Between the Map and the Terrain: Erlend O. Nødtvedt's Vestlandet

Abstract

This article explores heteropian, utopian and dystopian places in Erlend O. Nødtvedt’s 2017 novel, Vestlandet, in order to better understand how the author uses references to regional historical and contemporary figures and events to construct what Edward Said labeled a cultural archive in a larger anti-imperialist project. Language, landscape, and identity form the core of Nødtvedt’s project. This raucously humorous novel activates the Foucauldian heteropias of indefinitely accumulating time and of the festival, as well as Marc Augé’s notion of the non-place in order to comment upon the perceived cultural and political divide between western and eastern Norway.