Sólrún Michelsen in Hungarian
Sólrún Michelsen’s 2019 novel Ein táttur er silvur (Eng. One Thread is Silver) has been published in Hungarian by publisher Polar Könyvek as A sors fonala – Ezüst. Kata Veress translated the book from Faroese into Hungarian.
The novel begins with a tragic event. A mother dies during childbirth, leaving ten children behind. Not an uncommon incident over a hundred years ago. The grief is silenced. The father remarries, the children are dispersed, and their fates take very different turns. Taking place in the late nineteenth century, the novel weaves the conflicts within religion, politics, trade unions and culture that transpired at the turn of the century, into tales of destiny – including the one of tyrannical Axel Fr. Moe, who is sent to the Faroes by the Danish Inner Mission. The one girl, who has big plans for her future, goes to a farm to work and earn some money before going abroad to follow her dream. The farmer rapes her, and a baby is born. Nobody gets to know who the father is, but she must live with the shame. We follow her through her lonely journey as she tries to regain her footing after the atrocity.
Ein táttur er silvur is the first installment in a family saga trilogy by Sólrún Michelsen, released between 2019 and 2021. Since making her debut in 1994, Michelsen has written several books for both children and adults in different genres. She has received several literary awards in the Faroe Islands and was notably nominated for the 2015 Nordic Council Literature Prize for Hinumegin er mars. Her 2019-2021 trilogy was published in late 2021 in one compiled edition titled Nornan spinnur (Eng. The Norn Spins).
Kata Veress, born in 1989, is an experienced translator working mainly from Nordic languages into Hungarian and German. Besides Sólrún Michelsen, her translations of works by Kim Simonsen, Oddfríður Marni Rasmussen, Katrin Ottarsdóttir, Tóroddur Poulsen, Vónbjørt Vang and Sissal Kampmann have previously been published in Hungary. Veress was one of 13 translators that attended a translation seminar in the Faroe Islands last summer, organised by FarLit.
