2025 began
as a limbo. In January I was unemployed and without immediate prospects, but
with several obligations to which I had committed myself when I still received
a regular salary. As a consequence, although I theoretically should have plenty
of time to devote to reading, the many duties that demanded my attention, the
many things I had to prepare, and unexpected demands that came along the way,
all combined to leave less time for doing the kind of reading I had hoped to
do. My pace throughout the year became choppy, and I was unable to follow the
parameters that ordinarily guide my literary forays within the calendar year.
However, 2025 also afforded me several opportunities for travel, and many of
the books I read this year were consumed en route to somewhere.
Travelling
by page
Every year,
I try to explore more of the world through the pages of its myriad literatures.
As a bare minimum, I aim to read one book from every country in the world –
including Palestine – and I have been chipping away at this goal since I began
the project in 2017, inspired by the excellent work of journalist and author
Ann Morgan.
In previous
years, I have made good use of my access to university libraries and their
inter-library loan systems, and although a similar system exists for public
libraries in Norway, this year’s limited access to the holdings of universities
with departments dedicated to the languages and literatures of other parts of
the globe meant that I had to rely on my own reserves. Over the past two
decades, I have accumulated a decent personal library with items for future
reading, some of which are intended to help in my ongoing quest of travelling
by page. However, since I did not know for how long I would remain unemployed,
I decided to buy a couple of new books to ensure that I would still be able to
keep travelling for a while.
The first
book I finished was A girl called Eel by Ali Zamir, translated by Aneesa
Abbas Higgins. This novel is an exploration of society and gender roles in the
Comoros, and provided an interesting and heartbreaking window into a country
about which I know very little, and whose literature is not extensively
available to non-francophone readers.
New
places for reading
Aside from
travelling by page, I also did a lot of physical travel, partly thanks to some
plans that had been laid the year before, and partly thanks to a surprise
short-term employment that brought me out of my village on several journeys. As
a consequence, I was able to find several new places for reading this year,
too. For instance, a three-week journey that included Hamburg, Bergen, Oslo,
Madrid, and Salamanca in late March and early April meant that I could seek out
several places in which to sit down and quietly peruse what I was carrying with
me for that specific purpose. In a Latin American restaurant in Hamburg, for
instance, I followed C. S. Lewis’ imagined Martian landscape in Out of the
Silent Planet, while I was reading up on the cult of saints in medieval
Italy and medieval England in the bars of Salamanca and of Madrid respectively.
In the
summer, I took another boat for a ride, this time on the fjord, and went ashore
on a small promontory. This journey was eventful, as I hope to explain in a
later blogpost, but for the present purpose the main point is that I also
brought with me a book to read. Strictly speaking, the promontory itself was
not a new place for reading, as I had been here before, but this time the
oppressive sun drove me and my youngest sister’s dog into the refuge of some
shady foliage, and after a refreshing swim I lay down to read Old Norse
chivalric romances translated into modern Norwegian.
Reading
by lists
Each year,
I steer my reading in accordance with several lists. Aside from the ongoing
attempt to read a book from every country, I also aim to read at least three
books in four categories: a) academic books; b) books by Norwegian authors; c)
books by Nobel laureates in literature; and d) books from a reading-list I put
together during my first year at university.
Due to the
pace of this year’s reading – dominated in large part by editorial tasks that
tired my brain too much for reading as much as I would have liked – I was
unable to complete this particular goal. However, some headway was gained in
each of the categories.
The year started auspiciously with the completion of the Norwegian translation of Cantar de mio Cid, translated by Eva M. Lorenzen as Diktet om min Cid, which I bought during my BA studies and have been meaning to read for years. This was, however, the only book from my old to-read list which I was able to complete.
When it
came to academic books, I was much more fortunate, and I feel greatly enriched
by the various titles I managed to read as I was doing research for various
articles and mini-projects. For instance, Niamh Wycherley’s The Cult of
Relics in Early Medieval Ireland was a particularly interesting foray into
a part of medieval Latin Christendom that I keep feeling I should know more
about, and this book was a joy to read. I was also happy to finally get an
opportunity to read Audun Dybdahl’s monograph on the runic calendars of Norway
and Sweden, Primstaven i lys av helgenkulten (runic calendars in light
of the cult of saints). I was glad to be able to prioritise this book both
because it is an interesting topic on a source type that bridges the medieval
storyworld with the early modern one, but also because Dybdahl was one of my
lecturers at university. As he passed five years ago, it felt like a fitting if
belated tribute to his work.
