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Please find the List of Open Electives for the 2023/2024 Spring semester here.

These subjects can be chosen by 2-4 year BA students and MA students with the individual study plan instead of the electives suggested in your study programme.

More information can be found here>

December 5th the Scandinavian Centre will host the visit of Dr. Maria Ahlholm from the University of Helsinki. She will talk on “Translanguaging in the school: implications for conception of language and language pedagogy” at 13.00 o’clock in seminar room 314 AB (in Engliish).

Maria Ahlholm is an Adjunct Professor in Finnish language, with specification in applied linguistics, and her recent research has focused on the language acquisition of newly arrived immigrants, refugees and children. You are warmly welcome to hear about multilingual schools in Finland and discuss current pedagogical trends!

On December 5–7th Prof M. J. Driscoll ((University of Copenhagen) will deliver a series of lectures for Scandinavian Centre students. We kindly invite everyone interested!

5th December 9 a.m. Room 314 AB

Icelandic manuscripts and texts: An introduction

My lecture is intended as an introduction to Icelandic manuscripts, intended primarily for people interested in learning how to read Icelandic texts in their original form, that is to say in manuscripts, or in printed editions prepared on the basis of such manuscripts. It will cover the basics of Icelandic manuscript studies, from codicology and palaeography to textual criticism, but its principal aim is to give readers an understanding of manuscripts and manuscript transmission.

Preparatory reading:

Guðvarður Már Gunnlaugsson: “Manuscripts and palaeography”, A companion to Old Norse- Icelandic literature and culture, ed. Rory McTurk (Oxford, 2005), pp. 245-264.

Soffía Guðný Guðmundsdóttir, Laufey Guðnadóttir and Anne Mette Hansen: “Book production in the Middle Ages”, 66 manuscripts from the Arnamagnæan collection, ed. M. J. Driscoll and Svanhildur Óskarsdóttir (Copenhagen, 2015), pp. 211-228.

6th December 3 p.m. Room 314 AB

Popular romance in late pre-modern Iceland

Several longer-form, vernacular narrative genres of medieval Icelandic literature can be subsumed under the general heading “romance”. The bulk of these are known as riddarasögur (lit. Sagas of knights) in Icelandic. These are essentially chivalric romances, either 13th-century translations of predominately French romances or younger original Icelandic compositions using some of the same characters, settings and motifs as the translated romances. There about a dozen of the former, most of them translated in Norway but found almost exclusively in Icelandic manuscripts, and between 30 and 40 of the latter. A large number of similar sagas – somewhere around 150 – survive from the post-medieval period, but these have yet to attract much scholarly interest. The fornaldarsögur Norðurlanda (lit. Sagas of ancient times in the lands of the north) are also very much in the romance vein – formulaic, episodic quest narratives with a strong element of the fabulous and a happy ending – but take place in a Viking rather than a chivalric milieu. There are about 35 of these sagas preserved from the medieval period, and roughly an equal number composed after the middle ages. In my lecture I will present this material and discuss its transmission history.

Preparatory reading:

Barnes, Geraldine: “Romance in Iceland”, Old Icelandic literature and society, ed. Margaret Clunies Ross (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 266-286.

Driscoll, Matthew James: “Late prose fiction (lygisögur)”, A companion to Old Norse-Icelandic literature and culture, ed. Rory McTurk (Oxford, 2005), pp. 190-204.

7th of December 1 p.m. Room Sp1

The Icelandic rímur

The Icelandic rímur (lit. ‘rhymes’) are uniquely Icelandic, long narrative poems in complex meters, normally comprising several cantos or fits. The number of fits in one rímur cycle could vary from two or three to several dozen. The fits were in turn divided into stanzas, typically numbering between 30 and 100. Around 70 rímur survive from the medieval period, the majority of them anonymous. Rímur remained popular in Iceland until well into the modern age, and in all over a thousand rímur have survived. Rímur were almost invariably based on pre-existing prose narratives. Almost any story could be used, but the majority of rímur are based on romances of one kind or another, typically the mythical heroic sagas (fornaldarsögur) or chivalric romances (riddarasögur). Rímur were intended to be recited aloud, intoned in a manner called “að kveða”, best described as something between singing and speaking. Several hundred rímurmelodies have survived into the modern age, many of them clearly of some antiquity. In my lecture I will present the most important features of the rímur and play recorded clips from actual performances.

Preparatory reading:

Hughes, Shaun F.D.: “Late secular poetry”, A companion to Old Norse-Icelandic literature and culture, ed. Rory McTurk (Oxford, 2005), pp. 205-222. 

About the professor

M. J. Driscoll is Professor of Old Norse Philology at the Arnamagnæan Institute, a research centre within the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen’s Faculty of Humanities. He holds degrees from the University of Stirling (BA (Hons.) 1979), Háskóli Íslands (Cand.mag. 1988) and Oxford University (DPhil 1994).

