Today, NORLA had the pleasure of welcoming three (of a total of four) new translators to Oslo for the sixth season of our translators hotel at Hotell Bondeheimen:

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

We look forward to spending the next two weeks in their company!

In the end of April, NORLA invited stakeholders to take part in a planning and input conference for Norway as Guest of Honour nation in Frankfurt 2019. We are pleased that 250 participants from the literature trade and cultural life took part in sounding the starting shot for the project – which will be the largest ever Norwegian cultural initiative abroad.

Lots of very exciting things happened at NORLA in 2016, and once again translation support awarded for Norwegian titles hit new records.
Read more.

Now you can read about all our activities in the 2016 annual report, which can be downloaded below.

See also our 2016 album on Facebook.

Our 2016 web calendar has more details of all NORLA’s activities.

Those of us who work at NORLA regularly share our personal reading tips for various seasons.
It will soon be Easter and in conjunction with the Norwegian tradition of reading crime fiction in particular during the Easter holiday, we have selected some good books that can offer a bit of suspense.

If you read Norwegian, you will find the tips here.

The translators are the most important stakeholders we have for bringing Norwegian literature to the world. Their work is of vital importance and to showcase this work in January 2015 we started the interview series «Translator of the Month». Here we become better acquainted with translators from the Norwegian language and their challenging work, which introduces Norwegian literature to all the different languages of the world.

The translator of the month for April is Jarka Vrbova. She has translated a long list of Norwegian books into Czech and in 2009 was conferred with the honour Knight 1st Class by the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for her contribution to the promotion of Norwegian-Czech alliances, particularly in the fields of literature and culture.
In addition to her work as a translator, she teaches Norwegian at Charles University in Prague and has thereby played a wholly central role in the work of spreading enthusiasm for Norwegian language and literature in the Czech Republic and also in terms of recruiting budding translators. We at NORLA are very thankful for all her work!

This spring Jarka is of current interest with all of three translations: Jostein Gaarder’s Dukkeføreren (The Puppeteer), Henrik Svensen’s nonfiction book Bergtatt (In High Places) and Bjørg Vik’s Små nøkler, store rom (Small Keys, Large Rooms).
Read our interview (in Norwegian) here.

Norway will be Guest of Honour at the Frankfurt Book Fair 2019.

Programme for NORLA’s Planning and Input Conference, Wednesday 26 April 2017
Sentralen (Marmorsalen), Øvre Slottsgt. 3, Oslo

PROGRAMME

The Norwegian Guest of Honour project for the book fair in Frankfurt will, in addition to literature, include an extensive cultural framework programme, where the Guest of Honour nation will present a panorama of its life of arts and culture throughout the entire city of Frankfurt during the autumn when the book fair takes place.

Frankfurt has many good museums and culture institutions that can choose to take part in this, should they find that the Guest of Honour has exciting things to offer.

Such a culture programme must, in the same manner as the publication of a book, be prepared well in advance. And as a first step, Project Manager Halldór Guðmundsson and Culture Coordinator Marit Ingvill Sande visited Frankfurt in the end of March and were received with open arms and great interest.

Germany, in other words! Leipziger Buchmesse takes place in an exhibition hall located 20 minutes from the city centre by S-Bahn but can nonetheless boast of attracting 285,000 visitors to a city with a mere 500,000 residents. How do they achieve this?

The Riverton Prize is the annual Norwegian Crime Fiction Award. Every year a jury of distinguished crime literature readers pick the best crime novel of the year, and for 2016 they picked Torkil Damhaugs novel A Fifth Season in great competition with Karin Fossum, Chris Tvedt, Unni Lindell and Bjørn Olav Nordahl.

At NORLA we’d like to celebrate Waffle Day (Vaffelens dag) by sharing our best Waffle booktip:

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. As part of the programme we had the honour of receiving them all, and Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Mette-Marit, in our offices.