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This book was converted from its physical edition to the digital format by a community of volunteers. You may find it for free on the web. Purchase of the Kindle edition includes wireless delivery. ... Read more

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Comprehensive and Readable
This is one of the entries in the History of Scandinavian Literatures series which were, I believe, all published in the late 1990's.

Well-written and comprehensive, this can serve as a reference book or be consumed for its narrative content. I'm impressed by the breadth and depth on display here: 709 pp with a 23 p bibliography, a 50 p index, and maps.

As far as approach goes, here's some dustjacket blurbage...

"For centuries, Denmark dominated the culture of Scandinavia, and its literature has influenced such English works as Beowulf and Hamlet as well as major philosophical movements: humanism, romanticism, existentialism. With contributions from nine internationally recognized scholars, A History of Danish Literature reaches back as far as the literary record allows, to the ancient runic inscriptions, and thence to medieval Latin, the development of literature in the vernacular, and the flowering of a distinct Danish literary tradition numbering among its luminaries Hans Christian Andersen, Soren Kierkegaard, and Karen Blixen."

"The approach used in A History of Danish Literature is maintained in the other volumes of A History of Scandinavian Literatures, which surveys the literary history of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Iceland, and Finland. These literatures are viewed not only as part of an interrelated Scandinavian tradition but as part of world literature. A comparative approach is used through-out, and social and cultural history feature prominently."


TABLE OF CONTENTS HIGHLIGHTS
The Middle Ages (David W. Colbert)
From the Reformation to the Baroque (F.J. Billeskow Jansen)
The Age of Enlightenment (P.M. Mitchell)
From Romanticism to Realism (Sven H. Rossell)
The Modern Breakthrough (Niels Ingwersen)
Between the World Wars (Sven H. Rossel, Niels Ingwersen)
Danish Literature 1940-1990
Faroese Literature (W. Glyn Jones)
Danish and Faroese Women Writers (Faith Ingwersen)
Children's Literature (Flemming Mouritsen) ... Read more

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The Angel House is the third novel in the celebrated Swedish novelist Kerstin Ekman's popular quartet of novels she wrote between 1974 and 1983. The women are now free from the hard physical tasks of the earlier novels, but no less trapped in the grinding repetition of factory jobs, repressive unions, and domestic chores in the isolation of their new homes. A male hierarchy still dominates the town; time is ruled by financial imperatives, council chairman's gavels, factory whistles, and military orders. She sets the remnants of a more organic timescale, governed by the slow evolution of women's bodies, the nurture of informal networks, and the unhurried cycles of trees and fruit bushes in old gardens. Winner of the Bernard Shaw Prize for Swedish Translation in 2003 (given every three years). ... Read more

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A linguistic tour de force"" - The Guardian. The harsh climate and often harsh economic conditions of the countries that fringe the shores of the Baltic Sea (Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) provide a framework for lives of fierce independence and self-reliance; yet the coldness can be softened by the warmth of trust and dissipated by invigorating fantasy. ""Reading these tales after a steady diet of American post-modernists makes you feel as if you are paging your way slowly back into more vital times."" - Harvard Review. ""Elegant....This book is not only a good read, but a valuable contribution to the unity and diversity of the contemporary short story in the world."" - World Literature Today. Most of the authors whose works are featured in this broad selection are quite young and have not had works published in English translation. The comprehensive introduction to the authors places them in the context of their national literature. ... Read more

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Brilliant Stream Of Consciousness Character Study
Adam's Diary is a brilliant work of art & a very entertaining book. In it, the "modern Adam" is a composite of thief, dog & prisoner. It's interesting that the composites are not merely psycological aspects of 3 different men, but they're actually what the men involved have become in reality. The book is broken up into 3 "diaries" for each man, & they all revolve around their relationship to one woman. Each portion is an interesting blend of "stream of consciousness" and psycological drama. The book becomes more & more compelling as you read on. Faldbakken is a guy hardly anybody in America has heard about, let alone read, & that's a real shame. He's a first-class writer & worthy blood-brother to Dostoyevsky. Get this! ... Read more

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Exciting Conclusion To The Holme Trilogy
This is the final book in the Holme trilogy, a saga about a Viking thrall and his family. The book starts out with the aftermath of the destruction of the Christian church by Holme. He leads other thralls in an uprising for freedom, which ends in disaster. Once again, Holme is in trouble and must flee again. Holme goes to see the sympathetic king, and becomes his personal blacksmith. Holme's wife Ausi and daughter Tora move onto the king's settlement as well.

The family who originally owned Holme and Ausi is down to its last two surviving members - the old chieftains wife and their son. The old woman still wants vengence, meaning she wants to own Tora and Ausi once more. She's too afraid to want to own Holme again...he's far too dangerous. However, the son Svien has other ideas. He loves Tora and wants her to be his bride of her own free will. Svien works things out with Holme and things go well with Svien and Tora.

