Farbregd, Turid

Turid Astrid Farbregd, born Auestad in Gjesdal, Norway, in 1941. She took a grade as cand. phil. at Oslo University in 1969 and worked as Norwegian lecturer at Helsinki University 1970-1994. She held a state scholarship under the Norwegian department of culture 1995-2008 with Estonian and Finnish language and culture as working field. Co-editor of Finnish-Norwegian and Estonian-Norwegian dictionaries and of Lærebok i estisk for nordmenn. In 1984 she took the initiative for a Norwegian-Estonian Friendship Society and co-edited the annual publications Norsk-estisk kulturnytt and Estlandsnytt.

She translated from Estonian works by Jaan Kross, Viivi Luik, Mati Unt, Jaan Kaplinski, Tõnu Õnnepalu and Andrus Kivirähk, from Finnish among others Erno Paasilinna, Olli Jalonen, Sofi Oksanen, Juha Itkonen, Katja Kettu, Antti Tuomainen, Pajtim Statovci and Tommi Kinnunen.

She has received several awards: Estonia's Via Estica and the Norwegian Brageprisen 1989, the international Karel Čapek-medal 2002, the Norwegian Kritikerprisen 2013, Finnish state prize for translators 2016, Nordic Translators' prize by Letterstedtska Föreningen 2018.

Qvale, Per

Born in Oslo in 1946, Per Qvale studied Philosophy, History of ideas, and Comparative Literature in Oslo and Bergen, and held a scholarship in Philosophy in Tübingen, Germany 1973-74. Mag.art (PhD), University of Oslo 1981. He has translated about 150 books from German, English and Swedish, both fiction and non-fiction (e.g. Thomas Mann, Elias Canetti, John Fowles, Göran Tunström, Lars Gustafsson, Lars Andersson, Theodor W. Adorno, Peter Englund, John Irving, Sven Delblanc, William Shakespeare). His awards include: Letterstedtska Föreningens Nordisk Översättarpris 2013, The Norwegian Translators’ Association’s Bastian Prize 2008 and The Norwegian Book clubs Prize 2002.
As an editor he published a book on translation theory: Det umuliges kunst. Om å oversette. Oslo 1991 and as a writer a second one: Fra Hieronymus til hypertekst. Oversettelse i teori og praksis. Oslo 1998, English edition From St. Jerome to Hypertext, Manchester 2003.
Per Qvale has also been active as chairman of the Norwegian Association of Literary Translators and is a member of the chair of Det Norske Akademi for Sprog og Litteratur. 

 

Solstad, Dag

Born in Sandefjord in 1941, Dag Solstad (who died in March 2025) has widely been regarded as Norway’s most important contemporary novelist and a chronicler of his generation, whose career reflects the development of Norwegian society from the 1960s onwards. He was part of the first generation in Norway to have unrestricted access to tertiary education and, like many of his contemporaries, subsequently eschewed social democracy for a more radical politics.

In his youth he was heavily influenced by the Polish novelist and dramatist Witold Gombrowicz, whose work shaped Solstad’s theories of social role-play. While at university in the 1960s, Solstad and a number of other young writers launched the “Profil-opprøret”― the Profil rebellion―in which they used the literary journal “Profil” to champion literary modernism. In the 1970s, the “Profil generation” adopted a dogmatic leftist political stance, which Solstad later abandoned in a famous essay published in 1980.

Solstad made his literary debut in 1965 with a collection of symbolic, Kafkaesque short stories entitled “Spiraler”, but since 1969 the form that has preoccupied him is the novel. Together with fellow writer Jon Michelet, Solstad has also written five essayistic books covering five world championships in soccer.

Solstad's novels have been translated into more than 30 languages. In 1989 he received the Nordic Council's Literary Prize. Novel 11, Book 18 was nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction prize in Great Britain in 2009.

Ljosland, Knut

Knut Ljosland, born in Kristiansand 1946, studied German philology at Oslo University and worked as a secondary school teacher. He graduated with "Zur Nachbarschaft" about the poetry of Johannes Bobrowski.

In 1984 he published a volume of Bobrowski in Norwegian, ”Grannelag Sarmatien”, followed by editions of Peter Huchel (”Vegfar”), the Rumanian-German poet Anemone Latzina (”Dagboksdagar”) and Wassily Kandinsky's ”Klangar”.

Knut Ljosland is member of the Norwegian Translators' Association and has published articles on literature in magazines and newspapers.

Kittelsen, Erling

Kittelsen had his debut as a poet in 1970. He has since than published several poetry cycles and collections, as well as fables, dramatic works and translations of poetry.

He is known for his dialogues, partly with colleagues and partly in the work with the translation of poetry from distant languages in relation to the Nordic language area like Arabian, Persian, Korean, Latvian and Sumerian. He also has poetical dialogue with the most ancient poetical traditions in the Nordic Countries – the Old Norse Poetic Edda where at first he translates the old text and than presents a contemporary literary answer. Erling is known as a writer who renews language, a poet and storyteller. He is a writer who moves in untraditional ways, both with the language in his books and dramatic works and his literary activity through events and happenings. His last play has been translated and performed several times in the Middle East.

He has received several literary prices, amongst them The Aschehoug Prize (awarded on a binding recommendation by the Norwegian Critics Organization) and The Dobloug Prize (awarded by the Swedish Academy).

Vange, Arild

Arild Vange (b. 1955) is a Norwegian poet and translator. His work is concerned with finding ways of incorporating listening into the formal process of making poems and associated texts. His most recent book of poems, annerledes enn (otherwise than) (Aschehoug 2010), has been translated into German by Andrea Dobrowolski and published by Yara Edition, Graz.

Vange also works as a translator from German to Norwegian and has published books by Peter Huchel, Botho Strauss, Georg Trakl, Peter Waterhouse, Brigitte Oleschinski, Franz Kafka, Yoko Tawada, Thomas Kling and Anja Utler.