Published: 02 June 2026

First of all we would like to acknowledge the passing of Clas Zilliacus, a dear friend:

On the Death of Clas Zilliacus (26 May 1943 – 2 May 2026):

Since the early 1980s Clas Zilliacus and I worked closely together as friends, having met in Straelen at the biannual editorial conference of the annual Trajekt, published jointly by Otava Publishers and the Stuttgart house Klett-Cotta. There Clas Zilliacus also served in an advisory capacity for the anthology of modern poetry from Northern, Eastern and Southern Europe covering the period 1910–1930, which appeared in 1992 in Switzerland under the title Auf der Karte Europas ein Fleck (A Spot on the Map of Europe).

For the German-speaking world, Clas Zilliacus was an immensely important mediator of Finnish-Swedish literature: among other things he paved the way for the five-volume bilingual edition of the avant-garde in 2014, featuring works by Edith Södergran, Gunnar Björling, Elmer Diktonius, Rabbe Enckell and Henry Parland.

From the very beginning of the virtual Baltic Sea Library, which presents the literatures of the region by language rather than by nation, in autumn 2008, Clas Zilliacus served as editor for Swedish literature. His first suggestions for content, after careful reflection, were accordingly texts from both Sweden and Finland: by Tove Jansson, Selma Lagerlöf and Tomas Tranströmer.

We are deeply grateful to Clas Zilliacus for everything he accomplished as a bridge between our cultures. We remain committed to his legacy, and will remember him as a warm-hearted friend.

— Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke

Clas Zilliacus has contributed a great deal in the BSL, including:

The Gnarled-Pine People: Humility as nobility in Finland-Swedish Letters (Essay)

Der knorrige Stamm. Demut als Edelmut in der finnlandschwedischen Literatur (Essay)

Den finska romanens vida rum. Om Volter Kilpis "Alastalon salissa" (Essay)

Jaan Kross som språkkonstnär (Essay)

Jaan Kross kui keelekunstnik (Essay)

Writ in Water. Reading Die Ostsee (Essay)

In Wasser geschrieben. Beim Lesen von "Die Ostsee" (Essay)

In other news, we have added the following texts and translations:

• Fontane, Effi Briest now also in Norwegian
• Thomas Mann, Wüste Küste (Vortrag): German 
• Thomas Mann, Tonio Kröger (short story): German
• Thomas Mann, Buddenbrooks (3 chapters) in German, Swedish, Norwegian and Danish
• Ferdinand Gregorovius, Idyllen vom Baltischen Ufer, 1856 (soon with a new commentary by Hans Peter Neureuter)
• Enel Melberg, Separator. Norwegian and Swedish
• Ishbel Szatrawska, Toń  / Die Tiefe. Polish and German 

As well as the following essays:

• Adolf Molnar, Bericht einer Flucht 1938/39 (in German, on his flight from Vienna and exile in Finland)
• Per Qvale, Om at omsette Tucholsky (Norwegian)
• Lida Starodubtseva, Ingermanländare (Swedish)

We will also soon publish: 

• Henrik Othman, Min morfar kolchosbonden. Om Ingermanland (in Swedish)

Furthermore, We now have biographies for the following authors/contributors:

• Åsmund Forfang, bio + photo © Studio G., Orkanger
• Kirsi Kunnas, bio + photo © Joni Pyysalo 
• Ilona Nykyri, bio + photo © Nuppu Nykyri
• Lida Starodubtseva, bio + photo © private 
• Andreas Volk, bio + photo © Pawel Mazur

For the admission of rights we have been co-operating with the following publishing houses:

Bonniers Stockholm, 
Gyldendal Oslo, 
Gyldendal Copenhagen,
Samlaget Oslo, 
Voland & Qvist Berlin & Leipzig, 
WSOY Helsinki, 
Wydawnictwo Cyranka Warsaw.

Thanks to all of them!

Published: 08 January 2026

For the new year the BSL is planning a workshop for young translators (from German into the various languages of the Baltic Sea region) to be held at Litorina Folk High School in Karlskrona, Sweden.

