Scandinavian Studies

Runology is concerned with some 1300 years of the history of writing. Runes constituted the script used by many Germanic peoples from the second century A.D. Their use died out in Norway around 1400. This course spans the entire history of runes and gives an overview of both the secondary literature and the inscriptions themselves. For a relevant point of comparison, the course also includes a concise introduction to contemporary Roman Alphabet epigraphy in Scandinavia.

This course offers an introduction to Norwegian dialects, Norwegian language history, and New Norwegian both as cultural heritage and as a language of use. This course is an overview of the Norwegian language situation before and now. Upon completion of the course, the students must have knowledge of the main points in dialectology. They must work practically with target samples and be able to recognize the four main groups into which Norwegian dialects are divided. The students must have a good insight into Norwegian dialects and dialect variation and an overview of the historical and political background for the current situation. They must be able to transfer their knowledge of Norwegian colloquialisms to confidential situations. The students should also be familiar with some main features of Norwegian language history and have knowledge of Nynorsk's place in Norway today. They must be able to read and understand Nynorsk texts in various genres from blogs and newspapers to professional articles and shorter literary texts. The students gain insight into the Nynorsk vocabulary and basic grammatical features of the Nynorsk language and use this competence to write their own texts in Nynorsk. Students must have completed NORINT0130 – Norwegian for international students, level 3 or equivalent as a prerequisite.

This course provides insight into three interconnected fields of inquiry: the interdisciplinary study of contemporary Scandinavia and the larger Nordic region; the analysis of a large variety of cultural products; and an understanding of how narratives and images reflect past and present transnational and transcultural relations. The interdisciplinary course relates close readings of literary texts, films, art works, and other cultural products to discussions of the larger socio-political and media-aesthetic context. Among other things, this context is marked by the global circulation of ideas and artifacts; migration and diversity; climate change and other environmental concerns; and decolonization processes. Within the Nordic region, changing relations between majorities and minorities and between centers and peripheries are at stake that link the region to transformations on a global level. A special focus is directed at cultural and geopolitical changes in the Nordic part of the Arctic; at shifting relations within the Danish Realm between Denmark, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands; at the situation of Indigenous people in the region including the Sámi of the northern Scandinavian peninsula; and at the legacies of the transatlantic enslavement trade linking Scandinavia to Africa and the Caribbean. The course looks at how artistic, medial, and public expressions represent and reflect these processes. It presents a variety of textual, visual, and audiovisual material, as well as discourses and practices that reflect current shifts in Nordic self-images; imagined communities on national, regional, and global levels; and transnational entanglements. In short, the course explores and expands the notion of Scandinavia or “Norden” and traces the region’s transnational connectedness as reflected by contemporary arts and public discourse.

The course reviews the shaping of Swedish industrial culture and society from 1800 to 2000. The topics addressed include the transformation of the agricultural production system and the development of an infrastructure for transport, communications, and power transmission. The significance of technical change for the transformation of Sweden from a poor country to an industrialized and democratic society with a well-developed welfare state, Sweden's military-industrial complex, and the concept of the Swedish model are analyzed in the course.

The course presents an outline of Swedish art and visual culture from prehistoric times on to the present era, with insights in art from other Scandinavian countries.  The objects of study comprise diverse types of work such as artwork, mass-produced images and photographs, architecture and urban planning. 

This course is designed for international students. It is a course within the science of religion, and it deals with the religion in Denmark before the introduction of Christianity. The course reads poems concerning pre-Christian deities from Iceland as well as the medieval Icelandic writer Snorri, which makes it possible to get a glimpse of the mythology of the Scandinavians before Christianity. The gods Odin, Thor, Vanir, Loki and Balder are accentuated. The course also goes beyond mythology and tries to get an idea about the religious rituals and the religious experts of the Norsemen. The course includes an excursion to Lejre, Trelleborg and Roskilde and an excursion to Scania in Sweden to visit a couple of burial places in the shape of a ship and also some well-preserved runic stones. Students get an introductory understanding of ancient Nordic religion, mythology, its sources, as well as the archeological remains of it.

This course examines Scandinavian design from the 20th century to the present, in light of the international development of design during this period. The growth of modern design in Scandinavia is discussed in relation to early modernist and contemporary design. Upon completion of the course, students should be able to give an overview (from an international perspective) of key events in the history of design in Scandinavia from the past century, describe and characterize objects of Scandinavian design from the past century, and give a global comparative overview of the current place Scandinavian design has in society with regard to the balance of power, gender, ethnicity, and diversity.