Examining the changing reception of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries
between 1870 and 1940, this follow-up volume to Disseminating
Shakespeare in the Nordic Countries focuses on the broad movements of
national revivalism that took place around the turn of the century as
Finland and Norway, and later Iceland, were gaining their independence.
The first part of the book demonstrates how translations and productions
of Shakespeare were key in such movements, as Shakespeare was
appropriated for national and political purposes. The second part
explores how the role of Shakespeare in the Nordic countries was partly
transformed in the 1920s and 1930s as a new social system emerged, and
then as the rise of fascism meant that European politics cast a long
shadow on the Nordic countries and substantially affected the reception
of Shakespeare.
Contributors trace the impact of early translations of Shakespeare's
works into Icelandic, the role of women in the early transmission of
Shakespeare in Finland and the first Shakespeare production at the
Finnish Theatre, and the productions of Shakespeare's plays at the
Norwegian National Theatre between 1899 and the outbreak of the Great
War. In Part Two, they examine the political overtones of the 1916
Shakespeare celebrations in Hamlet's 'hometown' of Elsinore, Henrik
Rytter's translations of 23 Shakespeare plays into Norwegian to assess
their role in his poetics and in Scandinavian literature, the importance
of the 1937 production of Hamlet in Kronborg Castle starring Laurence
Olivier, and the role of Shakespeare in general and Hamlet in particular
in Swedish Nobel laureate Eyvind Johnson's early work where it became a
symbol of post-war passivity and rootlessness.
