Would anyone be able to recommend some good Norwegian literature? Whole family is from Norway...

Would anyone be able to recommend some good Norwegian literature? Whole family is from Norway, but I've never seen or heard of good literature or authors from there.

I'm fluent, so translated versions aren't necessary

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en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_(Hamsun_novel)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alf_Proysen
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Ibsen and Hamsun, m8.

Strindberg too, but he is Swedish. Still, isn't Norwegian very close to Swedish as a language? I remember one of my Norwegian friends tell me that they could understand Swedish almost perfectly.

This book is based

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_(Hamsun_novel)

Great book.

“Wasn’t Pan sitting in a tree watching to see how I would comport myself? Wasn’t his belly open, and wasn’t he hunched over so that he seemed to be drinking from his own belly? But all this he did only so he could cock his eye and watch me, and the whole tree shook from his silent laughter when he saw that my thoughts were running away with me.”
― Knut Hamsun, Pan

German and Norwegian are kind of similar, so I recommend Goethe. Actually, English and German aren't too far off, so check out Shakespeare as well, and David Foster Wallace.

They are essentially the same, so a Swedish author wouldn't be difficult.

Any suggestions for Ibsen? It seems he has plenty of works

Knausgard
Not memeing

Peer Gynt is by far the best

Or something more recent? "Film had become easier to talk about than the weather."

Not that user, but I recently read 11 plays of Ibsen, didn't much care for the works he is most praised for as a prose realist (A Doll's House and An Enemy of the People I actively disliked) but Peer Gynt is seriously one of the funniest, most tragic and most fascinating plays I have ever read. I don't know if I feel that way because I had no expectations going in, but yeah, recommend it for sure.

As far as the realist plays go, the ones I thought were actually impressive, and didn't descend into childish didacticism at the end were The Master Builder, Rosmersholm, Hedda Gabler and to some extent, The Wild Duck. But really, Ibsen is central to the western canon, so even if you don't care for his content and style you can be assured you're reading something that was influential and has stuck around.

The Norton Critical Edition of 5 Ibsen plays is a great place to start.

Thanks for the insight. I enjoy reading plays quite a bit, so I will give it a look

check out Stig Sæterbakken. he is pretty edgy.

Par Lagerkvist is Swedish, but my understanding is that Norwegians can read Swedish almost fluently. The Dwarf is an extremely interesting look at evil.

THE ICE PALACE

SNOW AND LOLIS

I read a bunch of Ibsen and did a lot of work in the Scand. department at my school. Norwegian, Danish and Swedish are all quite similar, and could all be spoken and written without toooooo much difficulty by someone familiar with the languages.

Anyway, my favorite Ibsen is probably Hedda Gabler and Ghosts(Gengare in Norwegian).

Knut Hamsun is another great Norwegian. His most famous work is Hunger, it is short and semi-autobiographical. If you like Dostoevsky you may enjoy it. Pan is my favorite, but I enjoyed Growth of the Soil and Mysteries as well.

If you're dipping into Swedes I would recommend Strindberg's Miss Julie, or if you're into weird shit A Dream Play.

Hjalmer Soderberg is another good Swede, and there's a good translation of his novella Doktor Glas out there.

Selma Lagorlov does some good Children's lit and stories as well.

What Norwegian book would be good for a girl? I get her books I think she might be interested in and she reads them. Last book I got her was the saga of Harald Hardrade because when she was younger she read a fictional book on his life and enjoyed it. Her family is from Norway so she likes stuff from it.

>could all be spoken and written without too much difficulty
Not Danish, and that's just a fact. Spoken Danish differs wildly from written Danish, and spoken Danish has also changed more, I would wager, than Norwegian and Swedish over the years, cf. movies from just 20-30 years ago vs. movies today, or compare older Danish news broadcasts with news ones because they talk ridiculously fast now, like to the point where some older members of my family claim they need subtitles like in Japan. Couple this with the fact that spoken Danish was already highly alliterative you'll have great difficulties knowing where one word ends and the next picks up. Furthermore, whereas with Norwegian and Swedish you actually have to use some of the muscles in your mouth, most Danish words can be spoken kind of from the back of your tongue while barely moving the lips or anything else.
Lastly, it's also not as homogeneous as you'd expext as there are at least two competing regiolects, Western and Eastern.

