Published in 1976, “I de mörka rummen, i de ljusa” (‘In the Dark Rooms; in the Bright Ones’) is a poetry collection by Finnish poet Bo Carpelan that won the ‘Nordic Council Literature Prize‘ in 1977. Born and grown up in Helsinki, Carpelan was a Swedish-speaking Finnish author of poetry, children’s books, novelist, dramatist, critic and translator. Doctor of philosophy and head librarian of the Helsinki central library, Bo Carpelan always returned to the big questions in life: at the beginning, he wrote in a modernist style, later developing a more epic language. In “I de mörka rummen, i de ljusa” Carpelan meanders through his personal experience guiding the reader through the landscape of his life, breaking down barriers between the outer and the inner worlds, while unfolding the story of his family step by step. According to the Adjudicating Committee, in clear and austere lyrics Bo Carpelan manages to express the interplay between the outer and inner reality of a shift between consciousness of death and feeling of life.