Northern Europe

Overview

The Icelandic sagas, written in the thirteenth century in prose and not in verse, tell of family quarrels with a plainness Europe would not recover until the nineteenth: they survive thanks to manuscripts the cold preserved. Ibsen's theatre changed the world stage in the 1880s, A Doll's House becoming the most performed play in the world. Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania each have their own language and a literature that developed under almost continuous foreign rule. The Icelandic manuscripts are on the Memory of the World register.

What circulates

The five Nordic countries have funded the translation of their authors for decades, which explains their presence in bookshops worldwide far beyond their demographic weight. The Baltic states had no such relay and are little translated, although their output is comparable. Nordic crime fiction alone is translated into forty languages.

Limits of this grouping

The zone puts together two distinct sets: the Nordic countries, whose languages apart from Finnish are related, and the Baltic states, two of whose languages are Baltic and one Finno-Ugric. Greenland appears as a Danish territory, although its language and literature are Inuit. Finnish does not belong to the same family as Swedish.

Works cited

• NarrativeThe Prose EddaEddaSnorri Sturluson · 1220An Icelandic handbook of poetry from the thirteenth century, which sets out Norse mythology for that purpose.Literature
• TheatreA Doll's HouseEt dukkehjemHenrik Ibsen · 1879A play in which a pampered wife, who committed a forgery to save her husband, sees her secret catch up with her.Literature
• TaleTales and Traditions of the EskimoKaladlit OkalluktualliaitHinrich Rink and Aron of Kangeq · 1859Greenlandic legends written by Greenlanders, on the first printing press of the island.Literature