Tuesday 10 March 2009

Ny Tid

If you want to keep abreast of cultural events in what is termed "Svenskfinland", i.e. the areas of Finland where Swedish is still spoken as a first language, the magazine Ny Tid still exists. I say "still" because it first appeared back in 1944, when it was a mouthpiece for left-wing politics.

Nowadays, it is much more focused on the arts. The latest issue that I have received through the post is 10/2009. This contains articles on, for instance, the sculptor Angela Oker-Blom, the bilingual Viirus theatre group, a review of the Swedish translation of Irène Némirovsky's Châleur du sang, a review of Charlotte Svensson's book Pli på pojkar, which discusses the role of men and masculine role models in children's literature, and other items from Sweden.

Every now and again, Ny Tid publishes a supplement entitled Kontur which is wholly devoted to literature as such. The Finland-Swedish publishing houses such as Schildts and Söderströms advertise new Finland-Swedish books there, and articles vary from ones about Finland-Swedish literature to ones about, for instance, Doris Lessing or a review of Le Clézio. In the latest issue, there are a number of poems by the Estonian poet Elo Viiding in Peeter Puide's Swedish translation.

Another interesting occasional supplement is Ikaros, which contains academic articles by people attached to the university Åbo Akademi. These supplements tend to have a wide range of themes from psychology to philosophy, art to science.

Specifically literary articles in the main Ny Tid paper over the past few months have included a large double one about Victoria Benedictsson; a review of Merete Mazzarella's "essäroman"about Zacharias Topelius Ingen saknad, ingen sorg; poems by Claes Andersson; a review of Robert Åsbacka's latest novel Orgelbyggaren.

Their website is at: http://www.nytid.fi/start/

3 comments:

Eric Dickens said...

I should add, to be accurate, that "Ny Tid" is, physically speaking, an A3 format newspaper, rather than a "magazine" as I termed it.

Anonymous said...

Thanks for this, Eric. I've added Ny Tid to the list of external links.

Eric Dickens said...

I've just got my issue of Ny Tid dated 13th March 2009, i.e. issue 11/2009, through the post. There is a little message there that says:

***

Månadens poet i Ny Tid

Under år 2009 publicerar Ny Tid varje månad författaporträtt av de finlandssvenska poeter som finns med i Ny Tids poetkalender.

Poetkalendern kan ännu köpas hos bokhandlare eller via nätbokhandeln.

Catharina Gripenberg är månadens poet i april, porträttet på henne publiceras in Ny Tid 15-16/2009

***

This month's poet is Stella Parland, who works with Malin Kivelä to produce the Ny Tid supplement Kontur, devoted to literature. This Parland (not the first author with that surname!) was born in Helsinki in 1974 and has published three books:

* Dikter om öden och döden [with Annika Sandelin](1999; reprint 2007)
* Katastrofer och strofer om slummer och stoj (2003)
* Delirium - Romanen on en hund (2004)