Tuesday 10 March 2009

Scandinavian Newsletter

Since the demise of the annual publication "Nordic Literature - Nordisk litteratur", the gap has to an extent been filled by the "Scandinavian Newsletter". This 100-page annual magazine is published in the English language in the northern Dutch city of Groningen, where Nordic languages and Estonian are taught at the local university.

Twelve issues have now been published by a group of editors attached to the Scandinavian Translation and Information Bureau there. It is financed by grants from the Danish Arts Agency, Mentanargrunnur Landsins in Tórshavn, FILI in Finland, the Fund for the Promotion of Icelandic Literature in Reykjavík, NORLA in Norway, and the Swedish Institute.

The magazine is slightly broader in focus than for literature alone, although authors and books are certainly the main focus. While the bibliography at the back tends to focus on translations of Scandinavian books into Dutch, all the articles are of international scope.

The latest issue, number 12, 2008, contains some Faroese material, as one of the editors, Roald van Elswijk, specialises in that language. So there are articles on the major prose author Heðin Brú, the state of literature on the Faroes, postmodernism in Faroese poetry, the first Faroese opera, and so on. But all the other Scandinavian or Nordic countries are well represented, with articles on and reviews of, for instance, Aki Kaurismäki, the Finnish magazine "Nuori Voima", Astrid Lindgren, Henrik Wergeland, Herman Bang, Alexander Ahndoril, Alva Myrdal, Werner Aspenström, and lots more. Contributors are Dutch, but also from the Nordic countries themselves.

If you wish to subscribe, the 12th issue costs €12.50, excluding postage, and back issues and bank details for payment can be obtained by sending an e-mail to: svin@svin.nl .

Their website is at: http://www.svin.nl/en/newsletter_en.htm

For those of you who are wondering where the "svin" comes from, this porcine pun is an abbreviation of the Dutch "Scandinavisch Vertaal- en Informatiebureau Nederland".

1 comment:

David McDuff said...

Are the online issues of the magazine complete, Eric? If so, what are the advantages of subscribing (beyond obtaining a hard copy)?