Bente Pedersen

Bente Pedersen from Skibotn has often used the description «A Cap of the North coctail» about herself. The popular author is one of Norway’s bestsellers with over 200 book titles. 

The Cap of the North with its diverse culture and history, is the setting for the characters in Pedersen’s novels. This multicultural area has a past that at times has been anything but rosy. She depicts poverty, hunger, shame and abuse, but also strong women, rebellion and love. Child trafficking, mining, the witch trials, prostitution are just some of the themes in Pedersen’s series and novels. Even if the people are fictitious, the historical context is correct. Pedersen’s novel series are defined as entertainment literature, and have sold several million copies in all the Nordic countries and in Poland.

Already in his teens, Pedersen began her career as a writer, writing sweet love stories for the magazine Romantikk. As a young student at the Teachers College in Tromsø in 1982-83, she wrote a special thesis on the immigration from Tornedalen in northern Finland to northern Troms in the 17th and 19th centuries. As she delved deep into local history, the idea of ​​writing books on that subject awoke. At just 23 years old, she sold her novel concept to Bladkompaniet, and over the next 10 years she wrote 40 books with the novel character Raija in the lead role.

The Raija series

The first book in the series about Raija «Foreign bird» was published in 20,000 copies. This was ten times as large as other authors at that time.

In the novel series, we meet Finnish Raija from Tornedalen at the beginning of the 18th century. War and hunger means that her parents see no other option than to «sell» her to the Samis, who take her across the border to Norway. We follow Raija’s many experiences, good and bad, in a multicultural and also male-dominated society.

The popularity of the Raija series allowed Pedersen to leave the teaching profession and become a full-time writer in 1989.