New book!

I have a new novel coming out this spring! I’ve been working on this book for a long time, so it feels like a milestone to finally be finished .

The novel is called Longyearbyen, named after the Norwegian settlement in Svalbard. I’ve grown up with stories about life in Longyearbyen, because my grandparents lived there for two years with two young children in the late 1950s. Both my grandmother and my mum have been telling me about Svalbard for as long as I can remember, and long before I published my first book, I felt sure that I would one day turn some of these stories into fiction.

Longyearbyen was an inhospitable coal mining settlement back in the 1950s, but there were a number of women and children living there. My grandfather (who sadly died in the early 1960s) came to Svalbard to work as a doctor at the tiny hospital. This was a vital job, given that the settlement was completely cut off from the world for 6 months each year. Back in the 1950s, thick sea ice surrounded the archipelago during the long winter, so no one could escape to the mainland before the ice cracked open.

The hospital in Longyearbyen in the 1950s. Photo taken by my grandfather, Gunnar Bjørner.

I’ve wanted to write a book inspired by this for more than a decade, but I kept putting it off, knowing that the project required a lot of research and time. To get myself started, I went on my first research trip to Svalbard in February 2017, and returned in June 2018. Most of the writing probably took place in 2019, though, and spilled over into 2020. I would be lying if I said I wasn’t pressed for time completing it! But the mad rush to finish it (complete with long nights and 4 AM writing sessions) makes reaching the finish line feel even more rewarding.