11 Jan

Posted at 16:27h in Narrative Cosmonauts

Have you come across Siri the Viking girl yet? If you have, you can now look forward to a fourth book and her return to Constantinople. If you haven’t yet made her acquaintance, you have something to look forward to! Siri is a feisty Pippi Longstocking kind of girl, presented in words and images that are reminiscent of Asterix – as clever as entertaining.

The next Siri book will appear by the end of April and is titled Calamity in Constantinople (Kalabalik i Konstantinopel). I recently met with her creators Patric Nyström and Per Demervall in Istanbul, where the Turkish translation was launched in early November, and took the opportunity to ask some questions about characterization and world-making.

Ingela: Many things have happened since 2016, when I chanced upon Siri in Dagens ETC, bought the first book and contacted you for an interview. Is it possible to describe briefly what the journey has been like for you and Siri since then?

Patric & Per: It’s actually been staggering, but also slow, partly because of the deplorable Covid pandemic. But we’ve been pegging away with several books so now if feels as if more and more people know about Siri.
Then we have to say that Siri and the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul really have found each other in a fantastic way – and of course also the people behind Siri and the institute.

Ingela: Speaking of which: the translation of the first two books into Turkish, as well as Siri’s participation in the digital exhibition “Nordic Tales, Byzantine Paths”, feels rather unexpected and exciting. What was it like to take Siri into a Turkish language environment?

Patric & Per: We felt confident all along that the interplay between word and image would work also in another language. Our hope is that the Turkish children will learn not only a part of their history, but also develop their own reading habits and language through the books and the exhibition.

Ingela: Siri started out by travelling to Miklagård/Constantinople in the first book. She has since then been visited by her friend Zack in the North (second book) and travelled to France to see Paris (third book), but I understand that she is now going to return to Constantinople. Why? And can you reveal anything about what will happen to her this time?

Patric: I felt it was time for Zack to visit his home in Constantinople again. I wanted to show his parents and the cityscape in more detail this time.
I have based Zack’s dad on Michael III, the youngest son of Emperor Theophilos. I made Eudokia Ingerina, Michael’s mistress, into Zack’s mom.
I thought this would give an obscure enough background to our little hero. I also invented a new villain, which was a bit scary when you’re used to Ivar and Grym.
This book is the most difficult I have written so far, since I had so many ideas and threads. But now I hope that they have all resulted in an entertaining story about a ring that brings luck to the emperor and the people and how it gets stolen by our new villain.

Ingela: You have actually created an entire world together in words and images – a historical world, but at the same time a world of its own and an imaginary version of what you have seen and read. Perhaps it’s a silly question, but how does this co-creative process come about?

Patric: It really is joint work. I write my manuscript based on what I have read during my research for a new book. In the manuscript I describe environments, monuments and buildings to Per, but also the characters that the children encounter. I try to incorporate historical events in order to infuse some more life into my stories. For example, the monk Ansgar lost almost 40 books to pirates on his first trip to Birka and I associated this with an idea I had about the Viking myth of the source of wisdom: that it could contain books. These thoughts eventually led to Mimir’s Well, the second book about Siri and Zack.

Per: Wow! That’s a question that demands a long digression! 🙂 But I will try to offer a short version.

When Patric has written his first draft, we go through it first individually and then together. At this point we’re brainstorming ideas and come up with all sorts of follies. When that’s done, Patric writes up the manuscript, which I then take and break it down into sketches of comic pages. We try to work in parallel as much as possible. I look up the environments and buildings which are to be recreated, the uniforms of guards and soldiers and so on.

When it comes to characters, it’s important to ‘build’ the persons based on their characteristics. In the forthcoming book, there is a sleazy advisor who has an assistant by his side. They have to be in sync, so there’s quite a bit of sketch work before I can feel that they are right. Of course, Patric also needs to feel that they are right for his manuscript. When it comes to buildings there is much material to draw on. I try to make my own reconstructions based on that material, so that the series has its own profile. But the most important is that image and text unite beautifully, which we think they do.

Ingela: Finally, there are rumours about a film adaptation – can you say anything about that? Is Siri going to Hollywood?

Per: That’s correct, there’s a great interest. We have a big film producer, a director and an animation company ready to take on Siri. But to launch Siri as an animated film is a long process. We have begun that journey and hope we will make it all the way.

As we are wrapping up, I come to think of one more question that I need to ask – something I’ve been wondering about when reading, but feel a little embarrassed to ask.