His research interests include manuscript and textual studies, particularly in the area of late pre-modern Icelandic. He also has a long-standing interest in the Digital Humanities, and served for many years on the technical council of the Text Encoding Initiative.

His publications include over 50 articles on various aspects of pre-modern Icelandic literature, editions and translations of a number of medieval and post-medieval Icelandic works, including Sigurðar saga þögla (Reykjavík, 1992), Ágrip af Noregskunungasögum (London, 1995, 2nd ed. 2008) and Fjórar sögur frá hendi Jóns Oddsonar Hjaltalín (Reykjavík, 2006), as well as the monograph The unwashed children of Eve: The production, dissemination and reception of popular literature in post-Reformation Iceland (London, 1997).

Source: https://bookofbooks.ku.dk

We kindly invite you to a guest lecture “Every book in every language on every subject”: Hernando Colón’s universal library and the Libro de los epitomes by Prof M. J. Driscoll (University of Copenhagen) on December 7th, 3 p.m. at Room V. Krėvės (118).

Annotation

In the beginning of the 16th century, Hernando Colón, son of the navigator Christopher Columbus, set out to build a universal library, one which would contain “all the books, in all languages and disciplines, that can be found within Christendom and without”. By the time of his death in 1539, Colón’s library in Seville comprised over 15000 volumes of predominantly printed books, the largest private library in the world at the time. To manage it all, he designed a revolutionary cataloguing system consisting of a number of cross-referenced inventories. All of these survive today in the Biblioteca Colombina in Seville, with the exception of one, the “Libro de los epitomes”, which was meant to contain short summaries of the contents of every book in the library. This had been presumed missing for half a millennium but was recently identified among the manuscripts in the Arnamagnæan Collection at Copenhagen University, of which it had been a part since the end of the 17th century. 

In my presentation I will describe the Libro and its contents and how it relates to the other bibliographical tools developed by Colón. I will also present the research project I lead, funded by the Carlsberg foundation and a private doner, which has as its aim the production of a full transcription of the text of the Libro and a study of its contents.

For more information on the project, see here >>

About Prof M. J. Driscoll

M. J. Driscoll is Professor of Old Norse Philology at the Arnamagnæan Institute, a research centre within the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen’s Faculty of Humanities. He holds degrees from the University of Stirling (BA (Hons.) 1979), Háskóli Íslands (Cand.mag. 1988) and Oxford University (DPhil 1994).

His research interests include manuscript and textual studies, particularly in the area of late pre-modern Icelandic. He also has a long-standing interest in the Digital Humanities, and served for many years on the technical council of the Text Encoding Initiative.

His publications include over 50 articles on various aspects of pre-modern Icelandic literature, editions and translations of a number of medieval and post-medieval Icelandic works, including Sigurðar saga þögla (Reykjavík, 1992), Ágrip af Noregskunungasögum (London, 1995, 2nd ed. 2008) and Fjórar sögur frá hendi Jóns Oddsonar Hjaltalín (Reykjavík, 2006), as well as the monograph The unwashed children of Eve: The production, dissemination and reception of popular literature in post-Reformation Iceland (London, 1997).

MotherNet member Professor Helena Wahlström Henriksson from Uppsala University will visit Vilnius University and on December 8 at 3 PM give a lecture Single Fathers Fail: Swedish cinema and (non)stigmatization of single parents (Room 314 B, Vilnius University Centre for Scandinavian Studies).

About the lecture

Representations of fathers and fatherhood in popular culture contribute to establishing the “ideational – and ideological – centrality of fatherhood” across cultures (Wahlström Henriksson 2020, 323). From a feminist perspective it is crucial to investigate these representations, since they “are part of the social fabric within which understandings of fatherhood take shape (Wahlström Henriksson 2020, 324). Furthermore, since single parenthood is a highly feminized phenomenon, it is important to investigate how “media images and representations intertwine with political and social ideologies” (Gallagher 2014, 27) to convey messages about single fathers.

This chapter explores representations of single fathers in 20th century Swedish fictional film, how gender, class, ethnicity, and age figure in these representations, and how they speak to their contemporary political and ideological context. Premiering between 2013 and 2022, they all have a single father as a central character: Mig Äger ingen (Nobody Owns Me 2013), Min så kallade pappa (My So-called Dad 2014), Yarden (The Dockyard 2016); these films reached wide audiences and also received both critical awards and much media attention. The analysis engages in critical dialogue with international film studies scholarship on (single) fatherhood (Bruzzi 2005; Hamad 2013; Åström 2015; Dole 2021).

Given that lone/single parenthood is “normalized” rather than socially/morally stigmatized in Sweden, and given the ways that Sweden has promoted fathers – including single fathers – as (potential) primary parents in family policy, these films become particularly intriguing due to their predominantly negative construction of single fatherhood as marked by failure and dysfunction. I argue that they offer a counter-discourse to dominant socio-political discourses, and problematize the normative idea that single parenthood is normal and non-stigmatized. But in a political climate increasingly marked by conservatism and nationalism these films are also troubling, for they can be read as feeding into reactionary discourses about family forms and values. Hence, I read the figure of the “failing single father” as one that may question as well as strengthen dominant ideologies.

