Gliding gently from Denmark to downtown L.A. to Boston and to London, among other settings, like a small yet potent iceberg, Wild Swims, the new collection of stories by Danish author Dorthe Nors (translated into English by Misha Hoekstra), makes a subtle way across its frigid expanses. Its narratives offer no ice-cracking collisions, no momentous, polar epiphanies, yet it is a collection that, after reading, renders you mute, as it has inched you— lone, cold passenger—along a precipice of the sea at the end of the world.
Unquestionably, one of the most unique voices in contemporary Danish fiction, Dorthe Nors is the author of four novels, one of which, Mirror, Shoulder, Signal, was a finalist for the 2017 International Man Booker Prize. Her short stories, perhaps, have brought her even wider recognition, at least in America, appearing in Harper’s Magazine, Tin House, as well as the New Yorker, the first Dane ever to be published there.
Recently, I had the great privilege to interview her.
Ryan Asmussen
You have had success in both the novel and short story form (as well as the novella). Is there a clear favorite for you between the two, or do you reach for one or the other depending on what form will fit a given narrative?
Dorthe Nors
Working in different forms gives me the ability to adapt and experiment. The short story is quite often based on the energy of a single sentence. I tend to store good sentences that I stumble upon for a while—sometimes years—in my strange inner archive of good sentences. Then after a while a sentence emerges and has somehow formed a story around itself. I love when that happens. The novel is, at least to me, a process that needs much more planning and accumulation. Not necessarily plot planning, but the material has to build itself up inside me, somehow. The energy is different, the protagonists, the themes, the voice, etc. All of these things have to come into play. It takes more time to get there. Writing a story quite often makes me feel excited! Writing a novel is filled with a lot more insecurity as I work my way into it. But then when I’m where I’m supposed to be, even the novel seems to start writing itself and I’m happy-happy.
Ryan Asmussen
As a composer of sentences, you consistently impress. In my reading, I couldn’t help but notice a quirky element of style I found immensely compelling. Every so often comes a sentence rather shocking in terms of its juxtaposition of subject and temporality. For example, in “In A Deer Stand” the hobbled protagonist considers the possible presence of wolves in his area, and the narrator says, “He’s seen it in the newspaper, but wolves can’t climb, and it’s just a question of time before she sits down next to the washing machine.” (Note to the reader: he’s referring to his wife who he imagines distressed by his long absence from home.) What do these syntactical set-ups mean to you? They can be a bit disorienting for the reader at first, and then, upon reflective re-reading, highly revelatory.
Dorthe Nors
I love to use conjunctions as a narrative motor. I don’t calculate the way I use them, though. It’s part of the intuitive presence that comes with writing short stories. First of all, this way of using conjunctions pushes the story forward. It also says something true about how our inner thoughts tend to jump from topic to topic, driven by association. The novel uses entire pages or even chapters to move the narrative forward. But in a good short story you should be able to initiate that movement in one sentence…or a few more. The writer Fiona Maazel once wrote about my stories that I made my reader laugh at the beginning of the sentence and cry for the horror of it all at the end of the same sentence. I didn’t even know that I did that to people before she wrote it! Why do I do it? Because I enjoy it, and it works. How do I do it? I hardly know.
Ryan Asmussen
The Scandinavian notion of hygge—perhaps best translated as ‘coziness,’ as it is in your English translation—is worked titularly and thematically into one of the stories. Yet, there’s a falsity to this societal practice for its male protagonist, alone and adrift as he is in his own consciousness as opposed to being warm and convivial with his partner. Is there any criticism of traditional Nordic culture here?
Dorthe Nors
Ha, oh yes! You see, the phenomenon hygge has been sold to the world with glossy pictures of knitted socks, fireplaces, hot chocolate, and people hanging out in candle-lit rooms. Love, community, and a laid-back lifestyle are oozing out of this phenomenon. What this does is sell “cozy” products to consumers all around the world: woolen blankets, coffee mugs, pastries, and so forth. But this merchandised version of hygge should come with a warning label. Historically and culturally hygge comes from the long and cold Scandinavian winters. We had to learn how to feel good while wintering, so we became good at hygge. However, hygge is also a social control system. It’s a phenomenon that excludes everything that isn’t hyggelig. In a culture ruled by hygge, it’s easy for those who don’t live cozy lives or struggle with un-cozy problems to “spoil the hygge” and people who “spoil the hygge” are troublemakers. The risk of being excluded, socially frowned upon, ignored, or accused of stuff is big if you “spoil the hygge.” So instead of “spoiling the hygge,” there’s a tendency to suppress things that could disturb the consensus that controls the surface. The story you’re addressing in my book, is of course the story “Hygge.” That one was actually inspired by a sentence I came across in the newspaper. A man was asked what happened the night he killed his girlfriend. He said: “I don’t know. One moment we were sitting on the couch having a “hyggelig” time, and then two minutes later she lay strangled on the floor.” I thought, oh my God, there’s a short path from hygge to murder!
Ryan Asmussen
I experienced many pleasurable readings of your story “Inside St. Paul’s,” in which a man visits the sarcophagus of Lord Nelson, a childhood hero, while musing about his youth among hockey players and his less-than-happy marriage. At the close, a strange act takes place, one that can be interpreted a number of ways, I think. Without revealing it, I wonder if you could tell us a bit about your relationship to this story as a whole. It strikes me as a fine example of the power of ambiguity in literature.