Ingela: I just realized I have one last question, if you have time. It’s not meant to be a snobbish academic question, I’m seriously curious: which language do you think that Siri speaks with Zack and other people she meets on her travels? Or is there a language in her world that goes beyond our ideas of languages bound to specific places?

 

Per: Ha-ha. That one is for Patric.

Patric: Thanks for the question 🙂 Of course, the complicated answer is that Siri and Zack speak Old Norse, because Zack grew up surrounded by his dad’s Varangian guards. When they’re in Paris they get around with Old Norse too. When it comes to Greek in Constantinople, I guess Zack interprets for Siri, but that would be very tedious to include in the books!
It is, in fact, likely that in the wonderful world of comics everyone speaks the same language, maybe thanks to the fact that they all have a Babel Fish behind their ears.*

This answer is indeed symptomatic of Siri and her creators: a combination of learning and pop culture, serious craft and a great sense of humour. Obviously, in the wonderful world of not only comics and fantasy, but also medieval storytelling, language is rarely an issue – characters and plots transgress such boundaries and that’s how storyworlds travel, effortlessly, through time and space.

Ingela Nilsson

* For those of you who are not familiar with the Babel Fish, check out The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams – according to Patric “the best novel ever”.

SIRI’S INSTAGRAM 

SIRI’S FACEBOOK

SIRI ON YOUTUBE

 

16 Dec

Posted at 14:44h in Other

The Swedish Institute at Athens and the Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul present the Gustav Karlsson Lecture on Byzantine Culture and Literature, given by Stratis Papioannou (University of Crete & Swedish Institute at Athens), on the topic of Readerly Pleasures in Byzantium. 

The lecture takes place on Tuesday, December 20, 2022, at 19h (Athens time), at the Swedish Institute at Athens, Mitseon 9, and via zoom link. To participate either way, please register. 

 

17 Oct

Posted at 11:00h in Other

Three of our team members, Christian Høgel, Daria Resh and Stratis Papaioannou will participate in the 6th Interantional Byzantine Seminar Lecture Series at the Institute for the History of Ancient Civilizations (IHAC) at the Northeast Normal University in Changchun (China), under the general theme Realism in Hagiography. The dates and titles below. The seminars will be held online. To register and join, contact the organizer. 

05 Jul

Posted at 11:49h in Into the Storyworlds

Scene 1: Day, inside

After walking in the spring rain through the narrow streets of Pera, we finally reach Kiraathane – the Literature House in Istanbul. We sit around the big table in a rather cramped room, a room literally full of writers. The dark clouds of the sky reflect the conversation: faces are drawn, deep breaths are taken between the sentences, sighs mingle with each other as Sami writers explain what has been damaged: the language, the heritage, the drums, the dignity, the forests, the land! When one question is repeated, curiously and insistently: “But why? Why cannot you advocate your cause, solve the issue by relying on the well-functioning democratic framework that you are lucky enough to live in?”, the writers simply look at each other, tears in their eyes. What can be heard in that silence is the hurtful truth: Because even the most democratic people may choose to be ignorant, to violate and stay silent.

Scene 2: Night, inside

The same evening, people are mingling with wine glasses in their hands, trying to sneak a peek through the kitchen door where waiters appear with delicious and exquisite finger food on silver trays. The ballroom of the Swedish Consulate General in Istanbul is filled with people from the literary scene of Turkey, Sami writers are dressed in bright colours, answering people’s questions with warm smiles. I find myself interpreting for a Sami writer and a Kurdish publisher. He asks her what she knows about Kurdish people. She says, I know about the Halabca Massacre, feeling terrified when I heard about it. And I know that your situation here is much more brutal than ours. He sighs, says “I don’t know whether it is worse now than before. We keep tasting new versions of brutality, it’s hard to compare. I was imprisoned for seven years because I published a Kurdish novel back in the 1990s. Now I can publish, but the situation is still not better. I ask you, my fellow writer, howcome years do not change anything, how can this be possible?” She listens while I interpret with trembling words, just barely holding back the tears. We stop talking for a few seconds before we smile at each other again.

