Nordic Council Literature Prize Awarded to Sámi Novel

The novel Láŋtdievvá/Planterhaug (Backwoods Fable) depicts the journey of Police Commissioner Huuva. He is a Norwegianised Sámi who travels from Oslo back to the Sámi village of Planterhaug to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of the old drunkard Nilsen.

The murder case serves as the work's external focal point, but in Planterhaug nothing is as it first appears. Huuva is met with silence, evasive answers and enigmatic statements.

On Tuesday, it was announced that this novel by Sigbjørn Skåden, a Sámi author from southern Troms, Sápmi/Northern Norway, is the winner of the 2026 Nordic Council Literature Prize.

The prize was last awarded to a Sámi-language work in 1991, when it went to Beaivi, áhčážan/The Sun, My Father by Nils-Aslak Valkeapää.

"A force field"

Láŋtdievvá/Planterhaug has been published simultaneously in Tornedalian Sámi and Norwegian, and assessed by both a Sámi and a Norwegian jury.

This literary work offers the reader much food for thought, according to the Sámi jury.

"The novel Láŋtdievvá is a force field condensed into 185 pages. The novel’s plot is full of abrupt turns, enigmatic scenes, meals of blood and offal, threatening beings from Sámi oral tradition, situational comedy, and a language that is a feast for all of your senses in one fell swoop. The author has also seasoned the novel with a wealth of allusions to literature and music," the jury writes.

The Norwegian jury describes the work as an exceptionally original novel.

"Planterhaug is a deeply poetic and melancholic novel, rich in detail and with a literary force rarely seen in contemporary Norwegian literature. Skåden alternates between Nynorsk, Bokmål and Sámi. These linguistic shifts distinguish the characters’ sense of belonging, their distances from one another, and their positions of power, the Norwegian jury members maintain, continuing:

"The novel’s play with language, family history, and symbols gives the text a clear historical gravity. Huuva’s investigation both looks back at the policies of Norwegianisation and ahead to questions of Sámi identity in present-day Norway."

The prize will be awarded during the Nordic Council's session in Helsinki on 27 October. Skålden will receive  the 'Nordlys' statuette and DKK 300,000.