Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl

About the author

Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl is an Icelandic poet and the author of three novels. He is also an avid translator of foreign literature. He works with performance and sound-poetry, and regularly appears at poetry and music festivals, as well as dabbling in the dark arts of the concrete. In the recent years he has explored the possibilities inherent in the European and North-American avant-garde traditions, and focused on disassembling language into its visual, social and linguistic units. Eiríkur is a founding member of the Nýhil poet cooperative.

In 2010 Eiríkur received a ‘Special Mention' at the Zebra Poetry Film Festival for his animated poem Höpöhöpö Böks. In 2008 Eiríkur received the Icelandic Translation Award for his translation of Motherless Brooklyn by Jonathan Lethem. Among other books he's translated is Maíkonungurinn – selected poems by Allen Ginsberg and 131.839 slög með bilum, an anthology of foreign contemporary and experimental poetry. In 2007 Eiríkur received ‘The Red Feather', an award for erotic writing given by the Krummi Reading Society. In 2006 Eiríkur received the runner-up prize in Ljóðstafur Jóns úr Vör, Iceland's most prestigious poetry prize, for his poem Parabólusetning.

Eiríkur's most recent book is the novel Gæska (‘Kindness', 2009). His second novel, Eitur fyrir byrjendur (‘Poison for beginners'), was published in Germany in 2010, as Gift für Anfänger, by Berlin-based publishers Kozempel & Timm, and is forthcoming in Swedish from Rámus.

Eiríkur's poetry and essays have been published into eleven languages.

Publisher: Nyhil / Mál og menning

Fiction