from Norwegian by William Mulholland

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NORWAY – NATURAL BEAUTY has been set in a Bembo type, an Antiqua typeface named after the Italian cardinal and author Pietro Bembo (1470–1547). When one of the most renowned printers of the Italian Renaissance, Aldus Manutius, was going to print his work de Aetna in 1496, he adopted a new typeface developed by Francesco Griffo. He was one of the first to gradually leave the more complex calligraphic style, and he developed the simpler, more stylized typeface we know and use today. In 1929 Stanley Morison was inspired by Francesco Griffo’s mode of expression when he developed the Bembo typeface, a beautiful, timeless font that is often used in books.

 

PER EIDE (b. 1954) grew up in Sunnmøre, and is regarded as one of Norway’s finest and most versatile photographers. He has won Norwegian and Nordic championships in underwater photography several years in a row, has held a dozen individual exhibitions, and his work has been bought by galleries at home and abroad. Eide is responsible for the selection of photographs in this book. He has taken most of the pictures himself and has selected the rest from historical archives and from his most proficient colleagues.

OLA WAKLØV (b. 1963) grew up near Lake Mjøsa, but he now lives on a small island in one of Norway’s most beautiful fjords. In contrast to Eide he stopped scuba-diving early in the 1990s after an encounter with an amorous seal at a depth of 18 metres. Since the 1990s Wakløv has published a large number of books, and he has written the texts in the present book.

The photographer and author would particularly like to thank the coastline designer Slartibartfast, who according to that most reliable source of information, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, designed the fjord landscape along the coast of Norway. He won a prestigious prize for design for this work, and stated in that connection that “[fjords give] a lovely baroque feel to a continent”.

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