Where to start reading Vigdis Hjorth

Have a look at these three novels by the acclaimed Norwegian author Vigdis Hjorth, all available in English translations.

Photo: Mads Odgaard Smidstrup, Scandinavian Fiction

Toxic family dynamics are often at the heart of a Vigdis Hjorth plot.

It is well known that the Norwegian author draws on her own family relations in her fiction writing, and when I interviewed her for Scandinavian Fiction Podcast, she admitted that some of her books are better than others, partly due to her choosing to deal with or not deal with heavy subjects. 

‘It can be very painful to deal with heavy stuff. But when you do that, the result is often better than when you don’t,’ she said.

Here are three Vigdis Hjorth novels to get you started, all translated into English by Charlotte Barslund.

Will and Testament

It’s been twenty years since Bergljot fled her family. When a dispute over her parents’ will grows bitter, she is drawn into a conflict about two island summer houses left in her parents’ will to her sisters, disinheriting the two eldest siblings from the most meaningful part of the estate. Since childhood, Bergljot has carried a horrible secret, and she reads the gesture as something very different: a final attempt to suppress the truth and a cruel insult to the grievously injured.

Is Mother Dead

‘To mother is to murder, or close enough,’ thinks Johanna, as she looks at the spelling of the two words in Norwegian. She's recently widowed and back in Oslo after a long absence as she prepares for a retrospective of her art. The subject of her work is motherhood, and some of her more controversial paintings have brought about a dramatic rift between parent and child. This new proximity, after decades of acrimonious absence, set both women on edge, and before too long Johanna finds her mother stalking her thoughts, and Johanna starts stalking her mother's house.

In 2023, Is Mother Dead – translated into English by Charlotte Barslund – appeared on the International Booker Prize long-list:

‘This is a dark, chilling book. One of its tricks is to rely on a narrator who is an anti-heroine, and who can be annoying because of her narcissism and her malice. That’s what makes her real and what makes us care about her.’

Long Live the Post Horn!

Ellinor, a 35-year-old media consultant, has not been feeling herself. In fact, she’s not been feeling much at all lately. Far beyond jaded, she picks through an old diary and fails to recognise the woman in its pages, seemingly as far away from the world around her as she's ever been. But when her co-worker vanishes overnight, an unusual new task is dropped on her desk. Off she goes to meet the Norwegian Postal Workers’ Union, setting the ball rolling on a strange and transformative six months.