Everyone has been talking about Greenland recently, and it continues to be in the news. According to CNN and Associated Press Greenland is bracing for a record influx of American tourists this summer, with U.S. bookings surging since the president mentioned buying the territory.
For those unable to visit Greenland but wanting to learn more about it, you will now be able to read a book set on this largest island on earth. Elizabeth Birkelund’s novel, A Northern Light in Provence , will be released in paperback on May 20th , 2025. The novel promises to transport you to Greenland with its dazzling Northern Lights, whiter than white icebergs, and whales’ tales shimmering in the golden sunset – and into a very chilly early spring! For those unwilling to wait for the paperback, the hardcover edition was released in May 2024 and is available at bookstores and online.
Birkelund wrote the first draft in 2023 without having traveled to Greenland. When she told her editor that she hadn’t been there, her editor said, “Well, you know you’re going.” Her editor even agreed to go with her. Birkelund recalls, “Not only did the trip deepen our professional relationship, but my editor was able to enrich the novel with her memory of details of the trip during the editing phase.” Birkelund says she “chose Greenland” because translation is the major theme of her novel. “I wanted Ilse Erlund, the main character who is a translator, to translate ‘place’ as well as words. I knew she would be traveling to Provence, so I wanted her to originate in a chilly, cold place above the Arctic Circle. Initially, I considered having her come from Norway’s Lofoten Islands, a place I have visited. However, I ultimately settled on Greenland because of my father’s Danish heritage and because one of our family names is Rasmussen. Knud Rasmussen is famous in Greenland’s exploration history.”
Birkelund continues, “I chose a village in Provence as Ilse’s destination because many years ago, I fell in love with a Provençal village, its hilltop position and views of the Luberon mountains. I was captivated by the weekly open-air market, the bar tabac/café, where the locals meet for morning café and in the evening, sip a glass of Ricard, a licorice flavored apéritif. All my senses were awakened! I knew that my character had to discover this magical place.
Ilse Erland lives in a house by the sea on the western coast of Greenland. Isolated and restless, she convinces her publisher to pay for a trip to France, a country she has never visited but whose language she speaks fluently. Her assignment: to translate the verses of Geoffrey LaBaye, a charismatic poet known as “the last living troubadour of Provence.”
Ilse finds another “self” in Provence, where she experiences a refreshing and exciting lifestyle and embraces the French “joie de vivre.” From Greenland to Provence, readers will discover how the two cultures differ—in food, culture, and lifestyle. The heavy insulated rubber boots that Ilse and her friends wear in Greenland, as opposed to the pastel-colored espadrilles worn in Provence, highlight the influence Greenland’s harsh climate has on its residents’ lives.
Self-discovery, travel, love and romance are key themes in Birkelund’s novel. She explains that tension propels a novel forward, and the primary tension in this novel stems from restlessness and longing—a woman’s desire to get out of the confines of her home to discover the world and herself within it. Ilse Erlund is 35 years old, an age when the decision to have children hovers in her thoughts and actions. Thanks to her profession as a translator, she finds a way to exit the small settlement on the western coast of Greenland—a country she has never left. She lands in a place where she knows no one, discovering, as many of us do, that the risks of leaving bring rewards. Echoing Tennyson’s portrayal of Ulysses and his own later years, Ilse proves to herself that she is “strong in will—To strive, to seek, to find and not to yield.”
Birkelund says, “So many of my life experiences fall into the books I’ve written. In this novel, my experiences in France, experimenting with the ‘other’—a different language, a different people, a different culture, a different history, a different sensibility—have had a profound impact on my life and on my books. This, I hope, I have translated into the books I’ve written.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Elizabeth Birkelund’s most recent novel, A Northern Light in Provence, was published in May 2024. The paperback edition will be released on May 20, 2025. Her previous novels include The Runaway Wife (Harper Colins) and The Dressmaker (Henry Holt & Co.) Her original and imaginative voice invites readers to explore new worlds far away and close to home.
Prior to writing novels, Elizabeth was the personal finance columnist for Cosmopolitan magazine and a full-time freelance writer for national magazines including Glamour, Self, Victoria, Working Woman and Institutional Investor. A graduate of Brown University, she has served on the boards of the National Humanities Center in Research Triangle, NC, and the Center for Fiction, NYC. She received a fellowship from the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She lives in New York City.
