Kevin C. Brimhall and Dr. Steven Sondrup, Scandinavian Studies
The works of such well-known authors as H.C. Andersen and Karen Blixen are relatively accessible in the original Danish, but have the disadvantage of failing to reflect contemporary spellings, syntax, and word usage common in present-day Danish. Like all languages, Danish is constantly changing and the passage of over a century has certainly left its mark on Danish literature. Unlike, older Danish works, contemporary Danish literary works are relatively hard to come by, which poses a problem for those interested in learning Danish as its written and spoken today. Consequently, the purpose of this project was to compile and supplement diverse contemporary Danish literature into a reader, with an emphasis on easily digestible genres such as short story and poetry form. The objective of the reader was to provide students with a collection of contemporary works conducive to one learning modern day language usage. The completed reader will now be used in Danish 201 and 202 courses here at BYU, and additionally made available to other interested universities, or individuals.
The bulk of this project was time spent in acquiring and reviewing diverse contemporary texts. I drew upon three main resources for this, namely texts purchased overseas from Danish bookstores, short stories published on the internet and the Harold B. Lee Library.
After review, appropriate texts were then typed up and a running glossary of likely unfamiliar words was created and placed in the right margin for ready reference. The written works have been placed in the reader in order of level of reading difficulty or in a gradual graded manner. The main obstacle I encountered was the difficulty in finding literature in either short story form or short enough in length to meet my criteria. One of the main points behind this project was using works that were reasonably digestible for the student and this particular genre was simply hard to come by. Oft times, when I had found a written work of appropriate length, the inappropriateness of some of the content within the text rendered it useless. This proved quite frustrating at times as I was determined to provide works that would be appropriately challenging to the student, but not at the cost of being offensive in any degree.
The oldest literary work contained in the reader is from the 1970’s and the majority were written in the 1990’s, with a few written within the past couple years. This is exactly the kind of literary time period I had in mind, and was pleased to find a sufficient number of texts appropriate in length and reading difficulty this contemporary. The resulting reader essentially contains three genres: short story, non-fiction narrative, and poetry.
The internet was the most helpful in acquiring recently written short stories. Of particular good use was an internet site a Danish culture organization has created that allows both promising and well-established Danish authors to submit either short stories or excerpts from larger works for web-publishing or as previews for forthcoming published texts, I drew largely upon this. Through a Danish book club, I acquired several non-fiction narrative texts that were ideal in length, format, and level of difficulty. The Harold B. Lee proved to be a good resource for contemporary Danish poetry.
The reader currently totals 50 pages, which I consider to be just the beginning. To this foundation, I plan on adding additional written works and supplements consisting of reading comprehension and grammatical exercises, specifically addressing each text, throughout the coming year.
All in all, I have honestly enjoyed this project and I am grateful for the opportunity I’ve had to see it through. Although, initially daunting and more time consuming than I had originally planned, it has certainly been a success. There were times when discouragement would set in, particularly when finding suitable texts seemed an impossible task, but everything panned out. I have personally become much better acquainted with contemporary Danish literature and authors in the process of reviewing countless works, which in turn has better equipped me as a Danish language instructor. Best of all, I feel better prepared in helping my students learn Danish as its spoken and written today by being able to offer them a reader that reinforces concepts taught in class. I look forward to making use of the reader in my Winter 2004 course and receiving feedback from my students.