Vónbjørt Vang wins the Nordic Council Literature Prize for Svørt orkidé
The Nordic Council has just announced Svørt orkidé by Vónbjørt Vang as the winner of the 2025 Nordic Council Literature Prize!
In Svørt orkidé – Black Orchid in English – the poet describes a mother’s experience of having a son struggling and finding his path in life. Faced with difficulty finding the proper expression, the work provides the hardships of motherhood an artistic language through poems, lyrical glimpses, essayistic parts, collages, flashbacks and diary excerpts with references and quotes from the history of literature. The poetry collection was published alongside the essay Úr loggbókunum by the Faroese publishing house Eksil.
In the Nordic Council’s rationale for awarding Vang its Literature Prize of 2025, the jury states:
The work is part of a current wave of motherhood literature, which it both discusses and refers to. This literature creates a starting point for the work’s search for form and meaning in grief. At the same time, the collection of poems touches on topical issues of parenting in today’s society; on a system that is failing and young people who are increasingly having a bad time in life.
Click here to read the full statement from the Nordic Council.
Vónbjørt Vang, born in 1974, is an author, poet and librarian. She has studied comparative literature and holds a BA in Creative Writing. She has had short stories and poems published in a variety of journals and anthologies. She has released three poetry collections, Millumlendingar (2011), Djúpini (2017) and Svørt orkidé (2023), as well as the essay Úr loggbókunum (2023).
The Nordic Council Literature Prize has been awarded every year since 1962 to a work written in a Nordic language of particularly high literary and artistic quality, and the prize is regarded as one of the most prestigious awards in the Nordic region. Over the years, only three Faroese writers have won the award; William Heinesen for the Danish-language novel Det gode håb in 1965, Rói Patursson for the Faroese-language poetry collection Líkasum in 1986, and now also Vónbjørt Vang. The Nordic Council hands out a total of five prizes, each worth 300.000 DKK, during the annual Session of the Nordic Council in late autumn. The prizes and statuettes will formally be handed out to the prize recipients during this year’s session in Stockholm, Sweden next week.
