136 articles
Māra Zālīte
Māra Zālīte, born 1952 in Siberia to a family deported by the Soviet regime, is a Latvian poet, playwright, and novelist whose rock opera Lāčplēsis premiered in 1988 during the Atmoda independence period.
Marcelijus Martinaitis
Marcelijus Martinaitis (1936–2013) was a Lithuanian poet, essayist, and translator best known for The Ballads of Kukutis (1977), whose trickster hero voiced dissent under Soviet censorship.
Maria Wine
Maria Wine, born Karla Petersen, was a Swedish poet and author born in Copenhagen in 1912. She debuted with Vinden ur mörkret (1943) and wrote over thirty books.
Marie Under
Marie Under (1883–1980) was an Estonian poet regarded as Estonia's greatest, a leader of the Siuru group who published 14 collections and fled to Sweden in 1944.
Marja-Liisa Vartio
Marja-Liisa Vartio, born Marja-Liisa Sairanen (1924–1966), was a Finnish poet and prose writer among the central modernists of 1950s Finnish literature, best known for her posthumous novel Hänen olivat linnut (1967).
Mats Traat
Mats Traat (1936–2022) was a prolific Estonian poet, prose writer, playwright, and translator known for chronicling rural life and history in southern Estonia and the Tartu language.
Matthías Jochumsson
Matthías Jochumsson (1835–1920) was an Icelandic clergyman, poet, playwright, and translator, best known as author of the lyrics of the Icelandic national anthem, written in 1874.
Nils Collett Vogt
Nils Collett Vogt (1864–1937) was a Norwegian writer remembered first and foremost as a lyric poet, though he also wrote novels, plays, and memoirs; his breakthrough was Fra Vaar til Høst (1894).
Nils Ferlin
Nils Ferlin (1898–1961) was a Swedish poet whose melancholy yet humorous verse about loneliness and poor, unlucky people made him one of Sweden's most beloved poets.
Nordahl Grieg
Nordahl Grieg, full name Johan Nordahl Brun Grieg, was a Norwegian poet, playwright, and war correspondent, known for the 1936 poem Til ungdommen and for wartime BBC broadcasts; he was killed over Berlin in 1943.
Olaf Bull
Olaf Bull (1883–1933) was a Norwegian poet, regarded in Denmark and Sweden as the leading Nordic lyricist of his time, debuting with Digte in 1909.
Olav Aukrust
Olav Aukrust (1883–1929) was a Norwegian teacher, folk high school headmaster, and poet who wrote in Nynorsk and counted among the leading lyric poets of the interwar years.
Olav H. Hauge
Olav H. Hauge (1908–1994) was a Norwegian poet and fruit farmer in Ulvik who wrote in Nynorsk and became one of Norway's foremost lyric poets.
Ole Sarvig
Ole Sarvig (1921–1981) was a Danish writer and one of the central Danish lyric poets of the twentieth century, known for religiously toned poetry expressing cultural crisis after World War II.
Paal Brekke
Paal Brekke (1923–1993) was a Norwegian poet, novelist, and translator who introduced high modernism into Norwegian poetry in the 1940s and 1950s and defended it in the tungetaledebatten.
Paavo Haavikko
Paavo Haavikko (1931–2008) was a Finnish poet, writer, and publisher, a central figure of the 1950s modernist breakthrough in Finnish poetry who won the Neustadt International Prize in 1984.
Pentti Saarikoski
Pentti Saarikoski (1937–1983) was a Finnish poet, translator, and journalist and a central figure of twentieth-century Finnish literature, famous for his 1962 collection What Really Happens? and for translating Homer, Joyce, and Salinger into Finnish.
Pia Tafdrup
Pia Tafdrup is a Danish poet and member of the Danish Academy, born in Copenhagen in 1952, who won the Nordic Council Literature Prize in 1999.
Rabbe Enckell
Rabbe Enckell (1903–1974) was a Finland-Swedish poet, critic, and painter, a founder of Finland-Swedish modernism who debuted in 1923 with Dikter and wrote about thirty poetry collections.
Rolf Jacobsen
Rolf Jacobsen (1907–1994) was a Norwegian poet and journalist whose debut collection Jord og jern (1933) brought technology into Norwegian poetry as one of its first literary modernists.
Salomėja Nėris
Salomėja Nėris, real name Salomėja Bačinskaitė-Bučienė, was a Lithuanian neo-Romantic poet (1904–1945) whose melodic, folk-song-inflected lyrics made her one of the most popular Lithuanian writers.
Sigbjørn Obstfelder
Sigbjørn Obstfelder (1866–1900) was a Norwegian writer, the foremost representative of early modernist lyric poetry in Norway, often called the creator of modernism in the Nordic countries.
Sigitas Geda
Sigitas Geda (1943–2008) was a Lithuanian poet, playwright, and translator who published over 50 poetry collections, translated Dante and the Quran into Lithuanian, and helped lead the Sąjūdis reform movement that restored Lithuania's independence.
Sigitas Parulskis
Sigitas Parulskis, born 1965 in Obeliai, Lithuania, is a poet, novelist, playwright, and critic, best known for Darkness and Partners, the first Lithuanian novel on Lithuanian complicity in the Holocaust.
Sonja Åkesson
Sonja Åkesson (1926–1977) was a Swedish poet and playwright of the "new simplicity" movement, whose poem "Äktenskapsfrågan" became a defining text of the women's movement.
Sophus Claussen
Sophus Claussen (1865–1931) was a Danish poet and a leading figure of Danish symbolism, attacked for frivolity in his lifetime and later hailed as a bridge between romanticism and modernism.
Stein Mehren
Stein Mehren (1935–2017) was a Norwegian poet and essayist, regarded as one of the foremost lyricists in recent Norwegian literature, who published nearly 30 poetry collections and won major prizes.
Thorkild Bjørnvig
Thorkild Bjørnvig (1918–2004) was a Danish poet, essayist, and literary scholar who co-edited the influential postwar journal Heretica, translated Rilke, and became widely known for his 1970s environmental poetry.
Tomas Tranströmer
Tomas Tranströmer was a Swedish poet, psychologist, and translator, regarded as the leading Swedish poet of his generation, who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2011.
Tomas Venclova
Tomas Venclova, born in 1937 in Klaipėda, is a Lithuanian poet, essayist, translator, and literary scholar, a Yale professor emeritus, and a founding member of the Lithuanian Helsinki Group.