Edith Södergran, Karen Blixen and Selma Lagerlöf join forces online
Press release, 7 March 2012
[Online platform launched today. Press photos and video presentation accessible now - more info below]
In the wake of the growing international interest in Nordic women writers, a new online platform will be launched this week. For the first time an international audience will be able to access more than a thousand years of literary history written by Nordic women. In depth material about iconic writers such as Karen Blixen, Selma Lagerlöf and Sigrid Undset will be accessible free of charge.
With Sofi Oksanen as a rising star in literature, the best-selling Scandinavian queens of crime fiction and the international popularity of the Danish television series such as Borgen and The Killing it is a well established fact: Nordic women are conquering the international cultural stage.
On nordicwomensliterature.net there are plenty of opportunities to explore the phenomenon even further. The online platform featuring more than 800 women writers from the Nordic countries will be easy to access for a new and much broader international group of readers.
With only a few clicks, you can skip around between topics such as psychoanalysis, salons or suicide and why women were trapped between new and old sexual ethics. The site is easy to navigate and all material is searchable and organized according to writers, articles and themes.
The first of its kind
Nordicwomensliterature.net is a digital web version of the original print work "History of Nordic Women´s Literature". When published in the 1990'es as the first of its kind it immediately gained pioneer status among scholars.
The ambition to reach a much broader audience was already present back then and is now met with the launch of the digital, English version. KVINFO’s director, Elisabeth Møller Jensen, the executive editor of the original, five volume edition, says:
”As of today it is expected that all information is available online, so through this effort we will reach a much broader audience. At the same time, the online version adds on extra value, because the vast amount of information is presented in new creative and inspiring ways. It makes unique knowledge available and shows the important contribution to literature by women writers.”
The history of Nordic literature is full of women writers who wrote for their lives and who fought for public recognition. We hope that the new online platform will be a stepping stone for Nordic women’s writers to reach the position within literary history they are entitled to.
LINKS
Go to the website: nordicwomensliterature.net
Watch video presentation on YouTube
Press photos are available at kvinfo.dk
CONTACTS
KVINFO's director Elisabeth Møller Jensen
elisabeth.m.jensen@kvinfo.dk
Phone: +45 33 14 11 56
Mobil: +45 23 34 05 27
Press officer Anita Frank Goth
anita.frank.goth@kvinfo.dk
Phone: +45 33 11 14 56
MORE FACTS
- The site will be celebrated on March 8th 2012, The International Women’s Day, at events in Copenhagen, Kolding, Gothenburg and Berlin. The following week the site will be presented in Stockholm.
- The project is a joint production between professionals from Denmark and Sweden. The Royal Danish Library has been in charge of the scanning and the digitalization of the original material.
- The site is produced by KVINFO, the Danish Centre for Information on Gender, Equality and Ethnicity, in cooperation with KVINNSAM, National resource library for gender studies, Sweden.
- The site is made possible with the generous donation given by The A.P. Møller and Chastine Mc-Kinney Møller Foundation and the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, Sweden’s central bank.
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