Ulf Eriksson, poet and prose writer from Stockholm, Anna Harrison, translator from Lithuanian and Polish to Swedish, Mikael Nydahl, Swedish publisher of “Ariel” förlag, Carina Nynäs, Finnish-Swedish poet from Åbo, Liana Ruokytė, Lithuanian cultural attaché in Stockholm and Copenhagen, and Casper Udmark, poet from Copenhagen, gathered for a workshop in the year 2000, organised by the Baltic Centre for Writers and Translators in Visby, in order to translate Sigitas Geda’s poems together with the poet himself (according to the model of the Royaumont Foundation).

The translations are a result of this common effort, they continued after the workshop and led to the publication of a Swedish selection of Geda’s poems in 2001.

Mauritz Nylund was born on February 12, 1925 in Helsinki and died in 2012. He was a Finnish poet, critic and translator. He has published collections of poetry in both Swedish and Finnish.
Nylund studied political science and humanities at the University of Helsinki. He has worked as a teacher in Finnish at Svenska Lyceum in Helsinki, as an editor for advertisements and as culture secretary for Swedish speaking writers' Författarcentrum. Nylund has also translated and edited anthologies, especially of Finnish poetry.

Born on 30 May, 1937 in Helsinki, Claes Andersson currently lives in Espoo. Andersson is a Finland-Swedish writer and translator, doctor, specialized in psychiatry, politician and jazz pianist. His writing career began in 1962 with the poetry collection “Ventil”. Altogether, his work consists of more than twenty poetry collections, radio and screen plays. His social criticism also shows in his political career, from 1987 to 1999 and 2007 to 2008 he sat in the Finnish parliament, first for the Democratic Union of Finnish people and then for the Left Alliance, whose spokesman he was from 1990 to 1998. From 1995 to 1999, he has been Minister of Culture of Finland. Claes Andersson died on 24 July, 2019.
Professor of Russian at the Åbo Akademi University and associate professor of Slavic languages at Stockholm University. Received a PhD in 1979 for a dissertation on Russian modernist poet Velimir Chlebnikov. Has written about the prose of Zamyatin and Babel (the skaz-problem) and the poetry of Pasternak, Tsvetaeva, Akhmatova. Is particularly interested in Russian folklore and the recasting of folk culture in the literature.
Translations from Russian (since 1977) and Serbian (since 1985). Translation awards in Sweden: 1988 from Samfundet De Nio (the literary society “The Nine” – 9 distinguished poets, writers, translators); 1995 from the Foundation Natur och Kultur, the Swedish Academy.

 

 

 

Holger Nohrström (March 10, 1885 Suonenjoki - November 12, 1939) was a Finnish librarian and literary translator. He worked at the Helsinki University Library as a curator and later as a librarian. He was also a literary critic for “Hufvudstadsbladet” and chief editor for “Finsk Tidskrift”.
Nohrström translated several Finnish authors into Swedish, among others Juhani Aho, Johannes Linnankoski, Maila Talvio, V. A. Koskenniemi, Larin-Kyösti and Helmi Setälä.

 

Tove Jansson is best known as the creator of the Moomins, a family of trolls first presented in Småtrollen och den stora översvämningen, 1945 (The Moomins and the Great Flood, tr. 2005). Further Moomin stories – books and comic strips – were to make her Finland’s most widely read author abroad. Jansson was a multi-talented Finland-Swedish artist, writer for children and adults, illustrator, painter, muralist, dramatist and song-writer. The Hans Christian Andersen gold medal (1966) and the Selma Lagerlöf prize (1992) are two of her awards. Japanese and Polish Moomin animations have been aired on television worldwide.