Belongings as a project

Belongings is a bilateral exchange project for Sami and Kurdish writers, a collaboration between two Literature Houses: Tjállegoahte in Jokkmokk, Sweden, and Wêjegeh Amed in Diyarbakir, Turkey. The project is funded by the Consulate General of Sweden in Istanbul, Kulturrådet, Region Norrbotten and the Sami Parliament. As the project coordinator, I find my role very inspiring, mediating between these two amazing literary ecosystems. At the centre of the project are ten writers – five Sami and five Kurdish – who were found through an open call in 2021. Four pages from their works were made available in translation and they all met at six online workshops, where the writers could get to know each other in Sami-Kurdish pairs based on their profile. The kick-off workshop was hosted by the Swedish Research Institute, where Ingela Nilsson (Uppsala University), Tolga Cora (Boğaziçi University), Onur Günay (Princeton University), and Olle Kejonen (Uppsala University) gave talks about translation and storytelling in minority contexts. This year, 2022, the Sami writers travel to Diyarbakir and the Kurdish writers to Jokkmokk. All writers attend all events and keep field journals. The project’s end product is a collectively written book, based on these field notes and published in three languages: Kurdish, Sami and English.

In reality…

In April 2022, after spending two days in Istanbul, we finally went to Diyarbakir to meet up with our fellow Kurdish writers. The Project’s interpreter, Salih – who had acted as simultaneous interpreter throughout the online workshops – was not in Wejegeh Amed when we arrived late in the evening. Accordingly, we had a shy start where no one knew how to communicate, who to interpret, or even what to talk about! After a roundtable introduction, some refreshments helped us to loosen up a bit: writers started to find their ‘other half’ from the workshops, phones got pulled out, Google translate joined us at the table and opened for friendly smiles and chats. Anyone who could took on the role of interpreter–enabler, without realizing that we were actually embarking on quite a demanding journey for the next couple of days.

        

Talk in the Swedish Research Institute in Istanul (Photo: AK)

The morning after we were in Wejegeh Amed for the panel sessions which were given by two of the Kurdish writers: on the city and its history and the city as a cultural scene. It was interesting to simply look at the room full of writers who had first gotten to know each other as squares on the Zoom screen, now being in the same room, being in Diyarbakir – cultural capital of Kurdish scene in Turkey! Sami writers were taking notes with such enthusiasm, reminding me of the energy of students in the first day of school. From the empires and kingdoms that had governed the city in the past, to more recent and democratic governments of the last one hundred years, they had all made such an impact on the liberties and restrictions of language and expression. After all this listening, it was then time to see the city with our own eyes through a guided tour.

Walk and talk on Diyarbakir streets (Photo: AK)

On the edge of a wall

Walking as a large group with our guide, on the ancient city walls of Diyarbakir…
Dilawer is approaching me in a whispering tone: “He tells the dry version of history, but our Sami colleagues need insights! I want to tell them about the old prison complex here for instance, could you interpret to Anne Marja?” I say yes and start facilitating this guerrilla city tour movement of Dilawer, which would in fact continue throughout the entire trip with several Sami recruits. When we reach the old cathedral of the city, Anne Marja says: “I will stick with you, Dilawer. No wonder you have written a book about the cultural roots of Kurdish idioms!” We walk and talk, through different streets, in different combinations of people.

One moment I listen to an interpreted conversation about the Kurdish spoken in the streets, mixed with Turkish, the other I hear how Samis are against building this kind of magnificent buildings. How, on the contrary, houses are burned after people died and only ash remains, in the middle of the woods. How some elderly people even start burning down the barn when they feel their time is coming! We ask and reply, talk and walk, show and point, explain and ensure… After four hours of this, we find ourselves exhausted, sitting in the courtyard of an old Diyarbakir stone house. Laughing our eyes out when we hear two people talking about the different methods of construction in these old houses – a “cultural exchange overdose”.

When we reach Wejegeh Amed in the evening for the Sami panel, everyone is tired but still eager to listen, talk, ask, learn! Salih is tired but continues to interpret between Turkish, Kurdish, English and Swedish. Quite a crowd of literature enthusiasts show up to the panel, where we hear about seven Sami languages, the consequences of the colonization of Sami land and resources, assimilation, being split between four countries… Things that the Kurdish audience certainly can relate to even before they finish the sentence. Salih’s tiredness reveals his playful personality more and more when he interprets. When someone in the audience insists, “It must be seven dialects, not languages”, Lea answers the question with the same certainty: “No, we do have seven languages.” Salih reacts to her instead of interpreting directly, “Really? I didn’t know this, what a shame that I had no idea about it!” This makes the audience break out in laughter, his “unprofessional” and sincere approach as an interpreter.

