The Case of Sillanpää: Translation, the Nobel Prize, and a Neighbor in Distress

This article explores the intricate relation between translation and the Nobel Prize in Literature through the lens of a special case: the 1939 award to Finnish novelist Frans Eemil Sillanpää. The discussions in the Nobel committee, and the decision of the Swedish Academy to select Sillanpää for the prize, were deeply affected by the long and complicated political and cultural history of neighbors Sweden and Finland, as well as the Soviet bombings of several Finnish cities in the autumn of 1939. This article argues, however, that the translations of Sillanpää’s novels into Swedish were just as important, and what mattered was not only that they were translated but also how and by whom they had been made accessible for Swedish-speaking readers. The 1939 Nobel Prize to Frans Eemil Sillanpää is a case of two neighboring nations with a common colonial past, two close and overlapping cultural and political positions, and two very dissimilar languages.