We are happy to announce our publication of a selection of works by Thomas Mann: two chapters from his Buddenbrooks, his novella Tonio Kröger and the lecture on his summer resort in Nidden, "Wüste Küste" (1931).

We are also working on two texts about the former Russian province of Ingria near St. Petersburg, one by Henrik Othman and another, written especially for the BSL, by Lida Starodubtseva.

One of our translators, Fiona Graham, was recently honoured by the Modern Language Association:
“Fiona Graham, a literary translator based in Wezembeek-Oppem, Belgium, is receiving an honorable mention for her translation of Elin Anna Labba’s The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow: The Forced Displacement of the Northern Sámi, published by the University of Minnesota Press.”

The first chapter of The Rocks Will Echo Our Sorrow was originally published by the BSL (with a slightly different title) .

In other news, we congratulate Karl Schlögel for receiving the Friedenspreis des Deutschen Buchhandels 2025! We are thrilled to publish his essay "Unser Atlantis, unser Pompeji" in the coming weeks.

Aino Kallas' Reigin pappi (The Rector of Reigi), a spooky novel from the Estonian island of Hiiumaa, is now available, even in Swedish.

We are preparing publications of Idyllen vom Baltischen Ufer by Ferdinand Gregorovius, originally published in 1856, and Bericht einer Flucht 1938/39 by Adolf Molnar.

For more on this, read Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke’s Hedersleben-Lecture on the literature of the Baltic States.

We wish you all the best for 2026!

The BSL team

Happy New Year with this yule goat from the Estonian island of Muhu

Published: 04 August 2025

In the first half of 2025 we published the following texts:

Martin Andersen Nexø, Pelle Erobreren. Novel extract. In Danish original, English and German translation

Martin Andersen Nexø, Lotterisvensken. Short story. In Danish original and German translation by the author

Manfred Peter Hein (1931-2025), Die Vertriebenen. Poem. Swedish translation by Britta Klockars 

Osip Mandelstam, ФИНЛЯНДИЯ (Finlandija). Prose text from 1912.

Osip Mandelstam, Над алтарем дымящихся зыбей. Poem (1910)

Bengt Pohjanen, Faravidin maa. Novel extract. Swedish translation by the author: Faravids rike - Kvänland

Ulrich Freiherr von Schlippenbach, Malerische Wanderungen durch Kurland. Travelogue. English translation by Lucas Shiller (Picturesque Journeys through Courland: The Village of Ģipka in Dundaga, Journey to Domesnes [Kolka], the Lighthouse there, the Beach, noteworthy Shipwrecks, The Heroic Feats of Sexton Fritz, the Village of Irbene in Dundaga)

Johann Gottfried Seume, Mein Sommer 1805. English translation from 1807: A Tour through a Part of Germany, Poland etc. Comment by Suvi Valli

Edith Södergran, Förhoppning. Poem. Russian translation by Natalya Tolstaya

We have edited the biographies of:

Werner Bergengruen

Max Fürst

Markus Huss

Andrejs Irbe

Osip Mandelstam

Johann Gottfried Seume

And we have added new essays by:

Markus Huss (1981-2024), Spöket på Gripsholms slott. Språkkonstnären och språkkritikern Kurt Tucholsky

Evelyn Juers, Baltic Blues. And Other Colours (from Sydney Review of Books).With photos by Antanas Sutkus © Galerie Susanne Albrecht, Berlin

Finally, we are excited to announce that we have begun cooperation with the Folk High School Litorina in Karlskrona, Blekinge, Sweden and are looking forward to a translators’ conference there in 2026.

Wishing you all the best

The Baltic Sea Library team

If you could support us:

Forum Mare Balticum e.V.

