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This past spring has been perhaps the most labour-intensive in NORLA’s history. A great deal has happened – particularly when it comes to Norway’s role as guest of honour at Frankfurt 2019:

The Frankfurt team was set up on 1 March, with a project manager, a coordinator for the literary programme and a coordinator for the cultural programme. And the first thing they focused on was presenting a broad range of Norwegian literature for translation to relevant publishers, and setting in motion potential collaborative projects for the cultural programme.

NORLA set up its New Voices programme to help new Norwegian authors reach the international market. The first round is now complete and the first group consisted of Simen Ekern, Roskva Koritzinsky, Nils Henrik Smith and Sigbjørn Mostue.

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 June and July is Maike Dörries, who translates into German. In June she took part in NORLA’s seminar for translators of literature for children and young people in Lillehammer, and is an extremely experienced translator, with more than 200 titles from Swedish, Danish and Norwegian to her name. In the interview she also mentions that she played a role in the creation of Endre Lund Eriksen’s popular novel for young people Den sommeren pappa ble homo (“That Summer my Dad was Gay”).

A Norwegian sports and cultural delegation led by Norway’s Minister of Culture, Linda Hofstad Helleland, visited China from 25 to 27 May. The delegation also included the author Jostein Gaarder and NORLA’s director, Margit Walsø.
Jostein Gaarder’s books are very well known to Chinese readers as a total of 16 have already been published in Chinese!
A central part of the delegation’s cultural programme was to renew and strengthen cultural collaboration with China.

On 25 May, ZHANG Fusheng, previously editor of Nordic literature at the People’s Literature Publishing House, was awarded the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit by the Minister of Culture, Linda Hofstad Helleland.

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

Norwegian and international publishers, agents, translators and authors gathered at the annual seminar in Lillehammer.

Between 30 May and 4 June, Norway’s biggest literature festival took place in Lillehammer. During the festival, NORLA arranged a seminar for German translators of children’s and YA literature. In collaboration with the Norwegian Publishers Association and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, NORLA also invited 18 international children’s book publishers to Oslo and Lillehammer. This is the first time the annual publishers seminar has been entirely devoted to children’s and YA literature.

The Norwegian Minister of Culture, Linda Hofstad Helleland, recently awarded the 2016 Ministry of Culture’s literary prizes for children and young adults.

We congratulate the winners:

The winners are:

Best fiction title:

Vigdis Hjorth
Wills and Testaments (original title: Arv og miljø)
(Published by Cappelen Damm)
About the book and read the statement from the jury

Read the Norwegian speech from the prize ceremony here

Best non-fiction title:

Marit Paasche
Hannah Ryggen. En fri (original title)
(Published by Pax forlag)
About the book

More about Hannah Ryggen here

Read the Norwegian speech from the prize ceremony here

Best children and young adult title:

Tyra Teodora Tronstad
The Darkness Comes From Within (original title: Mørket kommer innenfra)
(Published by Aschehoug)
About the book

Read the Norwegian speech from the prize ceremony here

Literary critic of the year:

Anne Cathrine Straume

Her reviews (in Norwegian) may be found at the NRK – Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation – website

Read the Norwegian speech from the prize ceremony here

Best translation:

Kristin Sørsdal
For the translation from the Italian of Historia om det tapte barnet by Elena Ferrante (published by Samlaget).

Read the Norwegian speech from the prize ceremony here

About the prizes

The Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature (Den norske Kritikerprisen for litteratur or Kritikerprisen) is awarded by the Norwegian Literature Critics’ Association (Norsk Litteraturkritikerlag) and has been awarded every year since 1950. The prize is presented to a Norwegian author for a literary work as agreed to among the members of the Norwegian Literature Critics’ Association. Since 1978 the Norwegian Literature Critics’ Association has also awarded a prize for the best work of children’s literature. In 2003 the Critics Prize for the year’s best work of translation was established, and in 2012 the Critics Prize for the year’s best work of nonfiction for adults was established. 

Read more about the Norwegian literary critics’ prizes and previous winners

Updated info (in Norwegian only) here

NORLA, Norwegian literature abroad, provides funding for the translation of Norwegian titles to be published abroad. The total amount of translation subsidies awarded in 2016 has once again beaten all previous records and among other developments, we can see a clear expansion within the English language market.
NORLA received last year all of 518 applications for translation subsidies, the largest number of applications in our history. Out of these applications, NORLA’s committees of experts awarded subsidies for 499 publications of Norwegian books in translation into 46 different languages.

NORLA’s Director Margit Walsø comments on the figures as follows:
«Norwegian authors are more attractive in the world market than ever before and are reaching readers in every part of the world. We now have a unique opportunity to capitalize on the Frankfurt Book Fair’s global scope of impact, in that Norway has been named Guest of Honour for 2019. NORLA is looking forward to the collaboration with translators, the culture sector and the book trade at home and abroad.»

