The best books about Norway

A harrowing and beautiful tale of two sisters growing up with a paranoid schizophrenic mother. The author describes a fine line between gentle artistic creativity and debilitating mental illness. The reader will come away with a better understanding of how deeply children are affected growing up in a dysfunctional and traumatic environment. A mother's love and a journey to forgiveness teach us the complex meaning of love.

If you’ve read this, you’ll nod your head in agreement. If not, what are you waiting for? This novel was first published in 1942 and has remained in print ever since. Germany invaded neutral Norway on April 9, 1940, with massive, overwhelming forces, but was resisted from the start. I often read Snow Treasure aloud to students, hanging on every page-turn just as my students do. I always make it clear that this is a fictionalized account of the daring (and true) escape of Norway’s king and cabinet, along with their national treasure, which allowed them to continue the fight from England. When I speak about my own books, I am often asked about Snow Treasure—by adults! It’s the unforgettable book of their youth that they still believe to be entirely true. That’s a testament to terrific writing and reading!

Mass killings are rare – especially in Norway, but we hear about them and they cause fear. Understanding why they happen has to be a way to try to stop them—even if it’s only stopping gun access (in the USA anyway) to those who are at risk. Seierstad takes a clear hard look at the tragedy where 77 people lost their lives—at the perpetrator’s childhood, where the system got it wrong and where the psychiatric profession couldn’t agree.

I’m a skier as well as a hiker. This book appeals to both of these outdoor loves, but it goes much deeper.

This is a true story about a small band of Norwegians who ski and hike across the Norwegian wilderness, and nearly freeze to death and starve doing it. Their mission is to sabotage a remote, heavily guarded power plant, where the Nazis are developing heavy water for a nuclear bomb.

In addition to the perils that nature throws at them, these resourceful members of the local resistance must also evade their Gestapo hunters at every snowdrift. It’s a low-odds, high-risk adventure that altered the outcome of World War II.

It’s also engulfed me like the blizzards of the Norwegian winter and taught me how ingenuity, perseverance, and grit are the keys to survival when the odds are overwhelming.

Nansen, ‘the father of polar exploration’ (and a great fan of Rae) was not just the first man to cross Greenland, to endure an intentional two-year drift towards the North Pole in an ice-locked ship and to turn skiing into a popular sport, but he was also a heartthrob diplomat, a founder of independent Norway, the first to introduce a tractor to Russia and a mediator in the enforced mass migrations of millions of displaced people. Did you know, for example, that while Robert Falcon Scott was discovering he’d been beaten to the Pole, his wife Kathleen was sharing a bed with Nansen in a Berlin hotel? The span of this book is immense and the fascination of its subject - an early sex symbol and media superstar - won’t disappoint.

The Twelfth Man by Norwegian-American writer Astrid Karlsen Scott is the dramatic story of Norwegian agent Jan Baalsrud’s survival after a SOE mission gone wrong. A first account of his ordeal was published in 1955, but this is a more accurate telling. I like her in-depth approach to uncovering the true facts. On one of her research trips to Norway, she teamed up with Dr. Tore Haug who was also investigating Baalsrud’s story of survival. They were able to meet and interview all the survivors who helped the agent or who were indirectly involved and had knowledge of his story. You not only see what is at stake for the hero of the story, but for the people who are helping him escape the Nazis’ search for him. 

I found this book mentioned in one of Charles Bukowski’s. If Bukowski liked it, I surely would, too, I thought. This is, without a doubt, a severely strange book. Hunger followers the narrator as he desperately tries to become a successful writer while battling the hardships of starvation and homelessness. He becomes delusional with grandiose ideas and attempts to humiliate a love interest of his. This book will leave you questioning your literary choices.  

I absolutely fell in love with twelve-year-old Bart—a kid who doesn’t complain when there are only pretzel sticks for dinner, who takes boxing lessons, but can’t punch, a kid who loves opera. Opera! (Specifically, the voice of baritone Bryn Terfel--Look him up and listen!) He lives near Oslo, Norway in shabby public housing with his loving, alcoholic, and often unemployed mother. Bart makes the best of everything in his life. His unique, gentle nature, some lovely friendships, and Svingen’s storytelling completely won my heart. I don’t know why this book hasn’t gotten more accolades—maybe because people expect every Norwegian novel to have Vikings and fjords. (Language Alert: There are some instances of the word sh*t—blame the translator).

Knut Hamsun is one the greatest writers of all time, in my opinion.

And yes, I am separating the work from the person and the political views. Hamsun was a strange guy and he wrote mainly about strange guys.

Lieutenant Thomas Glahn is one of them, the protagonist of Pan. Glahn is an ex-soldier, living in a hunting hut near a small harbour town in Norway. Technically, Pan is a love story. But it is not a typical love story. It is so co-dependent and twisted that it literally hurts.

Glahn is at best an idiot, at worst some kind of a sociopath. He thinks he is in love but his “love” is not innocent and pure but ugly and even dirty. It is easy to feel sorry for Glahn, easier to simply hate him.

