Maria Helleberg

Perhaps it could not be directly measured, but the subject of Greek and Roman Civilisation – not usually one of the most highly regarded in grammar schools – must have had a boost in 1986 when the then 30-year-old Maria Helleberg published her first novel Seersken (The Prophetess), which was a resounding success.

The Prophetess is Cassandra, the second youngest of King Priam’s nineteen children by Queen Hecabe, and Maria Helleberg lets Cassandra tell the story of the fall of Troy, an event we mostly associate with the beautiful Helena and Prince Paris. Maria Helleberg was generous enough to give her teacher in Greek and Roman Civilisation part of the honour for the novel’s being written at all. The teacher was clever, and Maria Helleberg was captivated by the subject and the often stupendous stories it contains. However, the book was not written immediately after her final exams. Maria first went through Copenhagen University, where she took the degree of mag.art. in the history of theatre, attesting her qualification, that she is able, in a proper scholarly fashion, to organise her sources and her material and to present that material in a comprehensible manner.

And there have been many sources and a great deal of material to organise over the years. Maria Helleberg has taken her readers through many countries and many eras. She has literally worked her way up through the centuries and the histories relating to them, not chronologically, not according to a definite pattern, but always seeking the good story and the living characters behind the dry figures and schematic way of looking at figures in history books. The special quality in Maria Helleberg’s novels is that the relevant era and its special spirit and view of mankind are always seen from viewpoints different from the traditional ones. It is usually a woman’s or several women’s views of the situation and the drama that are brought out most sharply, whether we are in Classical Greece, ancient Rome, 14^th-century Sweden-Norway, 18^th-century Denmark (Caroline Mathilde and Struensee, “the best story in the history of Denmark” as she has called the relationship between the two) or the Denmark of the 19^th century (Countess Danner) or the present day.

Several of the novels’ titles are sufficient to suggest the female point of view. Behind the words “Marskallens kvinde” (The Marshal’s Woman), “Statholderens hustru” (The Procurator’s Wife) and “Lukrezias ægteskab” (Lucrecia’s Marriage) hide, naturally, conquests and power, but the main emphasis in the various stories is on the women. There is a little more mystery about titles like “Så mangen sti vild” (So Many Wild Paths) and “Som en vredens plov” (Like a Plough of Wrath), but in these books, too, which are inspired by the oldest rhymed chronicle in Sweden, Erikskrøniken, (The Chronicle of King Erik), written about 1320, Maria Helleberg has been interested in the restraints to which the women of that period were subjected. And indeed, Maria Helleberg has also said in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten, 15.8.93, that her historical novels are fundamentally disguises. She merely removes the everlasting and unchanging human character from the present and puts the problems that have always existed and still exist between people, between men and women, in a different age and possibly a different country in order to put things into perspective.

But Maria Helleberg also often moves in the present, and no literary genre is foreign to her. She has written books for children, she has turned to dramas and plays for radio, reviews and commentaries, she has written travel accounts (Rome, Naples) and contributed to several anthologies. She is very industrious and difficult to keep up with. At this very moment there might very well be some new book or other literary work by her on the market.