In October 2017, Hartmut Mittelstädt, an Icelandic teacher at the University of Greifsvald in Germany, contacted me in the hopes of publishing one of my short stories in German. The story in question, Veggir (Walls), originally appeared in the online journal Skíðblaðnir, which was later published in its entirety in a two-volume print edition by publishing house Tunglið in February 2016—during one of their full-moon events.
Two of the Nordic Department‘s students, Claudia Nierste and Mareen Patzelt, had taken on the task of putting together the sixth volume of a journal published by the university under the title Neue Nordische Novellen (or “New Nordic Fiction”) which gathers together German translations of short stories by authors from the Nordic and Baltic countries. These translations were undertaken by the university‘s students and edited by Claudia and Mareen with assistance from the Nordic Department‘s teachers.
Naturally, I was very flattered and immediately gave them the go-ahead, but didn‘t give it much thought beyond that until now, nearly a year later, when two reading copies appeared in my mailbox here in Bay Ridge. The publication is much grander than I had suspected, and contains first translations of short fiction by twenty-three authors from eleven different countries; i.e. Faeroe Islands, Iceland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark Finland, Estonia, Russia, Poland, Ukraine and the Czech Republic. Along with myself, the collection contains writings by two other Icelandic authors: Bjargey Ólafsdóttir and Árný Stella Gunnarsdóttir.
It‘s a great honour to be involved with such an ambitious and elaborately illustrated work. The translation of my story was undertaken by Sven Thiersch and I would like to thank him as well as Mareen and Claudia for including my work in the journal, which is my first publication in German.
