Wassmo, Herbjørg

Herbjørg Wassmo is one of Norway's most popular authors. She was born in Myre in northern Norway. She inherited her joy of storytelling from her two grandmothers and started to write poetry at school. She continued to write in her spare time while attending teacher-training college at Bodø and reading literature at the University of Tromsø. Wassmo published a poetry collection entitled Vingeslag in 1976, but she is best known for her novels. Her books were major commercial successes in Scandinavia and Europe in the ‘80s and ‘90s, and in 1987 she was the first Norwegian woman writer to be awarded the Nordic Council Literature Prize.