Helge Fauskanger

Helge Kåre Fauskanger (born 17 August 1971) is a Norwegian author and philologist. In Norway he is known as a crime novelist; elsewhere, he is best known as a Tolkien scholar with an interest in Tolkien's constructed languages.

Education

Fauskanger has studied both philology and religious studies, and has taken courses in classical Hebrew, Greek and Coptic. His main thesis ''The Bible in Norwegian'' (1998) compares selected texts from three widespread Norwegian Bible translations. He describes himself as an agnostic and skeptic.

Career

Fauskanger's satirical debut novel ''Fullmåne over Uroba'' ("Full Moon over Uroba" 2009) describes an alternative reality where a nation resembling the USA is located in Europe instead.

Fauskanger's debut as a crime writer was the crime novel ''Skrinet'' in 2012, published by Baskerville. This is a Sherlock Holmes pastiche where Holmes comes to Norway in 1895, and tracks down the lost reliquary of St. Sunniva. The novel ''Skarlagenssalen'' (Gyldendal 2013) is a sequel to ''Skrinet'' with the same first-person narrator, who in this story meets the ten-year-old Vidkun Quisling in 1897. Vidkun is with his father on a paranormal investigation at a dark manor in Østfold. The story is a crime thriller with inspiration from John Dickson Carr. Both ''Skrinet'' and ''Skarlagenssalen'' were awarded a dice throw of 5 by Norway's ''Verdens Gang'' newspaper.

In 2015 he published a commentary edition of The New Testament newly translated from Greek into Norwegian, observing to the annoyance of the Norwegian Bible Society that their 2011 version was more polished than the original. The translation tried to preserve illogicalities and bad language in the original Bible text. The Society commented that it was almost impossible to give the "real" text as it had mainly been presented orally and then written by people for whom Greek was not their first language; in their view Fauskanger's "polemic oozes with contempt". Fauskanger denied that he held the Bible in contempt.

Tolkien linguistics

Fauskanger is known for his linguistic work on J.R.R. Tolkien's fictional world of Middle-earth. Since the early nineties, he has been a regular contributor to ''Angerthas'', the member magazine of Norway's Tolkien Society. He started and runs the website ''Ardalambion'', devoted to the study of Tolkien's constructed languages. The site has been called "one of the principal websites for the study of Tolkien's languages". The website has been translated from English into a number of other languages. In connection with his work with Tolkien's languages, Fauskanger has appeared in the programs ''Typisk Norsk'' and '. A poem he wrote in Tolkien's invented language Quenya (''Silmessë'', "In starlight") was set to music by Carvin Knowles and had a music video made for it. Among the topics he has published papers on are Sindarin and Black Speech. He has created a 20-lesson course on Quenya, which he states "presuppose a deep and serious interest on the part of the student".

Reception

The Norwegian national newspaper ''Aftenposten'' describes Fauskanger as having "an aura of 1905 about him", the year in which his book ''Skamtegnet'' is set. It calls the book at once a historical crime novel, a murder mystery, and a streak of supernatural horror. The paper's reviewer Pål Gerhard Olsen calls the book "an excellent read" with an "exquisitely elegant" plot and a masterfully constructed ending. The paper writes that with his knowledge of multiple ancient languages "one can safely say that auskangeris almost unbearably scholarly".

Reviewing Fauskanger's book ''Skrinet'', the Norwegian daily newspaper ''Dagsavisen'' writes that the novel begins from a sentence by Arthur Conan Doyle, which mentions that Sherlock Holmes visited Norway in 1895, and the last line of ''The Adventure of Black Peter'' where Holmes says that his address will be "somewhere in Norway". Asked if this was just "literary grave robbing", Fauskanger replied that the book has fun with Holmes, St Sunniva, and Jewish Kabbalah mysticism, three things that might not seem to be connected until one reads the book.

In ''Arda Philology'', Karolina Kazimierczak writes that Fauskanger's description of Quenya in his ''Quenya Course'' could easily be read as historical musicology. She comments that his interpretation seems "loseto Tolkien's own vision of language, music, and their interrelations."

Works

* 2009 ''Fullmåne over Uroba'' (Full Moon over Uroba) – novel
* 2012 ''Skrinet'' (The Casket) – crime novel
* 2013 ''Skarlagenssalen'' (The Scarlet Hall) – crime novel
* 2015 ''Det nye testamente'' (The New Testament) – bible translation and commentary
* 2015 ''Skamtegnet'' (Sign of Shame) – crime novel
* 2021 ''Skorpionbrosjen'' (The Scorpion Brooch) – crime novel

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Fauskanger, Helge

Norwegian philologists
Norwegian crime writers
People from Bergen
1971 births

Living people