Stef Penney on the coming of age of her latest novel, The Long Water
Back in January 2022 we commissioned award-winning author Stef Penney to write a novel with a strong sense of place set in Nordland - with only two prerequisites: Penney had to write the book remotely (i.e. without having set foot in Nordland) and she would get tips from locals as inspiration for the book.
This was a unique legacy project that was to bring an outside perspective to the daily lives of local inhabitants in Nordland, give Bodø2024 an opportunity to work in a truly innovative way, and reach out to a broad international audience.
Fast forward to July 2024 and here it is at last – Stef Penney’s new novel hit the shelves on 4 July! We attended the book launch, which was held at the famous Stanfords Bookshop in London earlier this month. We grabbed the opportunity to catch up with Stef Penney and ask her a few questions.
Stef Penney at the book launch at Stanfords Bookshop in London. All photos: Marie Peyre / Bodø2024
This is a very unusual project, what attracted you to it?
Number one, that it takes place in the Arctic, and I am in love with the Arctic! Since writing my first book, The Tenderness of Wolves, I have returned again and again to northern and/or snowbound landscapes. I’m just endlessly fascinated for reasons I don’t really understand – perhaps because of my Scottish childhood when I spent holidays in the Highlands, much of which have a sub-Arctic ecosystem.
What is it like writing about a place you have not visited?
I get asked this question a lot. My usual answer is that you create the setting of a story in the same way that you create the characters; you make it what the story needs it to be. In many ways the landscape is just another character. And a novel is fiction, after all.
Just as you learn all you can about a historical period before you can write about it, you have to teach yourself about another place. I do the research. The internet is a fantastic resource, and I accumulate banks of photographs, maps, blogs, even YouTube videos. I also – like everyone – watch films and TV – the series Skam and Delete Me were particularly helpful with some of the social background, but it’s always maps and photographs that first draw me to a particular place, and then keep my mind’s eye focused there.
You received lots of tips from locals at the start of the process, some of them anonymously. Were there any other locations or stories that awakened your curiosity and that you could have written about?
There were lots of fascinating snippets that cropped up, like the story of the Venetian sailors shipwrecked on the island of Røst in the 15th century, and there were pictures of stunning places on islands, and stories about the hardships of grandparents who made a living from fishing and farming. However, I wanted to avoid treading too closely in the footsteps of those, like Roy Jacobsen, who have written beautifully about Nordland life in the past. I also knew that the timescale was too short for the in-depth research I normally like to do, and so this necessarily became a contemporary story, albeit with some historical back story. I quite quickly focused in on Sulitjelma and its mining past, and from then on, everything grew out of that.
You particularly enjoyed talking to the young people who came to the virtual writing workshops we organised, can you say a bit about that?
It was something that I was nervous about, never having done it before, but it was so rewarding, and I am continually humbled by Norwegians’ proficiency in English. I already knew that some of the main characters would be teenagers, so I was able to ask them about their lives and preoccupations; even really simple things like, what it’s like going to school in winter when it never gets light? I learned a lot from them – for example, I had no idea that Norway still has military service, and I knew nothing about the school-leaving tradition of the russ, which became a big part of the story.
You asked for people locally to lend their names for characters in the book, an unusual way to find names for characters. How did that go?
So far so good! It’s interesting to speculate why, but a lot more women than men responded to this request. But in the end most of the characters in the book now share a first name, family name, or sometimes both, with a local who either nominated themselves, a loved one or an ancestor. I know nothing about the original owners, so… I hope they like the results!
You will be travelling to Bodø and Sulitjelma, where part of the book is set, in September. What are you most looking forward to?
It will be great to be there in the flesh and see how closely (or not!) it corresponds to the idea of the place I have built in my mind. I would love to get some wild swimming in (dependent on weather and temperature – it will be late September by then, so we’ll see…). Most all, I hope I’ll get to meet some of the people I’ve spoken to or emailed with over the last two years. I’d love to know what they think of the book!
Stef Penney is signing books and talking to visitors at Stanfords Bookshop about her book.
Stef Penney chatting with her editor Jane Wood.
About Stef Penney
Stef Penney is a screenwriter and author of five novels: The Tenderness of Wolves (2006), The Invisible Ones (2011), Under a Pole Star (2016), The Beasts of Paris (2023) and The Long Water (2024). She has also written extensively for radio, including adaptations of Moby Dick and The Worst Journey in the World. The Tenderness of Wolves won the Costa Book of the Year Award and the Theakston's Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award (one of the UK's top crime-fiction awards). It has been translated into 30 languages.
The Long Water was earlier this year featured on The Guardian’s list of 'books to look out for in 2024':