Catherine Eyjólfsson and Erik Skyum-Nielsen, translators of Icelandic authors into French and Danish.
The museum has installed a small exhibition with several editions of translations by Catherine Eyjólfsson and Erik Skyum-Nielsen, who have been active in translating the works of Icelandic authors into French and Danish. Both received the ORÐSTÍR honorary award at the 2015 Literature Festival, which is intended to draw attention to the invaluable work of translators. The award is supported by the Icelandic Literature Centre, the Association of Translators and Interpreters, Íslandsstofa, the Office of the President of Iceland and the Reykjavík Literature Festival.
Catherine Eyjólfsson, translator of Icelandic authors into French
In recent years, the reputation of Icelandic literature in France has grown considerably. Icelandic classics and the works of Halldór Laxness gained a good foothold on the French book market in the twentieth century, but since the turn of the century, translations of contemporary Icelandic fiction have increased in number and have attracted well-deserved attention. Among those who have played a major role in this success is Catherine Eyjólfsson, who moved to Iceland from France in 1972, worked for a long time as a French teacher, but turned to translations in the 1990s. She has translated over 40 Icelandic works, including novels and poems by many of the nation's leading living poets, such as Auður Öva Ólafsdóttir, Einar Má Guðmundsson, Guðberg Bergsson, Guðrúna Eva Mínervudóttir, Gyrður Elíasson, Ingibjörg Haraldsdóttir, Linda Vilhjálmsdóttir, Pétur Gunnarsson, Sigurbjörg Þrastardóttir, Sjón, Steinunni Sigurðardóttir, Svava Jakobsdóttir and Thor Vilhjálmsson. Some of these works have been nominated for prestigious awards, most recently Catherine's translation of Bergsvein Birgisson's A Reply to a Letter from Helga, which is nominated for a prize awarded jointly by the University of Lille to the author and translator.
Erik Skyum-Nielsen, translator of Icelandic literature into Danish
Erik Skyum-Nielsen is a literary scholar and a respected literary critic. For the past 40 years, he has been an energetic and influential ambassador of Icelandic literature in Denmark, or ever since he was appointed lecturer in Danish at the University of Iceland in the mid-1970s. He has translated over 40 Icelandic works into Danish, including ancient sagas and eddic poetry, as well as poems, novels and plays by contemporary authors, including Svava Jakobsdóttir, Thor Vilhjálmsson, Stefán Hörð Grímsson, Birgi Sigurðsson, Fríðu Á. Sigurðardóttir, Gyrði Elíasson and Gerði Kristnýja. Erik's first translations were published in 1981, on the one hand short stories by contemporary Icelandic poets, on the other a selection of poems by a young Icelandic poet, Einar Má Guðmundsson, who had published his first two books of poetry a year earlier. Erik has since translated most of Einar's works into Danish shortly after they were published in Icelandic, thus laying the foundation for the popularity that Einar has enjoyed in Denmark. To some extent, these Danish translations paved the way for Einar and other contemporary Icelandic authors to other markets, not least in the Nordic countries and Germany.
