Halldór Kiljan Laxness was an Icelandic writer and winner of the 1955 Nobel Prize in Literature. He wrote novels, poetry, newspaper articles, essays, plays, travelogues and short stories. Writers who influenced Laxness included August Strindberg, Sigmund Freud, Knut Hamsun, Sinclair Lewis, Upton Sinclair, Bertolt Brecht and Ernest Hemingway.
Tarjei Vesaas was a Norwegian poet and novelist. Vesaas is widely considered to be one of Norway's greatest writers of the twentieth century and perhaps its most important since World War II.
Arnaldur Indriðason is an Icelandic writer of crime fiction; his most popular series features the protagonist Detective Erlendur.
Per Petterson is a Norwegian novelist. His debut book was Aske i munnen, sand i skoa (1987), a collection of short stories. He has since published a number of novels to good reviews. To Siberia (1996), set in the Second World War, was published in English in 1998 and nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. I kjølvannet, translated as In the Wake (2002), is a young man's story of losing his family in the Scandinavian Star ferry disaster in 1990 ; it won the Brage Prize for 2000. His 2008 novel Jeg forbanner tidens elv won the Nordic Council Literature Prize for 2009, with an English translation published in 2010.
Auður Jónsdóttir is one of the most accomplished authors writing in Icelandic today. Her novels have aroused interest in Iceland as well as abroad for their rare blend of incisive candor and humor. She won the Icelandic Literary Prize for The People in the Basement and the Icelandic Women's Literature Prize for Secretaries to the Spirits (Ósjálfrátt). Both of these novels were nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize.
Pétur Gunnarsson is an Icelandic writer.
Guðbergur Bergsson is an Icelandic writer born in Grindavík on 16 October 1932. He attended the University of Iceland for his Teaching degree and then studied literature at the University of Barcelona. He is one of the leading translators of Spanish works in Iceland. In Barcelona, he met and engaged with the publisher and writer Jaime Salinas Bonmatí.
Gyrðir Elíasson is an author and translator in Iceland.
Gerður Kristný is an Icelandic writer who is best known for her poetry and books for children.
Icelandic literature refers to literature written in Iceland or by Icelandic people. It is best known for the sagas written in medieval times, starting in the 13th century. As Icelandic and Old Norse are almost the same, and because Icelandic works constitute most of Old Norse literature, Old Norse literature is often wrongly considered a subset of Icelandic literature. However, works by Norwegians are present in the standard reader Sýnisbók íslenzkra bókmennta til miðrar átjándu aldar, compiled by Sigurður Nordal on the grounds that the language was the same.
Andri Snær Magnason is an Icelandic writer. He has written novels, poetry, plays, short stories, and essays. His work has been published or performed in more than 30 countries.
Antti Elias Tuuri is a Finnish writer, known for his works dealing with Southern Ostrobothnia.
The Swan is a novel written by the Icelandic writer Guðbergur Bergsson in 1991.
Ólafur Haukur Símonarson,, is an Icelandic playwright and novelist who lives in Reykjavík, Iceland.
Þorsteinn frá Hamri, was an Icelandic writer notable for having been nominated five times for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize over a period of 35 years.
Justice Undone is a novel by Icelandic author Thor Vilhjálmsson. It was published in 1986.
Carl Jóhan Jensen is a Faroese writer, poet and literary critic. His books have five times been nominated for the Nordic Council's Literature Prize in 1991, 1998, 2007, 2008 and 2016. In 1989 and 2006 he received the M. A. Jacobsen's Cultural Prize from Tórshavn City Council
Þorgeir Þorgeirson was an Icelandic writer, translator and filmmaker, one of the first Icelandic graduates of foreign film schools. In 1987 he was found guilty of defaming the Icelandic police in two newspaper articles and fined; he then sued the Icelandic state in the European Court of Human Rights, which in 1992 in an influential ruling found in his favour.
Ólafur Gunnarsson is a contemporary Icelandic author and translator.