During 2016 NORLA received a record-breaking 438 Norwegian books that have been published in a total of 47 languages made possible by translation subsidies from NORLA (and within the Nordic countries: from the Nordic Council of Ministers).
This surpasses even last year’s all-time high!

Of the 438 books, 349 were fiction titles and 89 non-fiction titles. And there were 127 books for children/young adults.

See all Norwegian books published abroad in 2016 through funding in the list below.

NORLA congratulates Dag Johan Haugerud on his receiving the 2016 P2-listeners’ Novel Prize for the novel Easy Atonal Pieces for Children (Enkle atonale stykker for barn).

The P2-listeners’ Novel Prize is awarded every year by the Norwegian radio channel NRK P2. The nominated books are chosen by a professional jury, which then narrow the nominations down to a shortlist of six books. From there on in a listener’s jury consisting of six people will discuss the books in a series of radio shows, before announcing the winner.

Read more about Easy Atonal Pieces for Children here.

See previous prize winners here (in Norwegian only).

This spring, NORLA’s staff look forward to attending several book fairs, events and literary festivals around the world. See detailed list below.
Feel free to contact us to schedule a meeting!

The first group of participants chosen for NORLA’s development programme for new literary talents – “New Voices” – has been decided. The four names are:
Simen Ekern, Sigbjørn Mostue, Roskva Koritzinsky and Nils Henrik Smith.

During the presentation of the culture report “The Power of Culture,” Trine Skei Grande asserted that cultural policy is freedom of expression’s policy. We at NORLA could not agree more.

The Frankfurt Book Fair is the world’s largest book fair and this year all the Norwegian participants were gathered at a large joint stand, in a reinforced collaboration between the Norwegian Publishers Association, Norwegian agents, NORLA and Norwegian publishers. The stand was a hub of extensive activity and vibrant energy, and it was of course also decorated with many good, beautiful books in all genres.
All seven of NORLA’s staff members took part in the book fair this year for the very first time! This was also NORLA’s 25th anniversary in Frankfurt, an event that was commemorated by a friendly gesture of appreciation from the book fair in the form of a delicious cake delivered to the stand.

On September 29th in Oslo, during the celebration of St. Jerome, the patron saint of translators, the 11th recipient of NORLA’s Translator’s Award was announced. The award was established in 2007 to spotlight the work done for Norwegian literature by foreign language translators. The award is to be given to a talented translator and is intended as a measure to encourage the promotion of Norwegian literature.

The award is given annually and on an alternating basis to translators of non-fiction and fiction. This year’s award is for non-fiction and the award recipient is Nargis Shinkarenko, who translates into Russian.

Today, NORLA had the pleasure of welcoming four new translators to Oslo for the fifth season of our translators hotel at Hotell Bondeheimen:

Katerina Kristufkova (Czech)
Riina Hanso (Estonian)
Eleonora Pankratova (Russian)
Miroslav Zumrik (Slovakian).

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

The translators are at present translating among others the following books: Erlend Loe’s novel Volvo lastvagnar, Marit Reiersgård’s crime fiction novel Tall Snow, Tore Rem’s award-winning Knut Hamsun. The Journey to Hitler and Merethe Lindstrøm’s From the Winter Archives.

They look forward to meeting authors they are translating, or will be translating, and to better get to know Norwegian publishers and agents. They will also take part in several literary events and book launches during their stay, as well as visits to bookshops. In addition to this, the Norwegian Children’s Book Festival in Oslo (Barnebokfestivalen, September 15-17), and Oslo Culture Night (Oslo kulturnatt, September 16) will offer great opportunities for dives into Norwegian literature, culture and history.

All four will also be having work stations in our office, so we look forward to seeing them almost daily.

(From the left: NORLA’s Torill Johansen (who administers the translators hotel scheme), Katerina Kristufkova, Riina Hanso, Eleonora Pankratova and
Miroslav Zumrik.
Photo: Mette Børja).

The most important news item of the spring for Norwegian cultural life was that Norway was named Guest of Honour for the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2019. In the speech given by the Minister of Culture in conjunction with the signing of the agreement, she emphasized that Norway has hereby acquired a unique position for the internationalization of Norwegian literature and culture through the book fair’s strong position in the important German market and worldwide. The Guest of Honour project provides great opportunities for Norwegian authors and for increasing the export of literature in the coming years. The book trade’s combined investment will be crucial and Norwegian Book Day in June clearly demonstrated that the industry is prepared to make the most of this opportunity. Activities commence now. NORLA’s talent development programme for new literary voices within all genres will start up in the autumn, in collaboration with Talent Norway and the Norwegian Publishers Association.