But the book is so well written and the story so fascinating that the… show more.

This book is for slightly younger readers, but I think it has genuine multi-generational appeal. I read it aloud to my eight-year-old, who laughed aloud and loved it – in fact, it was the first read-aloud chapter book that he stuck with. And his grandmother is also reading and loving it! Astrid has the feel of a classic, with its humor and its gentle wisdom. Though it’s a story about a feisty girl who loves sledding, it’s also a story about how someone you love can keep a hurtful secret. How does one forgive such a thing? Astrid figures it out. 

Maria Parr’s timeless novel takes place in Norway’s fictional Mathildewick Cove. The story centers on Lena and her best friend Trille, who are dealing with typical 12-year-old matters, including family arguments, rapidly growing bodies, and drama-filled school days. The setting of Lena, the Sea, and Me is especially charming, featuring mountains, hills, farm animals, and of course the water, which plays a significant role in the book. I appreciate that Lena and Trille spend all their time outside. Lena in particular—with her strong limbs and ruddy cheeks—is formidable as she builds rafts and plays goalkeeper for her soccer team. Irascible and lively, she will delight and inspire readers everywhere.

Weary of people asking him what his plans for the future are, eighteen-year-old Dutch teen Tycho decides to travel from his Holland home to America to work at a camp for international kids. Along the way, he meets Oliver, who’s from Norway, and is also going to work at the camp. The two quickly become fast friends and then something more. When their love relationship is discovered, they’re expelled from the camp, and the two fly back to Norway where Tycho will stay with Oliver while the boy’s mother is gone. No, there are no wild parties, just a lovely examination of an emerging relationship that is challenged by Oliver’s keeping a closely guarded secret. If this sounds dull, trust me, it isn’t! Find out why I’m so crazy about this book by reading it. Tell them Michael sent you...

To close off the list, I picked a novel where the main character ends up becoming energized by her work.

At an otherwise soul-sucking job at a PR firm, Ellinor becomes involved with, and motivated by, a political movement about supporting postal workers in Norway.

For a novel that could have been bogged down by the inner workings of the EU and the Norwegian Postal Service, Hjorth’s writing style is crisp and perfect. She could choose any subject matter and it would be interesting. 

Skis Against the Atom is a classic action story from WWII and about one of the most famous commando raids. It is the first-hand account of the heavy water raid by one of the men who was part of it, Knut Haukelid. First published in 1954, this book just pulled me into the dangerous and heroic actions of a group of young men who undertook the destruction of the heavily-guarded plant at Rjukan in Telemark. It gave me ideas for my own book concerning not only the planning and execution of missions, but the camaraderie of the men doing it. One of my favorite stories in the book happened after the plant was blown up. It’s almost as thrilling as the actual raid. It’s a great read and constantly in print.

Maybe you are looking for a conventional pet? or maybe not? Ruby, the main character thought she might want a cat or dog but found loyalty in a less conventional pet. This whimsical book will leave readers with a different outlook on pet possibilities.

The Shetland Bus was a great operation fighting against the German occupation of Norway and David Howarth, second in command of the organization, brings a personal and knowledgeable telling of its history in The Shetland Bus. This book inspired me to write my novel. It is an amazing story of courage and skill. Fishermen on the west coast of Norway began to run fishing boats to England at the beginning of the war. Known as the North Sea Traffic, it eventually became formalized under British command. The Bus only worked during the dark of winter, when sea and weather conditions were dangerous, bringing over arms and agents, taking back refugees. Later, submarine chasers, the Hessa, Hitra, and Vigra, served from 1943 to the end of the war. 

Momentarily leaving the fantastic behind, let’s look at a real-life adventure in a time when travel to Earth’s extremities was not as easy as it is today. Even a single century in the past, explorers like Amundsen endured great hardship trying to reach places like the South Pole. On a journey of relative comfort, consider what it might’ve been like with a slightly lower level of technology, and face a reminder that humans are not quite the masters of the world’s untamable elements that we may think we are.

This stunningly designed new book, available from the Sami publishers in Norway, has a fascinating historical text (in English and North Sami), put together by Sami artist Outi Pieski and Finnish curator Eeva-Kristiina Harlin. Together, they collaborated on a project centered around the ládjogahpir, the horn hat once widely worn by Sami women across the high North. They inventoried the remaining examples in museums and they began to hold workshops to teach contemporary Sami women how to make the hats. Along the way, they tell stories of how the hats disappeared or were collected, and discuss the idea of “rematriation” as part of new initiatives in the Nordic countries to return Sami craft and culture.

As an Englishman living in France, this short story resonates with me on so many levels in a topsy-turvy sort of way. Babette is a foreigner (French) living in a foreign land (Norway), and the key part of this foreignness is the contrast between the piety of the two spinsters who employ Babette as their cook, and her supposedly hedonistic French approach to food and life, including a murky past in which she may have been an arsonist during the Commune of Paris. In truth, Babette is an artist who expresses herself through her cooking, and when she wins the lottery, she spends all the money on a single dinner for her hosts instead of buying a ticket home to France.