It is with deep sorrow we have received the news about the passing of Thomas Hylland Eriksen, a distinguished member of our Editorial Board and a professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Oslo. He was highly esteemed within many academic fields of knowledge all over the world, his books translated into many languages, and he was one of the most influential intellectuals in Norway during the span of at least three decades.
This year I had the great pleasure of working with him on the new NWCC series «What is happening to us?«, running from now on and through most of 2025.
A personal memory: Thomas was one of the friendliest people I have ever met. Even though we never were personal friends, we had a special connection dating back to the late 1990’s, when he was the editor of the Norwegian journal Samtiden. I sent him a rather ironic essay about how Norwegians and other Scandinavians for a couple of hundred years treated Rome as a romantic site for their blind adoration of the greatness of Roman art and history – including Norwegian academics working in the eternal city. It took only a few hours before he mailed me back that the essay was accepted for publication, and with an enthusiasm I will never forget. His open-minded attitude inspired me to seek a new direction with genres like «essayspeech», «essayistic action» and «sakpoesi» (non-fictional poetry).
In the midst of the deep sorrow stemming from this great loss, we deeply admire and appreciate his fighting spirit and perseverance on the book he managed to complete last summer and publish this fall, Det umistelige (The Inalienable). In this book he touches, in a brilliant and curious way, upon almost every aspect of the environmental crisis and the overheating of our planet (a concept he outlined and established as a field of research). The way he draws parallels between different areas of knowledge becomes in this book exceptional literature as well.
Our thoughts and compassion go out to his family and close ones, with eternal gratitude. Peace be to the good memory of Thomas Hylland Eriksen.
On behalf of the NWCC,
Freddy Fjellheim
/ Photo: Jan Tore Eriksen
KLIMAAKSJON / NORWEGIAN WRITERS´ CLIMATE CAMPAIGN // NWCC 