A NORTH-EAST author's books about life on the oil rigs have been published in Norway.

Peter Brunton's series of children's stories about Sally the Oil Rig Seal proved popular among offshore workers in Teesside whose children enjoyed reading them.

Former oil rig worker Mr Brunton originally wrote the stories in the early 1990s about a seal which regularly visited the rig he was stationed on based in the North Sea off Aberdeen. He published them five years ago.

Mr Brunton, from Middlesbrough, thought the books would also be popular for offshore workers' families in Norway, and turned to the Enterprise Europe Network (EEN) North-East, led by Teesside University, for help.

He said: "When I was working out in the North Sea, on another rig based off the shores of the Shetland Islands, I could see the flares from the Norwegian rigs and realised there was lots of Norwegian rig workers doing the same job I was doing.

“I know a lot of the oil rig workers on Teesside gave copies of the books to their children while they were working away and the children found it quite comforting to know what their parents were up to.

“It struck me that there was probably a market for the stories in Norway as so many of the experiences would be the same.”

EEN used Norwegian contacts to find a translator and they have now been published in Norwegian with Sally recast as "Plattformselen Selma".

Mr Brunton has just finished writing a third book, ‘Sally and her Pups’, which he also plans to get translated into Norwegian.