The clash between Christians and the worshippers of the old wooden gods comes to a head, and the battle between thralls and freemen continues. This is a very untraditional tale for the genre, written throughout with virtually no dialogue. Fridegard is a first-class storyteller, and infuses beautiful descriptions of wildlife and settings like a true master. The trilogy is a truly brilliant work of artistic literature. ... Read more

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Intelligent, Comprehensive, Readable
This is one of the entries in the History of Scandinavian Literatures series which were, I believe, all published in the late 1990's.

Well-written and comprehensive, this can serve as a reference book or be consumed for its narrative content. I'm impressed by the breadth and depth on display here: 584 pp with a 27 p bibliography, a 43 p index, and a map.

As far as approach goes, here's some dustjacket blurbage...

This book "provides much more than names and dates. Sweden's relative isolation in a remote corner of Europe put special stress on its language and literature to define national identity. In this volume, nine scholars...identify what is particular about Swedish literary culture as well as what makes it an integral part of European literature."

"...views Swedish literature in its historical and social context and reflects on the concerns of each age." "An additional chapter discusses children's literature, a major Swedish cultural export."

TABLE OF CONTENTS HIGHLIGHTS
The Middle Ages (Stephen A. Mitchell)
The Reformation and Sweden's Century as a Great Power (James Larson)
The Enlightenment and the Gustavian Age (James Massengale)
The Romantic Period (Bertil Nolan)
Liberalism, Realism, and the Modern Breakthrough (Birgitta Steene)
Into the 20th Century (Susan Brantly)
Literature After 1950 (Rochelle Wright)
Women Writers (Cheri Register)
Literature for Children and Young People (Maria Nikolajeva) ... Read more

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Sick, twisted and realistic
"Children's Island" is a Swedish novel by P.C. Jersild. I've only read the Swedish original, so I can't vouch for the American translation. This review, for all its worth, is therefore based on the original version.

I read "Children's Island" already as a kid. I shouldn't have. It's not a children's story. Rather, it's a sick, twisted and bizarre novel for adults. Even the contents are very "adult". My father mistook the novel for a children's story, probably because of its appealing and childish cover (different from the American cover pictured here). In fact, many of Jersild's novels are macabre, and border the surrealistic. There is also a streak of perverted sexuality running through the stories. "Children's Island" is no exception.

The main character of the novel, Reine, is a 10 year old kid. He runs away from home, and meets a string of absurd characters, most of them adults. For a while, he gets a job at a kind of undertakers' firm, run by an old refugee from the Soviet Union. He gets in trouble with his mother's lover, a real bum named Stig Utler who apparently hates kids. Later, Reine joins a hypocritical, left-wing theatre company, who talk a lot about "solidarity" and "anti-fascism" while actually being fiercely competitive. Reine also encounters a strange subculture known as "raggare", often seen as menacing when the novel was written (today, they are usually considered harmless and quite cool). The "raggare" are criminal and cultish, vandalize an amusement park and carry out a strange ritual during which they demolish Reine's bike. Reine then meets a bald-headed young woman and her old lover, who turns out to be crazy, and attempts to torture Reine in a gynaecologists' chair! During the final part of the story, our childhood hero meets a group of criminal boys at a boat in the Baltic Sea. They consider the clean-cut Reine to be "upper class" and steals his toy monkey (he eventually gets it back).

As for Reine himself, he is obsessed with perverse sexuality and frequently delusional. His private thoughts are more like those of a disturbed teenager or adult than those of a child. Reine comes across as a quite unsympathetic character, a kind of petty little sociopath who hates his parents, wants to become world dictator and believes that he is the only person in the universe. He is convinced that UN Secretary General Dag Hammarskjold is his real father. Despite being so young, Reine is also quite street smart and something of a survival artist. And no, he's definitely not upper class!

"Children's Island" was first published in 1976. The plot is set in Stockholm, the capital of Sweden, during the summer of 1975. When I re-read the novel this week, I was struck by the fact that many places described in the novel still look exactly the same, 35 years later! Sweden seems to have been caught in a time warp. Does nothing ever change around here? Despite the absurd character of much of the storyline, "Children's Island" nevertheless gives a very realistic impression (at least to Swedish readers). I haven't bothered checking all of the places, but I know that the flower shop mentioned in the novel still exists (or at least there is a flower shop at exactly the same spot). Incidentally, Children's Island is also a real place, although not an actual island. It's a summer camp area north of Stockholm. (Poor Reine never reaches it.)

I'm not sure what the point of "Children's Island" really is. Is Reine Jersild's alter ego? Is he a symbol of wayward children? Is the story a critique of adult-children relationships in the post-Woodstock West? The novel ends with Reine apparently going back to school and his grey, everyday existence, making you wonder whether his odyssey through Stockholm was some kind of dream.

