site.btaFive Years since the Death of Vera Gancheva, Pre-eminent Scandinavist, Translator and Publisher

Prof. Vera Gancheva, a Bulgarian literary scholar, critic, essayist, translator and publisher, passed away five years ago on June 10, 2020 at age 77.

Gancheva was born in Sofia on February 23, 1943. Her father, left-wing Agrarian politician, journalist and diplomat Lalyu Ganchev, served as Bulgaria’s ambassador to Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Iceland. Her mother, Nadya Gancheva, was a journalist at a daily newspaper and later headed two women’s magazines. Her younger sister, Vasa Gancheva, was a popular TV critic, director and presenter.

Vera Gancheva graduated from the Russian-Language Secondary School in Sofia and majored in Slavic Philology at the Sofia University. Between 1965 and 1968, she studied history of Scandinavian literatures and Swedish and Norwegian at Stockholm University.

Gancheva’s husband, gifted poet Vladimir Bashev, was killed in a road traffic accident in 1967. She never remarried.

Following Bashev’s advice, she took a job at BTA in 1966. After a stint as a reporter at the International News Desk, she transferred to the agency’s LIK weekly cultural magazine, where she was an editor, deputy editor-in-chief and editor-in-chief until 1976.

After working briefly as a deputy editor-in-chief of the Otechestvo magazine, Gancheva became chief editor of the Narodna Kultura Publishing House in 1978 and was its director between 1980 and 1989.

She spent time in Sweden, working on her doctoral thesis on the historical development of Swedish literature in the context of world literature. In 1992, she defended her thesis at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences’ Institute for Literature.

As founder and head of the Sofia University Department of Scandinavian Studies (established in 1992), she tutored two generations of Scandinavists, many of whom followed in her footsteps as translators and teachers. Starting in 1993, she conducted lecture courses in History of Scandinavian Literatures, Cultural History of the Scandinavian North, Nordic Literature and Old Scandinavian Mythology, and Swedish and Icelandic Civilization. She headed the department until her retirement in 2011 and became there an assistant professor and, in 2009, a full professor.

Gancheva lectured at universities in Bulgaria and abroad and was actively involved in public discussions and media appearances, expressing clear and well-reasoned views on topical subjects concerning the Scandinavian North and Bulgaria. She organized internationally attended scientific conferences, seminars and meetings on Scandinavian studies and Nordic countries’ culture and society.

Her papers and studies were published in Britain, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Italy, Russia and Romania. She took part in numerous international events and conferences organized by UNESCO, P.E.N. International, the International Association of Scandinavian Studies, and in quite a few research forums in various countries.

In 1991, Vera Gancheva founded the Hemus Publishing House and was its managing director until the end of 2001. In 1906-1997, she was director of the Sts Cyril and Methodius National Library.

In 1988, she headed the Artur Lundkvist and Maria Wine Foundation and chaired the Fund’s jury for awards to creative achievements of Bulgarian and Swedish persons of letters. In 1993, she was elected chair of the Bulgarian-Swedish Friendship Society. She was member of the Union of Bulgarian Writers and, until 1994, served as secretary of the Bulgarian P.E.N. Centre.

Gancheva is the author of six books on personalities, problems and phenomena in world literature and culture. She wrote numerous articles, studies, monographs and publications on Nordic culture and literature, edited and compiled a number of research conference proceedings, and Scandinavian poetry and prose anthologies.

In addition to the Scandinavian languages, she handled with ease English, Russian, French and Czech. Gancheva translated an impressive body of selected works by major and difficult Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Icelandic authors, many of which appeared for the first time in Bulgarian in her versions. She takes credit for the first Bulgarian translation from the original of Astrid Lindgren’s Pippi Longstocking (1968) and The Brothers Lionheart by the same author. Other significant writers and poets in her renditions include Artur Lundkvist, Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun, Søren Kierkegaard, Ingmar Bergman, Herbjørg Wassmo, Johan Borgen, Rolf Jacobsen, Tomas Tranströmer, Olav H. Hauge, Lars Gustafsson, Per Olov Enquist, Bengt Danielsson, Aksel Sandemose, and Tarjei Vesaas.

Her work in literary studies, translation and book publishing has been distinguished by a number of Bulgarian and foreign honours: the Hans Christian Andersen Award for the translation of Pippi Longstocking (1979), the Swedish Academy Prize (1983, 2000 and 2013), the International Translation Award of the Artur Lundkvist Fund in Stockholm (1988), the Swedish Writers’ Union Award (1994), the Order of Cyril and Methodius, First Class (1984), Knight of the Danish Order of the Dannebrog (2001), Gold Badge of the National Convent of Experts (2006), Sweden’s Royal Order of the Polar Star, First Class (2007), the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit, Knight First Class (2012), and the St Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia Badge of Honour with Blue Ribbon (2013).

In 2012, the BTA External Service covered the ceremony at which Vera Gancheva received the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit:

“Sofia, September 14 (BTA) - On Thursday, Bulgarian Professor Vera Gancheva was presented with the title of Knight First Class of the Royal Norwegian Order of Merit for her work in popularising Norwegian literature, language and culture in Bulgaria, the Norwegian Embassy in Sofia told BTA on Friday. Professor Gancheva is an expert in the literature and cultural history of the Scandinavian north, critic and essayist, translator, publisher, and has also been a lecturer at the St Kliment Ohridski University of Sofia for many years.

For more than forty years, Professor Gancheva has translated and published Norwegian literature, including works by Henrik Ibsen, Knut Hamsun, Sigrid Undset, Aksel Sandemose, Tarjei Vesaas, Johan Borgen, and Rolf Jacobsen, the press release said.

After reading King Harald V’s decree of August 17 regarding the conferral of the Order, Norwegian Ambassador Tove Skarstein said she was happy that a day before her official departure from Bulgaria she presented the honour precisely to Professor Gancheva. Skarstein highlighted Gancheva's contribution to the expansion and invigoration of Bulgarian-Norwegian contacts in the spheres of science and culture. VI/DS”