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Tyra Teodora Tronstad

Tyra Teodora Tronstad (b. 1972) made her debut in 2007 with the poetry collection On Monday Morning the Dead Stand in Line.

She has since published seven critically-acclaimed children’s and YA novels, several of which have been finalists for some of Norway’s most prestigious awards. Two of them were also awarded the Norwegian Critics Prize.

Her first novel for adult readers, There are No Limits to Yellow, was published in 2022.

Tronstad’s most recent novel, People Who Hate Local History, was published by Aschehoug in 2026 and has proven to be a major breakthrough.

BLYANT Agency is proudly representing Tyra Teodora Tronstad’s foreign rights for the novel People Who Hate Local History as well as the rights for film/tv.

Cover by Aina Griffin

People Who Hate Local History (Aschehoug, May 2026)

In Stor-Elvdal valley there are many types of people, many types of houses, many types of God and perhaps also a special type of goldeneye duck that nests by the river. And there are people who hate local history.

On Gunnarsmoen, Gunn Smedplassen’s elderly father Ingemar is acting strange. As a new virus sweeps the world she leaves Oslo behind and drives all those miles north to check up on him, only to realise that things are far worse than she expected. Meanwhile, in the house next door, her childhood best friend Pelle is on sick leave from his job as a snowplow driver on Highway 3, while his impulsive, green-haired teenage daughter Michelle threatens to wreak more chaos.

Gunn and Pelle were once thick as thieves, inseparable, but haven’t spoken a word to each other since they were sixteen. Eventually a matter involving damp firewood leads Gunn to knock on Pelle’s door, which triggers a chain reaction of painful memories, abominable secrets and old grievances. Once Gunn had a sister and a mother, and once Pelle had a mother who actually could remember things, and a grandmother who left for the big city and returned home pregnant and unwed.

This is a story of the two vastly different houses on Gunnarsmoen, two different countries if you may, about small and big events that form an intricate map, about the destructive forces of the river Glomma and the devastating consequences of silence, about lives that fall apart and lives that are glued back together, about those who leave, those who stay and those who finally return.

People Who Hate Local History is modern folklore from rural Norway: an intricate, luminous tableau of grief, forgiveness and redemption. Equally quirky and insightful, this is a big-hearted dramedy from a storyteller that has been compared to both Vigdis Hjorth and Elizabeth Strout.

Praises for People Who Hate Local History

“Tyra Teodora Tronstad’s novel is full of vitality. Even though the book’s packed with tragedies. Drowning. Amputation. Pandemic. It’s also full of people. Contrary to what the intriguing title People Who Hate Local History insinuates, the novel is buoyant local history in the best way possible.” – NRK

“This is lively stuff, with a freshness in tone that sets the book apart from the average novel /…/ Even if Tronstad isn’t as far-reaching as the entire corpus of local history publications, she paints a colourful portrait of Norway - or at least the Innlandet region - and with the help of a few, broad brushstrokes, she fits in a remarkable amount on 300 pages. With the progressive teacher family in an impractical Swiss chalet next door to the factory worker/Pentecostalist family in a prefab house from Moelven, Gunn and Pelle are raised in ‘two different countries’, the novel claims, and ‘both have visas to the other one’s territory, and they constantly cross the border’ so that the families’ different values, parenting styles and habits make both the children ‘interdisciplinary’. Literature may also contribute to that kind of educational advantage, but the greatest enjoyment with a novel like People Who Hate Local History lies in the prose, and Tronstad’s quick-witted narrator sounds like the secret love child of Vigdis Hjorth and Vidar Sandbeck. That’s a damn funny kid.” – Klassekampen

“A delightful mix of humour, irony and sharp observation skills permeates the story from Stor-Elvdal.” – Dagbladet

“I finish this novel with a smile, a novel which is among the best I’ve read in a long time. It’s written with abundance and humour, beguilingly down-to-earth, complex and intertwined down to the smallest, most secretive detail: a novel with a broad popular appeal and with a grand scope, not only for people who hate or love local history.” – Dag og Tid

“Tronstad knows the craft, she knows the rural temperament, and she perfectly captures the way villagers speak, and stay silent. A load of damp firewood can say more than a thousand words. In small villages, people know each other through generations. The stories of mistakes, rise and fall can be relentless in the countryside. And those who live in the countryside have to endure this and those around them. You can't choose someone else to drive your load of firewood even if your relationship’s rocky. Tyra Teodora Tronstad joins the ranks of authors who have understood the literary potential of such communities, such as Lars Mytting and Kyrre Andreassen.” – Morgenbladet

“I bet this will make Tronstad known to a significantly wider audience. That’s how charmingly funny this rural novel from Stor-Elvdal is, where the author herself grew up. There’s an abundance of animated and accurate depictions of small-town dynamics, in addition to vivid characters and droll, witty comments … People Who Hate Local History is overall a book that excels at being both shamelessly entertaining, quirky and insightful.” – Aftenposten

Bibliography

Folk som hater lokalhistorie / People Who Hate Local History (Aschehoug, Norway, 2026)

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