Nordic Visions
The Best of Nordic Speculative Fiction
Edited by Margrét Helgadóttir
Nordic Visions: The Best of Nordic Speculative Fiction provides what it promises on the cover. I mean, I can’t say whether this is the “best” of Nordic speculative fiction, but Margrét Helgadóttir has certainly sourced some good stories here, most of them by Nordic authors who are not very well known in English. She also contributes one of the works.
The term “speculative” fiction is used broadly and the
anthology straddles various genres – sci-fi, horror, weird fiction, fabulist
fiction – to name but a few. The anthology starts off with “She” by
John Ajvide Lidqvist. Lidqvist’s brand of horror often ventures into the weird,
but here he delivers a powerful, yet fairly conventional ghost story. Indeed, “She”
is not very indicative of the rest of the fiction on offer, which rarely
conforms to traditional “horror”, and more often than not inhabits a post-apocalyptic
future of forbidding urban spaces and dangerous rural expanses. If I were to identify
what, to me, makes this a collection of “Nordic” stories – apart, obviously,
from the provenance of the featured authors – it is the way in which the landscape
itself creates a feeling of danger and dread. Some stories also reveal their “Nordic”
influence through their references to Scandinavian folklore – what comes to
mind, particularly, is 'The
Wings that Slice the Sky' by Emmi Itäranta.
The anthology includes a helpful collection of biographies of the featured authors.
This is the full list of the stories:
'She', by John Ajvide Lindqvist, translated by Marlaine Delargy.
'Lost and Found' by Maria Haskins, translated by Maria Haskins.
'Sing' by Karin Tidbeck.
'The False Fisherman' by Kaspar Colling Nielsen,
translated by Olivia Lasky.
'Heather Country' by Jakob Drud.
'The Traveller Girl' by Lene Kaarberbøl, translated by Lene Kaarberbøl.
'The Abyss' by Rakel Helmsdal, translated by Marita Thomsen.
'The Dreamgiver' by Johann Thorsson.
'Hramraborg Babylon' by Alexander Dan
Vilhjálmsson, translated
by Quentin Bates.
'As You Wish' by Tor Åge Bringsværd, translated by Olivia Lasky.
'The Cormorant' by Tone Almhjell.
'The Day Jonas Shadowed His Dad' by Thore Hansen,
translated by Olivia Lasky.
'A Lion Roars in Longyearbyen' by Margrét
Helgadóttir.
'A Bird Does Not Sing Because It Has an Answer' by
Johanna Sinisalo.
'Elegy for a Young Elk' by Hannu Rajaniemi.
'The Wings that Slice the Sky' by Emmi Itäranta,
translated by Emmi
Itäranta.
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