Where does Aschehoug go?
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Erik Rudeng
Cultural historian
Tuesday marks 150 years since Aschehoug publishing started. The jubilee actualises challenges faced by the entire Norwegian book market.
Chronicle
This is a chronicle. Opinions in the text are the responsibility of the writer.
In 1872, Norwegian society faced a capital-poor and fragile publishing industry.
JW Cappelen’s publishing house from 1829 had specialized in religious literature and school books. The leading fiction writers published at Gyldendal in Copenhagen. Several tried to raise Norwegian publishing to Danish level, but did not succeed.
A 22-year-old philology student with migraines decided to interrupt his studies: “My head is now like a burnt-out volcano.” He wanted to marry and be his own master.
With money from his in-laws, he became a co-owner of the publishing bookstore H. Aschehoug & Co. There in 1888 he took over the small publishing department. With this as a starting point, the rector’s son William Nygaard revolutionized the Norwegian book world in the following years.
“Norwegian books on Norwegian publishers!”
The young publisher stayed with sharp advisers: the nationality theorist Moltke Moe, the writers Arne Garborg and Hans E. Kinck. The father, Marius Nygaard, had his large network of school staff and humanistic researchers. Father-in-law Andreas Wiel, who had created the Nordic region’s largest timber industry in Halden, maintained unsentimental sobriety, but could also provide considerable support.
With Arne Garborg and Fridtjof Nansen as leading authors, Aschehoug in the decade before 1905 became the epitome of Nygaard’s own slogan: “Norwegian books on Norwegian publishing!”
The ideological-scientific left environment around the publisher’s dominant journal The contemporary made Aschehoug particularly politically central. Almost an entire generation of writers turned away from Copenhagen. Many of them went to Aschehoug – Nini Roll Anker, Ragnhild Jølsen, Sigrid Undset, Johan Falkberget, Arnulf Øverland and a number of others.
Basic works such as Aschehoug’s Konversationslexikon, textbooks and profiled non-fiction saw the light of day. Aschehoug became the largest publisher of modern Norwegian literature of practically all kinds, not least for the higher school.
A Norwegian monopoly publisher?
In parallel with Aschehoug’s development, the visionary manager of Gyldendal in Copenhagen, Peter Nansen, laid plans for an ambitious international media company. It was called “the great Germanic Kabel-Net” based on early Danish film production, and also included the rights to “the big four” Norwegian authors, Danish authors, a possible Swedish publisher – and Aschehoug. It also planned bases in Berlin and New York.
The offer was a merger with mutual ownership of each other’s publishers and the transfer of all Norwegian authors on Gyldendal’s list to Aschehoug. Nygaard threw himself into the case. In the middle of the union crisis with Sweden in the summer and autumn of 1905, he stood guard as a corporal in the Smålenenes’ land storm battalion at the very border at Kornsjø. At the same time, he led per correspondence intense negotiations which for a long time seemed close to succeeding. That would have made Aschehoug almost a monopoly publisher in Norway.
Several times later he tried to buy the rights to the Norwegian authors, but Gyldendal perceived Nygaard more and more as unreasonably stubborn and meticulous.
Instead, the process ended surprisingly: After a terrific media campaign, a circle led by the dynamic Harald Grieg succeeded in scraping together the share capital for Gyldendal Norsk Forlag in 1924. Thus they secured the “home purchase”. This was the beginning of a more pluralistic Norwegian publishing structure, in contrast to Sweden and Denmark, where respectively Bonnier and «Den gyldendalske Boghandel» dominated the market.
Later, Nygaard stated that it was probably best that it went the way it did. In this way, the complete family ownership of Aschehoug was also secured, without any fuss from Copenhagen.
An extroverted publishing role
William Nygaard the elder was interested far beyond his own company and his own industry. He founded the Publishers’ Association in 1895, which he led and held the secretariat for several decades. Introduced collective and regular negotiations with the Booksellers’ Association. Drafted the draft of the Normal Agreement with authors from 1902. Was for a number of years elected to the Kristiania city council and chairmanship. Seated in the education and culture committee at the Storting, the committee for the Deichman library. Was chairman of the board of the National Theater for a number of years. Etc.
More than anyone, Nygaard shaped a culturally politically extroverted publishing role. This was later continued in public by Harald Grieg, Henrik Groth (Cappelen), Brikt Jensen and, among others, Nygaard’s grandson William.
Norsk Pen, the branch of the early international freedom of expression organization Pen International, was helped for many years in the interwar period and later by the son, magister Mads Wiel Nygaard and his colleagues.
This long-term, common industry orientation had plenty of room for stormy conflicts of interest between the various booksellers’, publishers’, authors’ and translators’ associations in this country. But the tradition of collective reason and regular negotiations tax clarification. Investigations and trust-based discussions paved the way for a common front on major issues.
