I've been reading a lot of Henning Mankell Swedish mysteries and novels by Peter Hoeg. In my tbr pile I have several works by Sigrid Undset. What next? What Scandinavian authors/books do you recommend?

Tove Jansson's series of children's books is excellent!  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moomins

Oh, those look so fun!

Martin Birck's Youth by Hjalmar Soderberg is a lovely book (He was Swedish).

I'm going to cheat and recommend William Heinesen, who was from the Faroe Islands - The Lost Musicians is one of my all time favorite books. 

While I'm at it, Halldor Laxness (from Iceland) - his book, The Iceland Bell, is also a good read. It was required reading for me in 9th grade and I enjoyed it even back then!

Selma Lagerloef (swedish):  Goesta Berling's Saga - lots of drama and broken hearts, but immensely readable.

And how about some vikings whacking each other over their heads?  Laxdaela Saga is the easiest of the Viking sagas, romantic and tragic (as most of the sagas are).

Kerstin Ekman is swedish mystery writer, also very good.

Similar to Mankell is Karin Fossum  from Norway.

Finnish : Arto Paasilinna is very funny, very weird, very good.  The Year of the Hare is available in English. I hope that his book about the traveling suicide club will be translated soon - I start laughing and shaking my head just thinking about it!

I hope that's of some help..

oooh, Asta, thanks! This should keep me busy for a while. I actually just started reading Blackwater by Kerstin Ekman, and I'm really enjoyng it so far.

I would recommend Vilhelm Moberg's series that begins with The Emigrants, continues with Unto a Good Land and The Settlers, and concludes with The Last Letter Home.   Giants in the Earth by Ole Rolvaag is a very good novel about Norwegian-American pioneers.   You might even go back and read a Knut Hamsun novel; Hamsun was a Nobel Prize for Literature winner 'way back when.  My choice would be Growth of the Soil.

Bonnie, those all look great! Good to include fiction on emigration!

The Summer Book by Tove Jansson is awesome. Its about spending the summer on an island with an unconventional grandmother. 

Popular Music from Vittula by Mikael Niemi is also great. Its about a boy growing up in northern Sweden in the 60s.

Thanks Amy - those both sound great.

I've started using the new tagging system to label things as Scandinavian fiction, and am tagging a lot of the great books y'all have suggested. thanks!

Naive Super is amazing, by a Norwegian author whose name I can't recall. Bought it in Oslo so I don't know if you can find it here.

I went on to try the classic Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo books, they are married.  And the newer Hakan Nesser who I did not enjoy as much.

I don't know about Nesbo, but I also recommend Viking romances (they're violent, they're funny, and they're all about chest thumping, derring-do, and fair maidens who can swing a mean sword :). If you can read drama (I know people who can only watch it :P), you should try August Strindberg (yes, he's pretty misogynistic, but works like Miss Julie and The Father pack a punch you won't soon forget) and Henrik Ibsen (Hedda Gabler, A Doll's House...)

Bret H.  Did you forget to mention that oldie-but-goodie The Wonderful Adventures of Nils?  It's by Selma Lagerloef, and Nils is a 14-year-old boy who goes on a wild goose chase . . . well, read it for yourself!  (I gave my hostess in Jonkoping some lovely goose figurines after an interesting few days' visit there---they were supposed to represent the goose in this famous old book.)

How could I forget my idol since I was about 7 years old: Pippi Longstocking! There are several books about this girl-heroine (all by Astrid Lindgren), and all are utterly awesome!

Lindgren also wrote a nice YA/medieval fantasy (without Pippi :P), The Brothers Lionheart.

Anybody know Soren Olsson and Anders Jacobsson?   My son just got "In Ned's Head" for Christmas.  Seems like fun children's book.

The Horrific Sufferings Of the Mind-Reading Monster Hercules Barefoot: His Wonderful Love and His Terrible Hatred by Carl-Johan Vallgren.                                     

Very quirky - almost like Daniel Wallace's Big Fish.

I loved it though.

Peder Victorius reminds me of the new book Out Stealing Horses, by Per Pederson (forgive the misspelling).  And then there was Sophie's World, by Jostein Gaarder, which was actually a review of the history of philosophy combined with a mystery, all designed for young adult readers.   Do you care about Icelandic authors?  I was thinking of Olaf Johann Olafsson, who wrote Absolution.

None of us remembered to mention Hans Christian Andersson!    The REAL stories he wrote for children were moralizing fairy tales, and NOTHING like the "Disneyfied" versions.  I am thinking in particular of The Little Mermaid, who ended up as a "daughter of the air" obliged to go about the world seeking out "good little children" so that her sentence might be lightened . . . .