Nordlit

This year's first Nordlit is an open issue consisting of two articles. Anna Nygren's article is about how animals and animal metaphors are deployed to tell stories about a small Swedish community in Fredrik Backman's Björnstad-trilogy (2016-2021). Deleuze’s and Guattari’s theory of becoming-animal is used to see how humanity is negotiated through closeness to nature. Solveig Bollig's article explores "otherness" in two Icelandic þættir in which different cultures and religions collide. The analysis examines how Otherness is constructed, challenged, and renegotiated throughout narratives of the short form. Enjoy!

A big thank you to our contributors and peer reviewers. Nordlit will be back in the fall with a special issue.

Contributors:

Anna Nygren är doktorand i litteraturvetenskap vid Åbo Akademi, och lektor i litterär gestaltning vid Göteborgs universitet. Nygrens avhandling behandlar Monika Fagerholms roman Vem dödade bambi? Tidigare publikationer: «Hundar, kaniner, rådjur. Kollektiv och djur(metaforer) i relation till våldtäkt i Monika Fagerholms Vem dödade bambi?» i Historiska och litteraturhistoriska studier, «Viljan att bli ett med hästen: Om relationen mellan häst och flicka i Inger Frimanssons hästböcker» i AVAIN – Kirjallisuudentutkimuksen Aikakauslehti, och «JA JA JA NEJ NEJ NEJ: Autistiskt värld- och könsgörande, affirmation, negering och förhandling» i Tidskrift för Litteraturvetenskap, 53(4), 2024.

Solveig Bollig is a doctoral researcher in Nordic languages at the Department of Language Studies at Umeå University, Sweden. Her research interests are Old Norse literature and the linguistic and literary conceptualisation and representation of Otherness. In her doctoral thesis, she investigates concepts and expressions of Otherness and Othering in Norse literature, primarily the íslendingaþættir, focusing on linguistic and literary expressions and representations of changeable and everyday Otherness. Her topics of interest are normativity and Othering and Otherness of human and non-human actors in both historical and contemporary materials, as well as their expressions in socio-onomastics and prototype semantics.