Has generated huge revenue
A main idea was that a language and book community as small as the Norwegian one would be best served by publicly regulated and predictable market frameworks with joint initiatives.
That is why it is very sensational to have the value-added tax on books brought down to 0. Later, clear remuneration for copyrights in connection with library use and machine copying was secured.
This has created enormous income for distribution between other Norwegian publishers, authors and translators. Our domestic remuneration organization Kopinor primarily has a background in the book industry. In recent decades, it has become a role model on a global level. The organization Norla to promote Norwegian literature abroad is another example.
It is very sensational to have the VAT on books reduced to 0
The negotiations between the National Library and the authors’ organizations on digitization and making Norwegian books available to all people towards recent years are a current result in a special class. This central clarification of the right is unique in the world and makes the National Library a leading – and admired – international institution of its kind.
It is difficult to imagine this long development without Nygaard and a legal phalanx rooted in the family business – three generations of copyright lawyers – Kristen Nygaard, Fredrik Winsnes and Harald Bjelke.
Anniversary forms
Publishing anniversaries are occasions for very big words. Not least in a state where publishing history is intimately linked to national and cultural independence.
Aschehoug’s first 50 years were celebrated amid waves of strikes and an incipient banking crisis in 1922 – in the new Moorish hall of the Hotel Bristol. 425 guests from cultural life, university, parliament and government. “A quarter of a million kroner” was distributed to scholarship programs for writers, teachers, bookshop assistants and for studies of the Norwegian language and Nordic literature. 15 speakers praised the national publishing house. Then followed a jazz band “in intense activity”.
At the 100th anniversary in 1972, it was a celebratory performance at the National Theatre. The king and crown prince sat in the lodge, and the theater’s most popular actors performed poems and literary scenes. Dressed in a jacket, the chairman of the board, Supreme Court lawyer Knut Tvedt, delivered a commanding and highly impressive speech, in which he impressed upon the publisher’s brilliant merits and importance. In the evening, you were back in the Moorish hall – the last big banquet in the fabled party room before Olav Thon’s drastic renovation.
Just three years later, the culturally more radical Gyldendal Rødt Forlag (as it was called in conservative circles) celebrated its 50th anniversary. It took place in the loose sloop, true Danish-inspired 70s style at Norges Varemesse at Sjølyst. Since then, a lot has happened with the two publishers and in the Norwegian book industry.
Publishers’ social mission
After decades of deregulation in social life and new frightening economic and cultural experts, growing global climate crisis, recent pandemic and now war in Europe, the country still needs serious publishers who take up vital common challenges.
Neoliberalist thinking has sown skepticism about regulation of the book market. At the same time, financial players have thrown themselves into the purchase of best-selling authorship in the hope of high profits. Meanwhile, technological and market structural changes understandably demand massive attention from the publishing management.
The Book Act will hardly be able to be defended if the largest publishers do not seek to reactivate their social mission and their social expertise
This was part of the background the proposal for a new Book Act now in August.
The draft law aims to promote fixed and predictable conditions in the industry and to limit access to the speculative economy. The Book Act will hardly be able to be defended if the largest publishers do not seek to reactivate their social mission and their social competence.
This means, not least, contributing to expanding the book culture to include groups that now more and more seem to fall outside. This applies to many young special and little reading groups in general. The causal relationships are complex and difficult to understand, but the publishers themselves must do more. And in collaboration with others – and each other – they must find out how.
Where will the Nygaardene go?
The Aschehoug Group’s greatest resource in the public eye today seems to be its sovereign position in the field of fiction.
Together with the subsidiary Oktober, the publisher had over 36 percent of the market in 2021. This position is shown to a great extent in the popular anniversary program in the glass house in front of the Aschehoug villa in Drammensveien 99 these days. But for the time being, the program seems rather shallow in terms of social policy and social debate.
Last week, Gyldendal took over 50.1 percent of the shares in the new Forente Forlag under the leadership of Håkon Harket (Press, Pax, Dreyer, Spartacus). At the same time, Gyldendal announced that the investment would be followed by a new financial injection in the prose.
For the time being, the program seems rather shallow in terms of social policy and social debate
Gyldendal’s – or Cappel’s – ventures in no way make it impossible for Aschehoug to assert himself in debate and other knowledge-oriented non-fiction. But it does not go without significantly greater motivation and publishing renewal in this central public field. In a proclaimed “year of jubilee” with a record financial profit of nearly DKK 160 million in mind, such a turnaround can hardly be said to be unaffordable.
Tom Harald Jenssen (69) will sooner or later step down as publisher in Norway’s largest publishing house Cappelen-Damm (owned by capital-strong Egmont in Copenhagen). Then the seasoned Mads Nygaard (53) in Aschehoug will probably appear with increased weight in the industry. Without this being talked about out loud, there is therefore considerable interest in where Nygaardene’s old “national publishing house” will go. How will the publisher understand its social mission? And in what direction will it place its ambition and intellectual capacity in the future?