This visit is a part of MotherNet project and has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 952366.

On November 9th (Thursday) we invite you to an international mini conference Crossroads of the Christian Spaces: Missions, Exile, and Peregrination in Early Modern Europe.

Programme and more information >

Facebook event >

Last week on 5–6 October, Arqus WP11 Plurilingual and Multicultural Hub co-leads met at Vilnius University to plan their new Arqus Multilingualism Module. WP11 co-lead from Leipzig University Professor Olaf Bärenfänger, director of the Language Center at Leipzig University, took part in the meeting together with his team: Alba Delgado, Kerstin Gackle and Irmgard Wanner. The event was hosted by WP11 co-lead from Vilnius University Professor Roma Kriaučiūnienė and her team Nijolė Burkšaitienė, Orinta Gerikaitė and Eglė Žurauskaitė.

The purpose of the meeting was to discuss the concept, content and implementation of the Arqus Multilingualism Module, which will be open to students at all Arqus Universities. WP11 plans to develop, pilot and put this module into practice by 2026.

The meeting was opened by the pro-rector for studies Dr Valdas Jaskūnas, dean of the Faculty of Philology Professor Mindaugas Kvietkauskas and Vilnius Arqus officer Dr Julija Savickė.

The first day was devoted to discussing various aspects of the Arqus Multilingualism Module and then to developing a basic structure and content for the module. In addition, there were meetings with a number of stakeholder groups.  

The meeting with colleagues from the Institute of Educational Sciences in the Faculty of Philosophy Professor R. Želvys and Dr Sandra Kairė from Vilnius University and Dr Makhabbat Kenzhegaliyeva from the Faculty of Education at Leipzig University were very fruitful as the professors shared their experience of developing a joint module for teacher training students titled Schools around the World. Many of their insights turned out to be applicable for the development of the Arqus Mutilingualism Module. Some ideas for further collaboration in piloting the modules were also addressed.

During the next meeting with colleagues from Vilnius University, WP6 co-lead Lina Malaiškaitė, Vilnius Arqus officer Julija Savicke, who is also head of the Study, Quality and Development Department at Vilnius University, and WP5 co-lead Andrius Uždanavičius, the focus was on ways the three work packages could collaborate throughout the process of developing and implementing the Arqus Multilingualism Module. Many suggestions related to the accreditation of the modules and the procedure for its implementation were given.

On the second day, the Arqus Multilingualism Module was presented to the  Network of Language Centre Directors and the WP11 board members. Both groups gave positive feedback and provided some additional ideas for the structure, content and development of the module. The plan is for the Module to be accredited by Vilnius University and approved and acknowledged by the other Arqus Universities.

The new Swedish ambassador to Lithuania Lars Wahlund the Head of Promotion Robin Rinaldo was welcomed to the Faculty of Philology by the Dean Prof. Dr Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, the founder of the Centre for Scandinavian Studies and head of The Institute for the Languages and Cultures of the Baltic Assoc. Prof. Dr Erika Sausverde, head of The Institute for Literary, Cultural and Translation Studies Assoc. Prof. Dr Inga Vidugirytė-Pakerienė, head of the Department of Lithuanian Literature Prof. Dr Brigita Speičytė and head of Centre for Scandinavian Studies Assoc. Prof. Dr Ieva Steponavičiūtė-Aleksiejūnienė.  

Standing from the left: Assoc. Prof. Dr Ieva Steponavičiūtė-Aleksiejūnienė, Assoc. Prof. Dr Erika Sausverde, Swedish ambassador to Lithuania Lars Wahlund, Dean Prof. Dr Mindaugas Kvietkauskas, Assoc. Prof. Dr Inga Vidugirytė-Pakerienė and Prof. Dr Brigita Speičytė.

During a round table meeting, new avenues of cooperation and cultural exchange were discussed between the Embassy of Sweden and the Faculty of Philology. One of the proposed fields was fostering interest in the Lithuanian diaspora research in Sweden and vice versa, as well as advancing the teaching of the Lithuanian language in the Swedish educational system. 

The meeting was followed by the Ambassador Mr Wahlund's guest lecture to the Centre for Scandinavian Studies students. We present the highlights as told by Swedish language lecturer Erik Svenning: 

The ambassador met the Swedish and Finnish students at Vilnius University on the 18th of October. He gave an overview of Swedish history from the Middle Ages, via the exceptionalism of the 20th century, to today’s heterogeneous Sweden. The room was packed with students who after his speech bombarded the ambassador with questions. Ranging from personal questions about what books he reads and what little town he was from, to the burning of the Coran and the recent gang criminality in Sweden. It was a relaxed and friendly atmosphere, and we concluded that the students and the ambassador would soon meet again and continue to get to know each other.