NOTE 21
“I wash the dishes the Saami way,” he says.
“How so?” says the anthropologist.
“It’s in the wrist,” he says. “But for people who are not so familiar with Saami culture it might seem like I do it exactly the same way as everyone else.”
NOTE 23
My coffin is slender, skinned trunks of willow, tightly bound.
My coffin is old postal bags, split and sewn to a snug cocoon.
My coffin is nightfall and the following day.
My coffin is the particularly roomy ski-box I got so cheaply in Sweden.
My coffin is a boat, with no sail, no oars, and the sky open above me.
My coffin is the wind, and entrusted men carry me onto the mount.
NOTE 24
Much later they arrived at a place. They viewed the land.
“This looks rather OK,” he says.
“Yeah,” she says.
“We’ll settle here,” he says.
“Yeah,” she says.
Author Biographies
Originally from Greenland, NAJA MARIE AIDT is a Danish poet and author with twenty-seven works in various genres to her name. She has received numerous honours, including the Danish Critics’ Prize and the Nordic nations’ most prestigious literary prize, the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize, in 2008 for Baboon, and her work has been translated into ten languages. Her work has also been anthologized in the Best European Fiction series and has appeared in leading American journals. Baboon was published in the USA by Two Lines Press in 2014. Denise Newman won the PEN Translation Prize for her translation of Baboon in 2015. Naja Marie Aidt’s first novel, Rock, Paper, Scissors, was published in August 2015 by Open Letter Books. She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
KJELL ASKILDSEN (born 1929 in Mandal, Norway) is one of the great Norwegian writers of the post-war era and a major figure in contemporary Scandinavian literature. Since his debut in 1953 he has published seven acclaimed short-story collections, as well as five novels. His latest book, the short-story collection The Cost of Friendship, was published in 2015. Askildsen has won the Swedish Academy’s Nordic Prize, the national Brage Prize and the Norwegian Critics’ Prize twice. His short stories have been translated into twenty-nine languages.
JOHAN BARGUM (born in 1943 in Helsinki, Finland) is a writer and director. He writes Swedish, Finland’s second official language and had his first book, a collection of short stories (Swartvitt, “Black and white”) published in 1965. He has mostly written short stories, but has also published novels and plays, some thirty works altogether. Films and television plays based on his work have been produced in Finland and Sweden, and his prose has been translated into several West and East European languages. His play Are There Tigers in the Congo? has been translated into more than twenty languages. Bargum has received many awards, among them the Pro Finlandia medal in 1996 and has been active in the cultural field as chairman of several organizations including the Finland-Swedish Authors Union. He is married, with two daughters and four grandchildren.
GUÐBERGUR BERGSSON (born in 1932 in Grindavik, Iceland) published his modernist novel Tómas Jónsson metsölubók in 1966 (“Tómas Jónsson Bestseller”), a cultural breakthrough in Icelandic literature. His novel Svanurinn (1991) (The Swan) secured his position as a major European novelist. Bergsson’s books have been translated into many languages. He is also a prolific translator of world literature and has enriched Icelandic literature and culture with timeless masterpieces by Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American writers, including Cervantes’s Don Quixote. He has been the recipient of several major prizes, including the Nordic Prize of the Swedish Academy in 2004. In 2010, he was awarded the Spanish Royal Cross (Orden de Merito civil).
HASSAN BLASIM was born in Baghdad in 1973, where he studied at the city’s Academy of Cinematic Arts. In 1998, he was advised to leave Baghdad, as his documentary critiques of life under Saddam Hussein had put him at risk. He fled to Sulaymaniya (Iraqi Kurdistan), where he continued to make films, including the feature-length drama Wounded Camera, under the Kurdish pseudonym “Ouazad Osman”. In 2004, after years of travelling illegally through Europe as a refugee, he finally settled in Finland. His first story to appear in print was for Comma’s anthology Madinah (2008), edited by Joumana Haddad, which was followed by two commissioned collections, The Madman of Freedom Square (2009) and The Iraqi Christ (2013)—all translated into English by Jonathan Wright. The latter collection won the 2014 Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, and Hassan’s stories have now been published in over twenty languages.
PER OLOV ENQUIST was born in 1934 in a small village in the northern part of Sweden. He is one of the most celebrated authors in Scandinavia, both as a novelist and a playwright. His novels have been translated into more than forty languages, and he is one of the most performed Scandinavian playwrights. Enquist is one of only two writers ever to have twice received the August Prize for fiction, the most prestigious Swedish literary prize: in 1999 with the novel The Visit of the Royal Physician, and in 2008 with his memoir novel The Wandering Pine.
FRODE GRYTTEN (born in 1960) made his debut in 1984 with the poetry collection Start. Since then he has written novels, short stories, poems and children’s books. Songs of the Beehive won Norway’s national book award, the Brage Prize, and was shortlisted for the Nordic Council’s Literature Prize. His only thriller, Floating Bear (2005), won the prestigious Riverton Prize. Grytten’s latest book, the short-story collection Men No One Needs, was published in 2016.
CARL JÓHAN JENSEN (born in Tórshavn in 1957) is one of the most original and provocative writers on the Faroese literary scene today. Poet and novelist Jensen is also a prominent figure in the public debate on culture and politics in the Faroe Islands. Since the early 1980s, he has produced seven volumes of poetry, four novels and a collection of essays, and he is a regular reviewer of the Faroese arts. He has twice been awarded the Faroese M.A. Jacobsen Literature Prize, and nominated five times for the prestigious Nordic Council’s Literature Prize. His work has appeared in literary journals and anthologies in Denmark, Norway, Sweden, the Netherlands, Germany and the USA. Jensen’s celebrated novel Ó-: søgur um djevulskap (2005) (working title in English: “Un-: Tales of Devilry”) was published in Norwegian translation in 2010 and in Icelandic in 2013. He is currently completing his fifth novel, which is expected to be published in early 2018.
LINDA BOS TRÖM KNAUSGAARD (born 1972) is a Swedish poet and author, as well as a producer of documentaries for Swedish radio. In 1998 she made her debut with a collection of poetry entitled Gör mig behaglig för såret, and in 2011 she returned with Grand Mal, a critically acclaimed collection of short stories. Her first novel, Helioskatastrofen, published in English by World Editions as The Helios Disaster (2013), proved to be her international breakthrough. Some of her awards and nominations include: winner of the Mare Kandre Prize 2013; nominated for Svenska Dagbladets Literary Prize in 2016, for the prestigious August Prize in 2016, and for the International Dublin Literary Award 2016 for Helioskatastrofen.