Honestly, I didn't get this one. But then, Jersild's other oeuvres are even stranger!

Stay tuned...
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This book covers the whole of Bergman's production, but concentrates in particular on close analyses of five of his major films: Smiles of a Summer Night, The Seventh Seal, The Silence, Persona, and Cries and Whispers. In addition to bringing post-modernist theoretical strategies to bear on the films, it offers a clear, current, pluralist feminist perspective. ... Read more

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In Lucie, written in 1888, shortly before Skram was incarcerated in an asylum for being out of her mind,"" she tells the story of a fallen woman, a dancing girl from Tivoli who is the mistress of the respectable bourgeois Theodor. He is so captivated by her that he charms and marries her and tries to turn her into a respectable woman. However, her lower-class origin and sexual experience creates an unbridgeable gulf between her and the other wives. Theodor's increasingly brutal attempts to quell her independent spirit push her into actions that lead by inevitable steps toward tragedy. The novel is set in Norway's capital city of Kristiania and Skram has an acute eye for detail and her realistic descriptions of degrading poverty call to mind the writings of her contemporary, Emile Zola.""A vividly detailed, subtly accusatory study of the catastrphic pairing of two irreconcilable opposites.""Kirkus Reviews ... Read more

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Comprehensive and Readable
This is one of the entries in the History of Scandinavian Literatures series which were, I believe, all published in the late 1990's.

Well-written and comprehensive, this can serve as a reference book or be consumed for its narrative content. I'm impressed by the breadth and depth on display here: 877 pp with a 70 p bibliography, a 43 p index, maps, and a glossary of Finnish and Swedish place names.

As far as approach goes, here's some dustjacket blurbage...

This book "covers both literary traditions [Finnish and Swedish] in detail. The volume's first section, on Finnish-language literature, consists of a series of connected chapters by leading authorities within the field. It opens with a consideration of the folk literature in Finnish that flourished during the Middle Ages and then examines the more recent history of Finnish-language literature, with special emphasis placed on writings from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."

"The second part of the book provides an examination of Finland's Swedish-language literature from the late fifteenth century through the early nineteenth century. Subsequent chapters trace developments in Finland's Swedish-language literature during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries."

"A survey of children's literature--from both the Finnish- and Swedish-language traditions--concludes this exceptionally thorough volume."

TABLE OF CONTENTS HIGHLIGHTS
Finnish Oral Poetry, Kalevala and Kanteletar (Michael Branch)
New Beginnings Latin and Finnish (Kai Laitinen and George C. Schoolfield)
The Rise of Finnish-Language Literature (Kai Laitinen)
The Period of Independence (Markku Envall)
A Part of Sweden (George C. Schoolfield)
National Romanticism -- A Golden Age (George C. Schoolfield)
A Sense of Minority (George C. Schoolfield)
The Age of Modernism (George C. Schoolfield)
A Startling Growth (George C. Schoolfield)
Children's Literature (Maija Lehtonen) ... Read more

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Bergman (1883-1931) is widely regarded as one of the foremost Swedish novelists of the twentieth century. Memoirs of a Dead Man follows the efforts of Jan Arnberg to escape the curse that has bound the fate of his family to that of the Arnfelts for generations. The earlier efforts of Jan's father to break free by moving to America foundered in a parody of consumer society and advertising slogans. Jan's own story culminates when he has to flee a small-town scandal in Sweden and ends up in a symbolic kingdom of death in Hamburg, where the family curse is played out once more, and where he comes to realize that abdication from free will is his only option. ... Read more

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The significant developments as trends in Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish literature are outlined and characterized in this history of Old Norse to modern Scandinavian writing. ... Read more

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"A heroic undertaking, this extremely useful encyclopedia covers the literatures of all five Nordic countries as well as Faroese, Inuit, and Sami. . . . is especially valuable in that it brings to light the sophistication and richness of literature in Finland and Iceland . . . highly recommended." Library Journal ... Read more

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A Master at Child Psychological Insight
Although nothing can compare to the original Danish (Historien om Børge), even in this English translation, H. C. Branner's The Story of Børge remains a tour de force of psychological awareness. Rich with Branner'smetaphoric prose and deceptively elliptical writing, the novel traces youngBørge's self-discovery through his father's illness and death, a stint withaging relatives, his return to his mother and an ultimate epiphany (for us,the readers) about destiny. Through a number of haunting short stories andsome excellent novels, H. C. Branner disclosed an uncanny understanding ofhuman frailty in all ages and sexes. Branner's prose is oftenexpressionistic in a truly visual sense, moving the subjective to theforefront. Mostly, however, this is simply a masterwork of child/adultpoint of view, with Branner's narrator walking that thin and precariousline between childhood discovery and adult reflection. Had more ofBranner's work been translated, he would have become world famous. ... Read more