winner of the 2001 Nordic literary award: Barks influence

[Lunnan & Hjort]

The annual Nordic literary award is a Big Thing, an event
of grand symbolic stature, and The Grail to strive & hope for
for the very best novelists or poets from Iceland, Finland,
Sweden, Denmark or Norway. The excitement level before
the winner is announced is high in all the right circles
(comparable in intensity to the annual 200 km Nordic
championships bicycling roadrace, for those who can remember
when this actually meant something).

This year's winner is Jan Kjærstad, the Norwegian novelist,
for his trilogy about Jonas Wergeland, "The Seducer",
"The Conqueror", and "The Discoverer". Kjærstad has been a
runner-up for the prize for several years. -- In an interview
Kjærstad rather quickly points to the influence of Carl Barks.
This is not surprising for those having read the books. The main
character Wergeland is a world traveller, and visits among
many other places Timbuktu, which he explains (in the book)
is because of the Barks stories which have Donald sent to
this African spot after particularly spectacular failures.

Kjærstad says that he needed his character to be "nomadic",
and that his inspiration for this comes from his reading the many
Barks adventure stories about Scrooge and Donald during
his childhood and youth.

Kjærstad claims to be writing "100 % conventionally and
100 % experimentally", and also hopes to be like
"a Bach with letters".

Nils Lid Hjort