This year, the most prestigious literature prize in the Nordic countries goes to Niels Fredrik Dahl (67).
The prize was announced Tuesday evening and will be awarded in <a href="https://time.news/volcano-erupts-in-southwest-iceland/" title="Volcano erupts in southwest Iceland“>Reykjavik, Iceland on October 29.
Dahl wins for the book “Fars rygg” which was released last autumn – and the jury describes it as a “powerful yet understated novel”.
Read VG’s review of the winning book here!
Dahl himself was completely taken aback when he learned he won:
– I had COVID and woke up dizzy to seven missed calls. Nowadays, no one calls anymore, so I thought: What on earth has happened now.
– Did you recover quickly when you received the news?
– Well, not exactly, but I felt a little better. I was terribly happy. And surprised, Dahl recounts – who had not thought for a moment that he would win.
A new feature this year is that the winner is announced a week before the official award ceremony. Here is Dahl photographed with his prize.
– No, for me it has been a great honor to be nominated for the prize. The nomination process lasts almost a whole year – to underline the breadth and strength of the literature being written in the Nordic countries. It has felt good to be highlighted and seen in this way.
– But winning clearly tops all of this.
He has not been nominated for the prize before, but his wife Linn Ullmann has been nominated twice, most recently last year for “Jente, 1983”.
Ullmann has never won the prize, but now they celebrate Niels Fredrik’s award together:
– We are going to Iceland on Sunday, and there is no one I would rather celebrate with. She is my first reader, very strict and very wise. I could not have written “Fars rygg” without her, Dahl tells VG.
Niels Fredrik Dahl was nominated alongside other authors including the Norwegian Maria Skaranger and the Danish Helle Helle.
The literature prize goes to a work of fiction that meets high literary and artistic standards – and is worth 300,000 Danish kroner.
Earlier this evening, it was also announced that the Nordic Council’s film prize goes to the Norwegian Dag Johan Haugerud for the film “Sex”.
Check out the trailer of the winning film here:
Niels Fredrik Dahl shares that he has read and been impressed by several of the other nominated books, including Helle Helle’s “Hafni fortæller”, Swedish poet Gunnar Harding’s “Minnen från glömskans städer”, and Norwegian author colleague Maria Navarro Skaranger’s “Jeg plystrer i den mørke vinden”.
– For every book I read, I thought: This is the winner.
– Now it’s pleasant to think that “Fars rygg” may get to live a little longer.
Both “Fars rygg” and Dahl’s critically acclaimed novel “Mor om natten” from 2017 actually started with him losing both his parents.
– I discovered then that I only partially knew them. I had only dealt with them in their lives with me. I had not been particularly concerned about who they were outside of me.
– It has been an exciting project. In “Fars rygg,” I based it on my father’s childhood and youth about which I knew very little. I had only caught on that he as a child lived several years away from his parents and that he had a pronounced lonely and demanding upbringing, Dahl recounts.
The last thing Niels Fredrik Dahl saw of his father John was his back.
– I have tried to turn him around and imagine him walking towards me; through all the countries he lived in and the turbulent times he lived through.
– Slowly, slowly, a broader and deeper portrait of him emerged than I thought I was capable of writing, Dahl explains.
He describes the writing process as both rewarding and demanding, and what struck him is how our own time resembles the turbulent times his father navigated as a young man.
– The rise of Nazi Germany, the occupation of Norway – and my father’s own flight to Sweden during the war. There are so many parallels here to the time we live in right now – and how it is for many people today.
– At what stage in your authorship are you now?
– That’s a question I ask myself too, he laughs and continues:
– I am working on something that might be about drinking, which I no longer do, and about writing, which I hope to continue doing for a long time.
The Nordic Council Literature Prize has been awarded since 1962, and this year, the award ceremony will be held in Reykjavik, Iceland on October 29. A new feature this year is that the winner is announced a week before – not during the actual award ceremony (which previously gathered all the nominees in the hall).
These were nominated from the other Nordic countries.
The award for best children’s and young adult book went to the Danish popular author Jakob Martin Strid for the book “Den fantastiske bus”. The author is already known for among others “Den utrolige historien om den kjempestore pæra”.
On Tuesday evening, it was also announced that the winners of the Nordic Council’s environmental prize went to the Icelandic architect Arnhildur Pálmadóttir – and the Nordic Council’s music prize went to Danish Rune Glerup for the work “Om Lys og Lethed”.