IBAN: DE33 8306 5408 0004 0072 98

[Deutsche Skatbank VR-Bank Altenburger Land, Schmölln: BIC GENO DEF1 SLR]

April 30th. Själsö, Gotland

Published: 15 December 2024

During this year we have included the following texts in our library:

Gunnar Ekelöf, En vallfart – 1938. Finnish translation by Caj Westerberg

Alexander Bestuzhev, Poezdka v Revel. Estonian translation by Voldemar Miller

August Thieme, Finnland (1808). Finnish translation by Teivas Oksala, English translation by Ritchie Robertson, Swedish translation by Lars and Mats Huldén, Russian translation by Mikhail Kostolomov

Anna Rydstedt, Hästen. Finnish translation by Christian Råbergh

Johann Gotfried Seume, Mein Sommer 1805. German original and Finnish translation by Suvi Valli

Ulrich Freiherr von Schlippenbach, Malerische Wanderungen durch Kurland. German original and Latvian trasnslation by Agris Dzenis

Manfred Peter Hein, Die Vertriebenen. Icelandic translation by Gauti Kristmannsson and Polish translation by Przemysław Chojnowski

Manfred Peter Hein, Ozersk. Icelandic translation by Gauti Kristmannsson and Polish translation by Przemysław Chojnowski

Matthias Alexander Castrén, Reseminnen (Resa till Lappland år 1838). Finnish translation by Aulis J. Joki and new Russian translation by Julia Kolesova

Hermann Sudermann, Das Bilderbuch meiner Jugend. Lithuanian translation by Jūratė Gusevienė  

A new audio file:

Jan Erik Vold reading Tomas Tranströmer, Östersjöar in Norwegian. Recording by Susanne Skog, EMS Stockholm

And we have included new essays by:

Max Egremont, East Prussia's Whispering Past (from: Forgotten land)

Cornelia Jentzsch, Diese unerklärliche Stille. Jon Fosses Dichtung

Günter Karl Bose, Franz Kafka im Ostseebad Mütitz [1923]

Karl Schlögel, Unser Atlantis, unser Pompeji (to be released next year)

Wishing you all the best for the year to come!

The Baltic Sea Library team

If you could support us:

Forum Mare Balticum e.V.

IBAN: DE33 8306 5408 0004 0072 98

[Deutsche Skatbank VR-Bank Altenburger Land, Schmölln: BIC GENO DEF1 SLR]

Published: 15 December 2023

During the second half of this year we have been able to include our library the following:

New texts by Carl Michael Bellman, Tjenare Mollberg, hur är det fatt? (Swedish, Finnish translated by Carl Axel Gottlund, German translated by Felix Niedner)

Gunnar Ekelöf, En vallfart - 1938 (Swedish, commented by John Swedenmark. The Finnish translation by Caj Westerberg will follow soon)

Max Fürst, Gefilte Fisch. Eine Jugend in Königsberg (German) © Birute Stern, Jerusalem

Ludwig Passarge, Eine Wanderung auf der Kurischen Nehrung im Jahre 1868 (German)

Lennart Sjögren, Fågeljägarna / The Bird-Hunters (Swedish, English translated by Robin Fulton Macpherson)

Aino Kallas, Lasnamäen valkea laiva (Estonian, translated by Friedebert Tuglas)

Volter Kilpi, Alastalon salissa / Die Albatros (German, translated by Gabriele Schrey-Vasara)

We are looking for translators of the poem Hästen by Anna Rydstedt and we are trying to solve the copyright issue for the late translators of Thieme's poem sequence Finnland: Teivas Oksala and Lars and Mats Huldén.

We have improved the readability of our essay section and established new essays by:

Sigrid Damm, Vögel, die verkünden Land. Das Leben des Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz

Eduard Müller, Die Fotografie hinter Johannes Bobrowskis Gedicht 'Bericht'

Wishing you all the best for the year to come!

The Baltic Sea Library team

Photo: Hanna Sjöberg, Gotland

Published: 24 December 2022

Dear friends and colleagues,

at the end of this saddening year with all its sufferings and threats close to our Baltic Sea region we wish to thank you all for your contributions and the interest and generosity you have shown during the years – and it is now 13 years since we started our virtual library - and to send you our season's greetings and best wishes for a hopefully lighter new year in 2023.

Yours,

Klaus-Jürgen Liedtke
chairman of Forum Mare Balticum e.V.
(grateful for your support in any way)