The author and the translator



Bergen 1993:


Arild Haaland is 73 years of age and is, like Hamlet, ‘extremely quick in his perceptions and wide awake in answering’. He has for 45 years worked in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Bergen, where his students have especially valued his interest in relating philosophical questions to our daily lives. In the words of a colleague: ‘Haaland not only writes about philosophers, he is one’.

His publications include books on Nazism, Nietzsche, Plato, Ibsen, Hamsun, international politics, economy and taxation, and art, as well as numerous articles, especially on cultural issues. He is a generous donator of works of art to his native Bergen and other communities, and he cultivates his hobby of restoring old houses to their former beauty.

Arild Haaland lives simply and prefers a dinner of fried eggs, supplemented with onions, which he claims also kept the Vikings vigorous.

Marianne Haslev Skånland is a linguist and philologist who likes texts, lexicography, translation, cats, mushrooms, trees and nature.