The conversation moderated by Sofie Hermansen Eriksdatter, Head of Secretariat for the Nordic Council Literature Prizes, will be in Swedish and Danish.
Gunnar D. Hansson (1945) is a poet, essayist, literary historian and translator of Old English and Old Icelandic poetry. He is an associate professor of literature and has been a professor at the University of Gothenburg.
Since his debut in 1979, he has written several essay collections and 12 poetry collections, including Tapeshavet (2017), which takes you on a multidimensional journey through time, space and thought. Tapeshavet is the name of a very old coastline, which was created on the Swedish west coast after the recent ice age. Hansson explores the areas of Tapeshavet, its history, and nature, the remains of lost cultures, fishing and stone carving. The book was nominated for the Nordic Council Literature Prize, and Hansson has received several prestigious literary awards for both his poetry and his essays. In several of his works, for example, Olunn (1989), Lunnebok(1991) and Idegransöarna (1994) he has dealt with nature and wildlife in and near the sea. The collections of poems are based on contemporary and historical, the Old Norse and the even older. Hansson’s lyrical authorship is cross-border. In his poetry collections, he moves freely and with great literary and philosophical knowledge, with humor, warmth and life experience in a rich measure between the personal and the universal human. They are unparalleled in Swedish poetry, both in terms of originality and literary quality.