This blog is now one year old. What began as a team effort between several Nordic-oriented translators, conceived as an alternative (or challenge?) to the Swedish-only focus of SELTA and Swedish Book Review, has developed over the months in several different directions. The initial emphasis on translation and translation topics has receded, while the sometimes relentless foraging among the work of obscure and little-read Scandinavian authors has given way to what I hope is a more balanced presentation of literary texts considered for their own sake rather than for that of encyclopedic inclusiveness or specifically "Nordic" content.
The blog became solely my own when I decided to allow posts on subjects that don't necessarily have a "literary" connection or context, but do reflect social and other attitudes prevalent in the countries of Northern Europe and Scandinavia. Some of my colleagues seem to have thought that this was cheating - but it may just have been that the strains of accommodating strongly differing approaches to the subject of Scandinavian writing and reality were too great to be contained within a single blog.
Anyway, Nordic Voices (often, but not always, in translation) will continue to follow its basic aim of acting as a listening post or sounding board for what is new, or characteristic, or troubling, or pleasing about the Nordic literary scene and life in the Nordic countries today. It will do so less in terms of scholarly reviews and studies than by means of intermittent, sometimes even fragmentary presentations, translations and news items drawn from the Web, the media and above all from the work and statements of authors themselves. My hope is that readers who have little or no knowledge of the languages of the region can gain some familiarity with what is happening in Northern Europe today, through the often enlightening prism of creative writing.
Happy birthday, Nordic Voices!