The only Norwegian book I've read is Naive super, it was alright.

Lars Saabye Christensen was pretty enjoyable imo.

Garborg is cool to, in the vein of Hamsun.

Norwegian Wood.

Hah.

If you want good contemporary authors you can try Dag Solstad or Ingvar Ambjornsen (and Knausgård ofc, not memeing; he's great).

For older ones you can't go wrong with Bjorneboe. And the classics: Hamsun, Kielland, Lie, Ibsen, Bjornson...

I'll also recommend Sigrid Undset, I've only read Jenny but it was very good.

Knausgaard, innit?

Novelists: Knut Hamsun, Sigurd Hoel, Rune Christiansen, Tarjei Vesaas
Plays: Henrik Ibsen
Poetry: A.O. Vinje, Olav H. Hauge, Per Sivle, Sigbjorn Obstfelder, Stein Mehren

Sophie's World(Sofies Verden). It's a great book.

Kristin Lavransdatter

Ole robert sunde, greatest contemporary writer today imo, his greatest influences are james joyce and marcel proust. you should check him out.

He seems like a dick irl tho. Where should one start with him?

Den boka suger hardt

Read Moomin in its original Swedish.

Ahh, I stand corrected then. I had seen written Danish and figured it wouldn't be too far off base. Has Danish seen the same level of official reform as Swedish? I want to say around 1900 they standardized Swedish and got rid of a lot of the more pointless and arbitrary difficulties in picking up the language, such as conjugating the word 'not' to be neuter/gendered etc.

Lol

What is so funny about Moomin?

Kjell Askildsen, Thomas Espedal, Jens Bjorneboe and Thure Erik Lund

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alf_Proysen

No they're not.

Dane here. Don't really agree with that statement. Spoken danish doesn't really differ from written danish, but the intonation when spoken certainly differs from the other scandinavian languages. Danish has more of a german ring to it. That spoken danish has evolved into some incomprehensible gibberish for elder people I think is not quite accurate. I have never ever heard someone complain about it, and I have grandparents too y'know?

Written norwegian, swedish and danish are very similar though. Swedish is maybe the odd one out, if any.

>Spoken danish doesn't really differ from written danish

Norwegian here, you're a goddamn liar.

Danish, as a Scandinavian language, is the LEAST true to its written form. That's what happens when you try to pronounce everything from the throat/etc.

Norwegian, by contrast, is most true to the written form.

I think the memery about danish being 'spoken from the throat/with a potato in your mouth' is untrue. You might say that danish differs when spoken when compared to the other scandinavian languages in that the intonation and pronounciation is DIFFERENT, involving softening of certain consonants, glottal stops and flattening of endings. But this is not because of 'laziness' with regard to being congruent with the written form. Danish pronounciation follows very apparent patterns of regularity.

This is why I say that the pronounciation differs from norwegian/swedish, but it does not differ wildly from its written form. The pronounciation and intonation simply follows other patterns and has another ring to it (which largely has to do with german influences) compared to the other scandi languages.

Aldri hort om an

>Tarjei Vesaas
This. The Birds was fine.

Say "Rodgrod med flode" on vocaroo, fucking potato-gobbler.

>Danes force us to adhere to their language
>We actually end up speaking/writing it better
>We actually end up remaining truer to it than they do
>Mfw

You don't have to agree. I posted slightly exaggerated facts.

You did it for free?

danes btfo will they ever recover?

never change

What are you looking for tho?

Plays:
Ibsen (realism, modernism, symbolism)
Super lyrical novels
Knut Hamsun (neo-romanticism and neo-realism)
Short stories:
Bjornstjerne Bjornson, Amalie Skram (realism and naturalism)
Poetry:
Sigborn Obstfjelder (modernism) Jan Erik Vold (imaginism, and what I think we will call "post-modernism" later, check out "Kulturuke", and you'll know I mean, the language barrier shouldn't be a problem)
Crime:
Jo Nesbo

a lot more shit to check out, a lot of it is already mentioned. You might want to check out Soren Kierkegaard as well, he is danish, but Danes, Swedes and Norwegians litterature goes hand in hand.

>They are essentially the same

[[[TRIGGERED]]]

I fucked that guy's daughter.

His book Sauermugg is excellent, though.

Are Kalvo, Kunsten å vere neger. Or any of his other books. Great stuff.