Portál Pražana
Nordic Days 2019
Nordic Days 2019, the tenth annual festival of Nordic culture, will take place from the 29th of October until the 6th of November in Prague. The festival will include films, a debate and even a guided tour. The theme of this year's jubilee festival, which presents significant cultural achievements in Scandinavian countries, is "journey", in all its different meanings.
Three films about journeys
The films in the festival are all about journeys. ‘Road North’ a Finnish film directed by Mika Kaurismäki, Aki Kaurismäki’s brother, will be screened. This comedy road-trip movie narrates the story of a father and son, two men as different as can be, who set out on a journey across Finland in a stolen car. This movie has an amazing soundtrack.
Other films to be screened in the Evald Cinema are ‘Illusive Tracks’, an atmospheric Swedish movie, and ‘Pathfinder’, a Norwegian adventure movie inspired by Sami mythology, and the first movie to ever be recorded in Northern Sami, the language of Nordic nomads.
In the footsteps of a Finnish bohemian
The theme of journeys is also reflected in a special event, a guided walk through Prague following the footsteps of the short story ‘Time in Prague’ by the Finnish writer Pentti Saarikoski. The translators Lenka Fárová and Michal Švec will be the tour guides.
Saarikoski spent several weeks in Prague between the years 1966 and 1967 with his partner, East German poet Sarah Kirsch. While wandering through the city, he kept a diary, which later became a literary hit in Finland. It was published in the Czech Republic for the first time in 2017 by Dybbuk Press publishing house.
Scandinavia –a depression or a way to be happy?
The culmination of this year's festival will be a debate on literature, with Auður Avy Ólafsdóttir, Icelandic writer and the 2018 winner of the Nordic Council Literature Prize, whose three novels have been translated into Czech (‘Butterflies in November’, ‘Hotel Silence’ and ‘The Greenhouse’); and Andrey Hejlskov, a Danish writer and blogger, who wrote ‘Escape to the Wild’, a book on escaping from civilisation.
The theme of the discussion will be the Nordic concept of life: are Scandinavians depressed introverts or do they hold the key to happiness? These topics will be discussed in the Gulliver Airship, a steel and wooden structure in the shape of a blimp, in the DOX Centre for Contemporary Art.
For further information, please visit: http://www.skandinavskydum.cz/en/