Panel in Wejegeh Amed, Diyarbakir 2 (Photo: AK)

Between meanings

When the panel is over, duties are not. The duty of telling, the duty of interpreting, the duty of reflecting on what has been heard: not only because of the interest, but also as a sign of respect for the interpreters allowing the words to reach us. When I take a short break from another intense conversation as interpreter–enabler, I encounter the people of the Swedish Consulate in a luxurious moment of being able to speak in only one language, if not my mother tongue. We talk and joke about Salih’s funny way of understanding interpretation. The Consul General says, “I think he does really well in this context. He breaks the ice by commenting and showing reactions while interpreting, it works perfectly in this cultural exchange setting! However, I could never work with such an interpreter. I need my words to be interpreted precisely, with the exact amount of elaboration; no more, no less. Because in diplomacy, interpretation can fulfil its purpose only in this way.”

Kurdish & Sami poetry night in Diyarbakir (Photo: AK)

Another day, we are on our way to Mardin. Everyone is taking the chance to watch the landscape, rural areas, villages, animals by the road. When we reach the open air museum of Dara, locals encourage us to start with the Roman cistern, but the group want to wait for the Kurdish writers to arrive. While waiting for them, someone says, “Can we cut the history part a bit short today? This place is historical, no doubt, but we couldn’t care less about Roman history! We are here, in this special place by the Mesopotamian plain, by the Syrian border! We would like to talk about cross-border communication, divided families, forced migration between the borders – you know, it’s our issues  too.”

At some point that day, I look around the bus and realize with panic that Kovan and Anne Marja are sitting in the two front seats – how will they manage? It’s too late, the bus is moving.

 

I hear them talking through Google and just a few minutes later, the loudest laughter. Anna comes up and asks me to interpret a question: “Did you personally suffer negative consequences from writing in Kurdish?” Dilawer replies in a calm manner. When he initiated a short story contest in the memory of a young Kurdish boy who had been killed, yes, there was an investigation. Also, he was arrested once when the police by coincidence found the idiom dictionary he had authored in his car. And yes, he was also fired from his teaching job at the university for signing a peace petition. As I am listening to him, he smiles softly and says, “Tell her I didn’t say these things to make her cry”. I turn and see Anna in tears. This time she apologizes, “Tell him that I wish I wasn’t crying, but I’m a person who cannot hide my feelings”. They both smile at each other. As we are silent for a minute, I suddenly hear the entire bus! People in groups of two or three, talking about politics, history, literature, criticism, identity, assimilation, language, all carried out through interpretation. “The nerdiest bus in the world”, I say to those around me. We laugh.

Text development workshop in Mordem, Diyarbakir (Photo: AK))

Stretching the word

Later that day, after the panel, I find a few of them talking about TikTok with dancing gestures. A Sami writer says that language activism is most efficient in the kind of places where you can engage the youth: TikTok, Snapchat, video games… A Kurdish writer talks about a video game project that she is involved in. In the meantime, one of them imitates a “famous” TikTok dance that I had no idea about. I hear joy and laughter, yet I cannot see any interpreter among them. It works anyhow, in a kind of mystical way which I believe lies in the ultimate intention of those writers to understand each other. It works, in a magical way that I never thought it would before the trip.

We spend another busy day sightseeing, visiting civic spaces in Diyarbakir. We visit the musical kindergarten that aims to preserve the mother tongue through Kurdish music, we  visit the city theatre, the language preservation institute. We have our closing text development workshop to exchange ideas as inspiration for composing the texts based on the field journals. In the evening we have a poetry evening and listen to Sami and Kurdish poems. Some presented with a sentence of explanation, some with only words and feelings. We listen to Kurdish deingbej and Sami joik on the same stage. The first moment the deingbej starts singing in Kurdish, Lis-Marie looks at me with eyes wide open: “He is joiking!”.

At the last night of the trip, the two tables are competing with each other in a singing contest. One can hear Sami and Kurdish in a random order since the tables are mixed. Then the applause. Then the dancing. Then warm hugs when saying goodbye. Interpreters are in demand at this stage: I hear my name being called randomly and frequently under the dark sky. “Can you tell her/him that this is not the end?” “Can you tell her/him I never thought I would have these amazing Sami/Kurdish friends?” “Can you tell her/him that I will follow up on what we talked about when they come to Sapmi?” 

I told it all. From one side to the other. Back with the answer. With careful consideration and in the easiest way possible. I am no interpreter though, just like many others in the group who still functioned as interpreter–enablers during this trip. I was just a person who speaks two languages fluently and happened to find myself among people who want to tell each other many, many stories, regardless of language.
(June, 2022)

 

Alev Karaduman

is a research-based writer and cultural consultant from Istanbul who works mostly within the area of diverse communities and identity issues.
She is currently based in Malmö and writes a column (in Turkish - https://otdergi.com) about humourist human situations related to migration.