Friday Friyay: 'Nordic Visions: The Best of Nordic Speculative Fiction', edited by Margrét Helgadóttir

I haven't done a post like this in almost a month, but I'm glad to be back on it! One of the reasons for the absence is that I was in Norway last week for an Oslo trip with my sister. It was a great trip and while there I dove into Nordic Visions, a collection of contemporary Nordic speculative fiction, from fantasy and science fiction to horror. So I thought, why not share some excerpts of that with you? Also, isn't that cover stunning?!

A Unique Speculative Fiction Collection From The Nordic Countries

Storytelling has been a major force in the Nordic countries for thousands of years, renowned for its particular sense of dark humour, featuring pacts with nature and a view of the worlds you seldom find in other places.

Perhaps it is the freezing cold winter? The closeness to the Atlantic Ocean and the Arctic? Maybe it’s the huge ancient forests...

Most have heard about Nordic crime fiction with its dark noir flare or the Icelandic Sagas. This anthology combines all that is unique about Nordic speculative fiction, from the darkest dystopian science fiction to terrifying horror. From the rational to the eccentric, these stories combine a deep sense of place with social criticism, themes of loneliness and the concern for humanity's impact on the wilderness.

Featuring 16 stories from the best contemporary speculative authors from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and The Faroe Islands, including John Ajvide Lindqvist, Hannu Rajaniemi, Tor Åge Bringsværd and more, many of which are appearing in English for the very first time. 

Book Beginnings is at home on Rose City Reader, hosted by Gilion Dumas, and Friday 56 at Freda's Voice, hosted by Freda. I'll also be joining the Book Blogger Hop, hosted by Billy over at Ramblings of a Coffee Addicted Writer. All quotes are taken from an ARC and may be different in the published book.

BB:

'from Sweden, 'She', John Anvide Lindqvist, trans. by Marlaine Delargy

She is running through the forest. The ground is a shimmering blue mosaic of moonlight filtered between bare branches.

. . . .

The first night in our new house - we couldn't wait!' 2%

So I've formatted this a little weirdly, maybe, because the story is about two people who's new house is haunted, which is weird, cause it's usually old houses that are haunted, right? But then the story also tells us about the she in little snippets, which are the two sentences at the top. 'She' builds up the tension between these two story lines really well and the ending was very unexpected and quite a gut punch because it does not play around.

F56:

'from Norway, 'The Cormorant', by Tone Almhjell

I wait for her to lapse into her story of the boy who washed ashore in a storm, won her heart, and flew away. But she doesn't. Instead, she cuts and tosses, cuts and tosses, until the crate is empty and all the silver dead. I draw a bucked of seawater and slosh it over the stone. Scales and blood rinse over the edge of the quay, but the smell lingers.' 56%

This was one of my favourite stories in the whole collection because it had such a fairytale-like quality to it. It's about a mother and daughter, but it's also about a woman coming into her own, about fearing what is coming, about embracing uncertainty. 

BBH:

This week's question comes from Billy himself:

Have you ever become disoriented in a bookstore?

Love this question and can't wait to read everyone else's answers. In short, yes, but only in like a temporal way, if that makes sense. I enjoy winding my way through bookstores, browsing shelves, moving from one section to another without a plan. None of that disorients me. But the disorientation hits hard when I look up and realise how much or how little time has passed, that it's still light outside or, conversely, that it has gone dark, that my friend has been waiting outside for me for ages already, or that I still have hours to go before I need to be anywhere else. I have zero grip on time in a bookstore for some reason xD

And that's it for me this week! What are you reading? And can you keep time in a bookstore?