(I hope this will be reasonably understandable, because my English is not directly any kind of business English)
Romance written in Swedish is something quite new. Simona Ahrnstedt, our Trail blazer for romance, published her first romance (historical) in 2010. Her seventh book comes this fall. In her wake, Swedish romance exploded with several new voices 2016, and it has continued 2017 and 2018, so we are experience something of a big romance wave right now.
Simona Ahrnstedt’s – our Romance Queen – books has been translated into many languages. In 2016 she became the first Swedish romance author to translate into English. All In, the first book in her contemporary romance series was published 2016.
Before Simona, there were of course the regular bunch of Swedish love novels and love stories in weekly magazines, albeit perhaps not exactly romance according to today's definitions. And further back in time there were authors who wrote more traditional love novels, among them Margit Söderholm, whose Hellesta series (about four generations of a fictional noble family, their country estates and the life in Stockholm society from about 1800 to 1880) is something of a landmark within Swedish romantic literature.
If you look beyond the boundaries of the romance genre, there is authors who also writes about life and love. Åsa Hellberg writes a kind of Chick Lit 50+, warm, funny books about women in the middle of life who are looking for love. And Frida Skybäck writes historical fiction with strong elements of love.
Today, there are several romance authors besides Simona Ahrnstedt and Swedish romance has already branched into several romance subgenres – Historical romance, Contemorary romance, (Small town romance, Contryside romance), Paranormal romance, Female/female romance.
The Swedish romance authors – as far as I know - who writes in Swedish:
(I have, if such information is available, listed web pages and social media accounts where you can follow the author)
Simona Ahrnstedt
- Historical romance - 3 books
- Contemporary romance - 4 books (+ 1 more on the way)
- Erotic novella - 1 novella
Find and follow
Web page, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram
- Paranormal romance – 3 books
- Contemporary romance - 1 book
Find and follow
Web page, Twitter
Sofia Fritzson
- Contemporary, Small Town romance - 2 books (+ 1 more on the way)
- Erotic novella - several
Find and follow
Web page, Instagram
- Contemorary romance, Small town romance - 2 books (+ 1 more on the way)
Find and follow
Web page, Twitter, Instagram
Samanta Olofsdotter
- Historical female/female romance - 1 book
Lina Forss
- Contemporary romance - 2 books
- Contemorary, Contryside romance - 2 books (+ 1 more on the way)
Find and follow
Web page
Heléne Holmström
- Paranormal romance – 1 book
- Contemporary romance - (1 book on the way)
Find and follow
Veronica Almer
- Contemorary romance - 1 book
Find and follow
Web page, Instagram
Alice Ekström
- Historical romance / Fantasy romance - 2 books (+ 1 more on the way)
Find and follow
Web page, Instagram
- Contemorary romance - 1 book
Find and follow
And I have also found one Swedish romance author who writes in English:
Anna Belfrage
- Historical romance, (Time slip and Medieval) - several books in each series
Find and follow
Web page, Blog, Twitter
The Swedish community has in recent years grown a little like rings on the water. The central ring is, of course, Simona Ahrnstedt and her captivating books and her veritable crusade to raise the status of romance in Sweden. For large parts of our cultural/literary elite goes, roughly:
“Romance?!”
“Eww!!!”
If that sounds familiar.
Back to the rings on the water. Around Simona Ahrnstedt there is of course her readers. All her many, and very enthusiastic readers. Simona has also held several courses on writing romance. Some of her readers, and some of the participants from these courses, have formed a community around her.
One of these is the Instagram account @romanceeverafter (https://www.instagram.com/romanceeverafter/) that Simona and some of her friends is running together.
Two of these women are Sofia Fritzson and Heléne Holmström, now romance authors themselves.
Then there is Romancepodden, a Swedish podcast about romance. There are five women who run this podcast and most episodes are in Swedish.
But since two of the women behind the podcast visited RT in Atlanta this spring and did several interviews and other recordings from there, there are also some episodes in English (and it is said that there will be several more during this summer). Earlier, they have done an interview in english with an American romance author, I think it was Courtney Milan.
Then there are probably a lot of smaller groups and constellations with enthusiastic romance readers, discuss their favorite books, and aspiring romance writers, support each other, out there. There are also some book bloggers who occasionally review romance.
And well, then there it is me.
Or me and Romanceportalen, actually.
It's hard to know exactly how the Swedish romance community really looks. As rings on the water spread, new systems of rings are created around the original ones. And there is no information. In any case, no general, compiled and easily accessible information. So I've probably missed someone. Or something.
Although the information available is incomplete, I have tried to compile as much as possible of it and link all I know anything about together here on Romanceportalen.
Romanceportalen started as a series of book tips on good romance for the holiday on my personal blog in the summer of 2014. The next step was articles about romance that I had read online. You know how it is, after a while you want to read a special article again. But "Oh dear, where did I read it?"Oh, yes, the next step became a list of links to good or intresting or funny articles about romance!
And because it was not only me who could be interested of this information - there was simply NO page about romance in Swedish with all the information we were looking for - so I made a web page instead of a plain word document for my own use. And then there became a list of links to sites about romance. And a list of all the books I had suggested in my blog.
I tried to build a site with the information I was looking for, the information that was not available in Swedish. And I think I can honestly say that there is no similar site available in Swedish today.
All other pages are in Swedish. All blog posts are in Swedish.
I have reviewed both Swedish and English romance but all the reviews are in Swedish, even if I reviewed an English romance. When I reviewed an English romance, I have, in recent years, supplemented the reviews with a shorter review on English on GoodReads.
One thing led to the next and suddenly a series of pages about romance had emerged as a new section in the middle of my personal web site. And on the blog section, the Romance blog was crowded together with my personal blog.
And my book tips on good romance became longer and more and more like reviews, until they one day were reviews. I worked with the structure and lay out, so that all pages included in the Romance section of my site would be easy to recognize.
And here we are now.
My name is Elisabet Nielsen and this was my web page and my blog until Romanceportalen just sort of – happened. If you can call something that has required hours and days and months of work for something that just happened. Maybe a accidentally labour of love?
This structure is of course not the optimal but it works so far.
And, yes, I am writing.
And, of course, I'm writing something romantic. What else?
(I truly hope this text was reasonably understandable, because, as I said initially, my English is not directly any kind of business English)
This is the Romanceportalen's first and so far only page in English. Since this page was not completely impossible to create, it is possible that over time there may be a few more.
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