasing the diversity of Norwegian literature.

The NAA network (Norwegian Arts Abroad) has published its annual report covering its overall activities for the years 2023–2024. The report highlights initiatives and activities in the field of internationalization, and presents the results of the grant schemes.

Sofie Maertens is a Belgian translator of approximately thirty Norwegian books spanning a range of genres into her native Dutch. She lives in Ename, a village in the Flemish Ardennes. Upon completion of her degree in translation studies in Ghent in 2003, where she specialised in German and Spanish, she and her partner and fellow student, Michiel Vanhee, moved to Germany. She enrolled at the University of Greifswald and began her studies in Norwegian and Polish Philology.

Sofie fell in love with Norway and the Norwegian language and culture following a summer spent working in Geiranger as a multilingual tour guide, and a few years later, she and her partner Michiel both moved to Lofoten in Northern Norway to work as tour guides. Following their time in Lofoten, they returned to Belgium and started a family, but the nostalgia they felt for Norway prompted them to choose Norwegian names for their children (Sindre and Lasse) and they started translating Norwegian novels into Dutch. Her partner Michiel became her husband Michiel, and eventually her partner in translation, too!

Our Translator of the Month for July is Jitka Jindřišková, who translates from Norwegian into Czech. She studied history and Norwegian language and literature at Masaryk University in Brno, the second-largest city in the Czech Republic. Jitka’s fascination with Scandinavian culture and history started when she gave a presentation on the topic of Norse mythology in high school, but her first trip to Norway wasn’t until the age of twenty, thanks to Bergen Summer School. During that visit she became captivated by Norway, and it was then that she made her first foray into fiction translation. Since then, she has racked up around thirty book translations across a range of genres. Earlier this year she was presented The Golden Ribbon Award for her translation of Nora Dåsnes’ graphic novel Cross My Heart and Never Lie (original title: Ti kniver i hjertet).

Norway is the guest country at the world’s largest children’s and young adult book fair

Oh! How we enjoyed spending last week at the Norwegian Festival of Literature, in Lillehammer! Along with crowds of happy festival goers, we celebrated the festival’s 30th anniversary and a wonderfully packed program with a focus on Sápmi. It was a sheer delight to take part in it all.

Each year, NORLA awards grants to support the translation of a wide range of Norwegian books into other languages. In 2024, a total of 529 grants were awarded for translations into 47 languages. NORLA received 546 applications in total, covering 445 works of fiction and 101 nonfiction titles. Of the 529 grants awarded, nearly a third were books for children and young adults — in total 147 publications.

2024 was another successful and eventful year for Norwegian literature abroad. The German translator Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel was named the first recipient of the new Fosse Prize. At the book fair in Cairo, Norway, as Guest of Honour, was able to build a literary bridge to the Arab world. Preparations for the upcoming Guest of Honour appearances at the book fairs in Leipzig 2025 and Bologna 2026 also moved into detailed planning.

Our Translator of the Month for June is Mariana. She was born into a typical middle-class Argentinian family, making her background a wonderful cultural, ethnic and religious mosaic. Her father was Norwegian, and her mother was Basque and Italian. The Spanish spoken in her childhood home was very diverse, with various different accents and many words imported from other languages, particularly Norwegian and Italian. Mariana has dreamed of travelling the world and learning different languages since childhood – she eventually settled on Norwegian, English, French and Swedish in addition to Spanish.

NORLA launched its largest international initiative outside of Europe when Norway was the Guest of Honour at the Cairo International Book Fair in 2024, one of the world’s largest public book fairs, attracting nearly 5 million visitors.