Tor Eystein Øverås

Baltic. A literary journey

How can it be that in Norway, Los Angeles feels much closer than, say, Helsinki, a city situated in our neighbourhood?
In 2002 Tor Eystein Øverås made a journey around the Baltic Sea, through all nine countries that border the sea. He started out in his hometown Bodø, and travelled for eight months,. Øverås wanted to map his world. Tor Eystein Øverås follows literary traces in the landscape, and traces of film and art. He visits places writers lived, places that are settings for literary works, and reflects on literature and landscape, literature and its sense of time and place, literature as collective memory, and the relationship between literature and nationality.
So much concerning literature is based on the concept of a national literature. Øverås wanted to cross borders in the Baltic region, and look for literary connections that transgresses national borders. He aims to connect the national literatures around the Baltic Sea, make them into a whole, a new literature.

This book was first published in 2005 by Gyldendal with the title Til. The new edition in 2017 called Baltic. A literary journey is a radically shortened text (70 000 words).