Dorthe Nors
I grew up with only brothers, so I’ve never really believed in the ways masculinity sometimes depicts itself in society. I know for a fact that most men aren’t Lord Nelson. I’m quite certain that Lord Nelson wasn’t even Lord Nelson, and I’m also quite sure that a lot of men feel estranged and bullied by alpha males just like women are bullied by them. I wanted to take a moment with a nice man who just never added up to the masculine character that he learned society—and women—wanted. What he did instead was to be a good husband, a good father, not a big warrior and on top of that: not very brave, but nevertheless a constant in the lives of his loved ones. That’s bravery too, but now the wife is bored, because he’s not Lord Nelson. Where did I come up with the idea? In St. Paul Cathedral, London, on a hot summer day. I saw men circling with audio tour headphones around the Nelson sarcophagus like sharks, and I accidentally touched the marble and noticed that it wasn’t cold as I had expected. I wanted to write about one of these men. I wanted to “listen in on” whatever drew him to that particular place. The ambiguity is perhaps also related to my specific use of minimalism. I leave spaces open so that the reader can donate to the story.
Ryan Asmussen
The world of a typical story in Wild Swims seems at best unknowable, if not perilously ambivalent, replete with missed opportunities and fatal side-steps. And yet there is an ease to your prose and a steadiness that almost feels in lockstep with this lack of surety. Is how the world seems to you, artistically at least?
Dorthe Nors
I’m a bit of a hardcore existentialist. I believe that we contain so many stories, so many memories and voices and ideas that never will be articulated and announced to the world. Even though we chatter more than ever on the internet, we are also very silent. Inside us are experiences that we can never share. There will be memories that you forever have to deal with alone. Life becomes easier to live when we’re loved, when we’re connected and part of a positive network. But even then, you have to accept that the voice you have inside you; your personal narrative, your history, your ups and downs are yours to carry. We never gain access to this voice in others, but that is one of the reasons why literature is amazing. In literature you can listen in on the monologues that go on inside your fellow human beings. You can eavesdrop on what goes on in their heads: What are they saying? What are their heartaches? What is the violence? Listen! Language is just the instrument on which I “play” these solitary stories.
Ryan Asmussen
You did not write your own English translation of this collection. Did you feel unsure about your literary English? Or did you put more trust in a translator’s linguistic objectivity?
Dorthe Nors
I always write literature in my native tongue, Danish. But I do write essays and articles in English. The translator of Wild Swims, Misha Hoekstra, is American—from the Chicago area, hey—and lives in Denmark. When it comes to fiction you need a translator who has English as his or her first language. I do participate a lot in the translation, though. The manuscript goes back and forth between Hoekstra and I quite a bit. Why? Because the translation is super important. I work so much in English and I know my own texts almost by heart when the Danish is done. But it is of course always the translator who has the final call when it comes to the translation. I think the English version of Wild Swims has turned out very well.
Ryan Asmussen
As a Dane, what does the achievement of being the first of your country to be published in the New Yorker mean to you?
Dorthe Nors
It means that every time there’s an article about me in Denmark, they will write: “She’s the first Dane to have fiction published in the New Yorker!”— ha ha. Fun aside, it was a huge game-changer for me. It of course changed things for me in the U.S., and it helped pave a way for my writing internationally. I’m forever grateful—and it has also been a true pleasure to work with a magazine that takes your writing that seriously. But it also changed my life as a writer in Denmark. I suddenly got Danish readers! In Denmark we love when “one of our own” achieves international success, but at the same time we frown on it. So I got applauded…and bullied a bit after it happened. But I’m still so grateful that it did happen. It was an honor.
Ryan Asmussen
“You can always withdraw a little bit further,” proclaims the epigraph of this collection, and in several stories this is precisely what happens to characters; they recede more deeply into themselves, like giving in to a losing battle against self-attrition, a slow effacement of self. Where do you see this tendency, spiritually or psychology, in the post-modern world? Do you see it in more universal terms? Part of the human struggle?
Dorthe Nors
I think that like most things in life, there’s a good and a bad side to a phenomenon. That goes for “withdrawal,” too. It’s bad if you withdraw from life because life scares you, and you don’t seem to have the ability to merge with it. But withdrawal is also healthy and beautiful. Leaning backward into your own life with reconciliation. Retreating. Not fighting, accepting. The withdrawal that you see on the internet is of a different nature, I believe, and quite often not particularly healthy, if you ask me. You can withdraw into anger, lack of empathy, mass psychosis, and so forth. You can even withdraw into conspiracy theory and as we know that is extremely dangerous to democracy. On another note, I wonder what happens when the Covid-19 pandemic is over. I know that I long to never do a zoom-conversation again. I long to be in the same room as the readers, the audience, my friends, my family. I long for that natural, human need of connection. But when I’ve been in that connectedness for a while, I’ll withdraw. I will put on my boots and hike, and I will be content with the company of myself.
FICTION
Wild Swims
By Dorthe Nors
Translated from the Danish by Misha Hoekstra
Graywolf Press
Publish February 2, 2021