Dybdahl’s
monograph also ticked the box for a third category, namely books by Norwegian
authors. For much of my life, I have prioritised non-Norwegian authors, and as
a consequence I feel I do not know the literature of my primary homeland as
much as I ought to do. The upside of this neglect is that I now have an excuse
to roam widely within the vast flora that is Norwegian literary history. To
this category, I also added Olav Bø’s short monograph on Norwegian feast-days, Norske
årshøgtider, which examines traditions and superstitions that have survived
in some form or other since the Middle Ages. A third example from this category
is Johannes Heggland’s Folket i dei kvite båtane (The people in the
white boats) from 1962, which is a children’s book set in early Bronze Age
Norway, and which aimed to bring a distant part of the Norwegian past to life
to young children based on archaeological findings available at the time.
Binging
sagas
Towards the
end of October, I picked up pace in my reading thanks to an earlier discovery
that a five-volume set of translations of Icelandic sagas into Norwegian has
been made available online. Ordinarily, I do not like reading on a screen – and
the fact that I have done so quite often this year is partly why my sense of my
own reading is rather muddled. However, at the end of October, this particular
medium suited me very well as I was travelling and had not brought enough books
sufficiently small to make for suitable travel reading. Additionally, a lot of
the sagas are rather short, so at a point when I was feeling hopelessly behind
in my annual reading, these tales were perfect for catching up and I devoured
fifteen in the course of two months, with a handful others having been finished
in the course of spring and summer. This became a veritable binge, both because
I read so many of them in such a short time, but also because I eventually
could not keep track of all the plots and all the characters once I had
finished a given saga, partly because of the speed but also because several of
the plots of the sagas share many of the same features, and because there are
numerous characters in them. Despite the overindulgence, it was also very
satisfying because as a medievalist I have been in arrears with my saga reading
for years, and it has been immensely rewarding to finally fill so many of these
gaps.
Science
and fiction
Another theme that emerged for this year’s reading was science fiction. This is another genre where I feel I have a lot of catching-up to do, but I have done so rather circuitously. Out of the Silent Planet and Perelandra by C. S. Lewis are unsurprising contributions to this theme, seeing as they are classics, albeit not necessarily widely famous in the current age. A more unconventional choice was the 1945 Norwegian novel Atomene spiller (the atoms are playing) by Hans Christian Sandbeck, which describes the world of the year 2250, and which evolves into a meditation on the perennial nature of human violence. What fascinates me the most about this novel is that it was one of the first books to be published after the liberation of Norway on May 8, in a time of general shortage. Moreover, it provides a reflection on the horrors of nuclear warfare at a remarkably early date, seeing as it was published only a few months after the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
A
meeting in Salamanca
In March, I
spent a few days in Salamanca for a conference. This is one of my favourite
cities, and an important literary location. Aside from being the setting of Lazarillo
de Tormes, typically regarded as the first picaresque novel, it is also the
workplace of one of my favourite poets, Maribel Andrés Llamero. I have been in
touch with Maribel for several years, and this year we were finally able to
meet up in person. She kindly signed my copy of her previous poetry collection
– Los inútiles (the useless ones) – which had bought the year before in
Santiago de Compostela. As an homage to Maribel, I subsequently crossed the
river Tormes – which I had never got around to do during my previous trips to
Salamanca – and stopped halfway to read some of her poems with the city’s
skyline as a backdrop. As Maribel’s poems have enabled me to connect more
deeply with my native landscapes for several years, it was a particular joy to
also weave my own history of reading more tightly to the city of Salamanca
through her work.
Sundry
highlights
Returning
to the University Library of Southern Denmark to work on a fifteenth-century
collection of saints’ legends.
Receiving
the editor and contributor copy of the volume Royal Blood.
Related blogposts (2025)
Synchronicities of reading, part 1
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