From the Adjudicating Committee (! — great name . . . we don’t use the word “adjudicating” near enough in our modern vernacular):

“The Icelandic author Gyrðir Elíasson has won the Nordic Council Literature Prize 2011 for his short story collection Milli trjánna for stylistically outstanding literary art which depicts inner and outer threats in dialogue with world literature.”

Here’s a bit from of Milli trjánna:

If anyone wonders where August Strindberg ended up after his death, the answer can be found in Gyrðir Elíasson’s latest collection of short stories, Milli trjánna. Here we meet Strindberg sitting all alone in the canteen in IKEA in Iceland surrounded by shoppers stuffing themselves with Swedish meatballs and cowberry jam. The short story is called Inferno, of course! In some of the book’s other short stories the reader meets the saddened musical brothers who are burying their father, the undertaker, amongst the potatoes in his kitchen garden, another musician who discovers a blank gravestone in his boxroom and last but not least, a black dog. The characters and the surroundings have become familiar to Icelandic readers with a knowledge of the author’s previous works but will probably seem a little strange to foreign readers.

The short stories are woven into each other, and there are references to Gyrðir Elíasson’s previous writings as well as older literature, not least Nordic. From the beginning of his career Gyrðir Elíasson has built up a unique universe, a world where individual texts are reinforced by the whole that they form a part of, almost as if all his production is a colossal borderless text that grows with each new poem or tale.

It’s worth noting that in 2008, Gyrðir Elíasson’s Stone Tree was translated from the Icelandic by Victoria Cribb and

And for more info on Icelandic Literature, be sure to check out a special website that was created to promote Icelandic lit and culture before the 2011 Frankfurt Book Fair, where Iceland will reign supreme as the Guest of Honor.

Denmark
Peter Laugesen
Fotorama (Photorama)
Poetry collection, Forlaget Borgen 2009

Ida Jessen
Børnene (The Children)
Novel, Forlaget Gyldendal 2009

Finland
Sofi Oksanen
Puhdistus (Purge)
Novel, WSOY 2008

Monika Fagerholm
Glitterscenen (The Glitter Scene)
Roman, Söderströms och Albert Bonniers Förlag 2009

Iceland
Einar Kárason
Ofsi (Fury)
Novel, Mál og menning 2008 (Danish translation by Kim Lembek)

Steinar Bragi
Konur (Women)
Novel, Mál og menning 2008 (Swedish translation by Inge Knudson)

Norway
Karl Ove Knausgård
Min kamp 1 (My Struggle, Part 1)
Novel, Förlaget Oktober 2009

Tomas Espedal
Imot kunsten (notatbøkene) (Towards Art (the notebooks))
Novel, Gyldendal 2009

Sweden
Steve Sem-Sandberg
De fattiga i Łódź (The Destitutes of Lodz)
Novel, Albert Bonniers Förlag 2009

Ann Jäderlund
Vad hjälper det en människa om hon häller rent vatten över sig i alla sina dagar (What Does It Help A Person If She Pours Clean Water Over Herself For All Of Her Days)
Poetry collection, Albert Bonniers Förlag 2009

Faroe Islands
Gunnar Hoydal
Í havsins hjarta (In the Heart of the Sea)
Novel, Forlaget Sprotin 2007 (Danish translation by Jette Hoydal)

The winner will be announced 30 March 2010. If I were a betting man, I’d put my money down on Karl Ove Knausgård.