Nylund, Mauritz

Mauritz Nylund was born on February 12, 1925 in Helsinki and died in 2012. He was a Finnish poet, critic and translator. He has published collections of poetry in both Swedish and Finnish.
Nylund studied political science and humanities at the University of Helsinki. He has worked as a teacher in Finnish at Svenska Lyceum in Helsinki, as an editor for advertisements and as culture secretary for Swedish speaking writers' Författarcentrum. Nylund has also translated and edited anthologies, especially of Finnish poetry.

Andersson, Claes

Born on 30 May, 1937 in Helsinki, Claes Andersson currently lives in Espoo. Andersson is a Finland-Swedish writer and translator, doctor, specialized in psychiatry, politician and jazz pianist. His writing career began in 1962 with the poetry collection “Ventil”. Altogether, his work consists of more than twenty poetry collections, radio and screen plays. His social criticism also shows in his political career, from 1987 to 1999 and 2007 to 2008 he sat in the Finnish parliament, first for the Democratic Union of Finnish people and then for the Left Alliance, whose spokesman he was from 1990 to 1998. From 1995 to 1999, he has been Minister of Culture of Finland. Claes Andersson died on 24 July, 2019.

Lönnqvist, Barbara

Professor of Russian at the Åbo Akademi University and associate professor of Slavic languages at Stockholm University. Received a PhD in 1979 for a dissertation on Russian modernist poet Velimir Chlebnikov. Has written about the prose of Zamyatin and Babel (the skaz-problem) and the poetry of Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova. Is particularly interested in Russian folklore and the recasting of folk culture in the literature.
Translations from Russian (since 1977) and Serbian (since 1985). Translation awards in Sweden: 1988 from Samfundet De Nio (the literary society “The Nine” – 9 distinguished poets, writers, translators); 1995 from the Foundation Natur och Kultur, the Swedish Academy.

 

 

 

Nohrström, Holger

Holger Nohrström (March 10, 1885 Suonenjoki - November 12, 1939) was a Finnish librarian and literary translator. He worked at the Helsinki University Library as a curator and later as a librarian. He was also a literary critic for “Hufvudstadsbladet” and chief editor for “Finsk Tidskrift”.
Nohrström translated several Finnish authors into Swedish, among others Juhani Aho, Johannes Linnankoski, Maila Talvio, V. A. Koskenniemi, Larin-Kyösti and Helmi Setälä.

 

Jansson, Tove

Tove Jansson is best known as the creator of the Moomins, a family of trolls first presented in Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen, 1945 (The Moomins and the Great Flood, tr. 2005). Further Moomin stories – books and comic strips – were to make her Finland’s most widely read author abroad. Jansson was a multi-talented Finland-Swedish artist, writer for children and adults, illustrator, painter, muralist, dramatist and song-writer. The Hans Christian Andersen gold medal (1966) and the Selma Lagerlöf prize (1992) are two of her awards. Japanese and Polish Moomin animations have been aired on television worldwide.

Tranströmer, Tomas

Tomas Tranströmer was born in Stockholm in 1931 and died on 26th March, 2015. His father was a journalist, but after his parents divorced he saw his father rarely. Tranströmer's mother was a teacher. In his childhood Tranströmer spent many summers on the island of Runmarö, and in his poetry collection Östersjöar (1974, Baltics) and memoir Minnena ser mig (1993) he also returned to its landscape.

Before Tranströmer became interested in music and painting, he was fascinated by archaeology and natural sciences and wanted to become an explorer. Tranströmer was educated at Södra Latin School, where he started to read and write poetry. In 1956 he received a degree in psychology from the University of Stockholm. He worked for the Psychotechnological Institute at the university, and in 1960 he became a psychologist at Roxtuna, an institution for juvenile offenders.

From the mid-1960s Tranströmer divided his time between his writing and his work as a psychologist. In 1965 he moved with his family to Västerås, a city about sixty miles west of Stockholm. After suffering a stroke in 1990, which deprived him of his speech and partly inhibited movement on his right-hand side, he moved back to Stockholm.

In 1990 Tranströmer received the Neustadt International Prize for Literature. His other awards include the Bonnier Award for Poetry, Germany's Petrarch Prize, Bellman Prize, The Swedish Academy’s Nordic Prize, and August Prize. In 2011 he finally was awarded the Nobel Prize.

In 1997 the city of Västerås established a special Tranströmer Prize.