Some Nostalgic Thoughts About The Teaching Of Scandinavian Studies In The UK
I was recently shown an article by Janet Garton in our Norwegian sister society's newsletter. She reported that the final students of Scandinavian languages at the University of East Anglia had graduated in the summer of 2008 and now there would be no more. The department which had existed for over 40 years had closed in spite of the fact that she and three other professors before her had "fostered the work of scholars who had won international acclaim".
This leaves UCL and Edinburgh as the last two establishments offering full departments of Scandinavian Studies at any university in the UK.
One does not have to look far for the reasons: cost pressures and the dwindling number of students of any modern language let alone Danish, Norwegian or Swedish. Sadness and nostalgia for a time when education was not subject to the same cost benefit analysis sparked off some memories for me.
I was at Cambridge in the mid to late 1950s and was reading Modern Languages. After years devoted exclusively to French and German I decided that catching up on Danish literature (I had grown up away from Denmark and had only ever read Hans Andersen) was an opportunity not to be missed.
The University had a Professor of Scandinavian Studies (Downs who was the Swedish expert), Glyn Daniels who covered Norway (later to be one of the above Professors of Scandinavian Studies at East Anglia) and Elias Bredsdorff from Denmark. A larger than life character, his reputation at the time was based more on his involvement with radical politics, (as a student he had met Trotsky and been a member of the communist party, resigning in 1939 when Russia invaded Finland) than on his academic output.
He had all of two students (myself and a young lady) to distract him from his real interests. His were the only lectures I felt compelled to attend lest he lose half his audience.
And read I did. Hans Andersen of course but mostly the other 19th and early 20th century authors that Bredsdorff thought worthwhile. Then came the examination. I stared at the questions aghast.
Bredsdorff had not set the paper (as I had assumed he would); instead Prof. Downs had. And they clearly did not share the same values. My College tutor laughed. A Dane who managed to do much worse in his one Danish exam than all his others. No matter. That year was a privilege.
Elias Bredsdorff went on to head the department for 19 years, write what is still regarded as the definitive life of Hans Andersen in English, to publish many seminal works on Danish and Scandinavian language and literature - and to die in 2002 at the venerable age of 90.
Birger Jensen
