This year Nordic Literature Week takes place from 14 -20 November and this year's theme is “The Nature in the Nordics”. In November, when it is at its darkest in our countries, we light a candle and read a book. This is the basic idea behind Nordic Literature Week.
The Monday of the Nordic Literature Week is The Big Reading Aloud Day. The rest of the week is filled with readings, exhibitions, and other cultural experiences in thousands of institutions across the Nordic countries and other institutions interested in the Nordic countries around the world. This is what we are trying to get as many institutions as possible involved in. The relationship between nature and man is central to this year's read-aloud books.
The picture book "If you meet a bear" is a collaboration between Finnish-Swedish Malin Kivelä and Linda Bondestam with Danish Martin Glaz Serup. The book is nominated for the Nordic Council's Children and Young People’s Literature Prize 2022. The book is based on the title's question of what to do if you meet a bear, both in an educational and above all a parodic way. The book treats the issue of nature as an idyllic place where city dwellers can go out with the mushroom basket in full swing but also asks the question of how wild nature really gets to be.
This year, adult readers can enjoy the book "The Gospel of the Eels: A Father, a Son and the World's Most Enigmatic Fish" by the Swedish author Patrik Svensson. It is a book about how the eel brings a son and his father together and about how the mystery of the eel can be compared to man. It is a story about the origin, destiny, how life should be lived, and the inevitable and unmanageable death.
This year's artwork is "Revebjeller" by Norwegian painter Nikolai Astrup (1880-1928).
