Tormod Haugen

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Tormod Haugen (12 May 1945 – 18 October 2008) was a Norwegian writer of children's books and translator. [1] For his "lasting contribution to children's literature" he received the international Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1990. [2] [3]

Norwegians people

Norwegians are a North Germanic ethnic group native to Norway. They share a common culture and speak the Norwegian language. Norwegian people and their descendants are found in migrant communities worldwide, notably in the United States, Canada, Australia, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, Brazil, Mexico, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and South Africa.

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Biography

Tormod Haugen, winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award (1990) Anderson (gold medal).jpg
Tormod Haugen, winner of the Hans Christian Andersen Award (1990)

Tormod Haugen grew up in Nybergsund, a small village in Trysil in Hedmark county, Norway. After school graduation at the Hamar Cathedral School in 1965, he attended the University of Oslo. He worked at the Munch Museum from 1971 to 1973. He made his debut as a writer in 1973 with Ikke som i fjor (Not like last year). After his debut he wrote a number of children and young people books, and he became one of the more acclaimed writers of children's literature in Scandinavia. [4]

Nybergsund Village in Eastern Norway, Norway

Nybergsund is a village in the municipality of Trysil in Hedmark, Norway with a population of 363. The village is best known for serving as a hiding place for the Norwegian royal family and Cabinet and sustaining German bombing during the German conquest of Norway. The town is also the birthplace of award-winning Norwegian writer and translator Tormod Haugen.

Trysil Municipality in Hedmark, Norway

Trysil is a municipality in Hedmark county, Norway. It is part of the traditional region of Østerdalen. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Innbygda. The municipality of Trysil was established on 1 January 1838.

Hedmark County (fylke) of Norway

Hedmark[²heːdmɑrk](listen) is a county in Norway, bordering Trøndelag to the north, Oppland to the west and Akershus to the south. The county administration is in Hamar.

He was an experimental and innovative writer who picked up elements from Norwegian folk tales and myths as well as from international children's literary traditions. A recurring theme in his writing was the lonely child whose feelings and wishes are disregarded by the adult world, and who as a consequence of this winds up in situations that are outside of his control. His books have been sold to 26 countries and translated into 24 languages. He was also an active translator. Among his works, he translated the Narnia books of C. S. Lewis into the Norwegian language. [5] [6]

C. S. Lewis Christian apologist, novelist, and Medievalist

Clive Staples Lewis was a British writer and lay theologian. He held academic positions in English literature at both Oxford University and Cambridge University. He is best known for his works of fiction, especially The Screwtape Letters, The Chronicles of Narnia, and The Space Trilogy, and for his non-fiction Christian apologetics, such as Mere Christianity, Miracles, and The Problem of Pain.

Norwegian language North Germanic language spoken in Norway

Norwegian is a North Germanic language spoken mainly in Norway, where it is the official language. Along with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a dialect continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional varieties, and some Norwegian and Swedish dialects, in particular, are very close. These Scandinavian languages, together with Faroese and Icelandic as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languages. Faroese and Icelandic are hardly mutually intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandinavian has diverged from them. While the two Germanic languages with the greatest numbers of speakers, English and German, have close similarities with Norwegian, neither is mutually intelligible with it. Norwegian is a descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era.

Awards

The biennial Hans Christian Andersen Award conferred by the International Board on Books for Young People is the highest recognition available to a writer or illustrator of children's books. Haugen received the writing award in 1990. [2] [3]

Hans Christian Andersen Award biennial awards to an illustrator and a writer of childrens literature

The Hans Christian Andersen Awards are two literary awards by the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY), recognising one living author and one living illustrator for their "lasting contribution to children's literature". The writing award was inaugurated in 1956, the illustration award in 1966. The former is sometimes called the "Nobel Prize for children's literature".

The International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) is a Swiss non-profit organization committed to bringing books and children together. The headquarters of the IBBY are located in Basel, Switzerland.

In 1984, he became the first children's author nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize. He won the prize of the Nordic School Librarians Association in 1986. He was nominated for the Norwegian Booksellers' Prize in 1997 and for the international Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award in 2005. [7]

The Norwegian Booksellers' Prize (Bokhandlerprisen) is a literature prize awarded annually by the Norwegian Booksellers Association. The prize is awarded for one of the year's books in the fiction / general literature category, including children's and youth books. The prize was initiated in 1948, then did not return until 1961. It was also on a hiatus from 1970 to 1980.

The Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award is an international children's literary award established by the Swedish government in 2002 to honour the Swedish children's author Astrid Lindgren (1907–2002). The prize is five million SEK, making it the richest award in children's literature and the one of the richest literary prizes in the world. The annual cost of 10 million SEK is financed with tax money.

The Norwegian Critics Prize for Literature is awarded by the Norwegian Literature Critics' Association and has been awarded every year since 1950. The prize is presented to a Norwegian author for a literary work as agreed to among the members of the Norwegian Literature Critics' Association. Since 1978 the Norwegian Literature Critics' Association has also awarded a prize for the best work of children's literature. In 2003 the Critics Prize for the year's best work of translation was established, and in 2012 the Critics Prize for the year's best work of nonfiction for adults was established. For other Norwegian Critics Awards, see Norwegian Theatre Critics Award, which has been awarded every year since 1939, the Norwegian Music Critics Award, which has been awarded every year since 1947, and the Norwegian Dance Critics Award, which has been awarded every year since 1977.

Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis literary award

The Deutscher Jugendliteraturpreis is an annual award established in 1956 by the Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth to recognise outstanding works of children's literature. It is Germany's only state-funded literary award. In the past, authors from many countries have been recognised, including non-German speakers.

Gyldendal's Endowment was a literature prize which was awarded in the period 1934–1995 by the Norwegian publisher Gyldendal Norsk Forlag. The prize was awarded to significant authors, regardless of which publisher the author was associated with. The basic capital of the legacies came from the release of Bjørnson's collective works in 1932.

Works

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