Volume 49, Issue 1 - Nordischer Klang

The inscription on a spear-shaft excavated from the Kragehul bog, just outside Flemløse, Denmark, in the late nineteenth century, is one of the most interpretatively problematic of all the early runic texts. Previous treatments of the inscription, however, have failed to consider the intertextuality and syntax of the text properly, and have often been distracted by idiosyncratic hypotheses peculiar to runic studies. The present paper addresses several of the shortcomings evident in the philological method applied in previous accounts in a historiographically critical analysis of the very difficult ancient moor find. Syntactic features such as anastrophe and left branch extraction can be discerned in the Kragehul spear-shaft inscription that seems to preserve a text that is intertextually paralleled by other contemporary Migration Age sources.

In the survey 115 participants read one of four books by Svend Age Madsen, Lars Skinnebach, Pia Juul and Maja Lee Langvad, respectively, and were asked about their valuation, expectations and own generic classification of the work. The books all have a singular, non-standard genre label (genre signature), and the main hypothesis was that this paratextual marker would have an effect on the expectations and experience of the readers. The hypothesis was only partly confirmed, but other findings were made among which two are to be highlighted: 1) The participants had difficulties generically classifying in an unambiguous manner suggesting that the self-claimed extraordinary genre status is reflected in the actual texts. 2) In general, the participants did not like the books, though these are all critically acclaimed. This points towards the old distinction between low and high culture still being relevant and suggests that the genre signature might be a marker of the latter. The article ends with a discussion of the role of empirical studies within literary theory.

Erlend Loe’s novel Stille dager i Mixing Part (2009, Quiet Days in Mixing Part) focuses on a marital crisis of a Norwegian couple on vacation in Germany. The husband, Bror Telemann, is a dramaturg who dreams of writing a major play, and he tries in vain to begin to write one. The novel is a third-person narrative, but it actually contains few narrative passages: most of the text consists of dialogues. The text is, in fact, a hybrid of two genres – part novel, part play. This seems to be a consciously chosen aesthetic strategy on Loe’s part. The main thematic aspects of Stille dager i Mixing Part are tied up with drama and theatre in various ways. This article shows how genre hybridity, aided by intertextual allusions, contributes to representing these main aspects.

This article centres on the literary representation of the pregnant body in the short story Skördebrev by Helena Granström. The short story interlocks the narration of the pregnant experience with narration from the perspective of a dairy cow on a farm, thus negotiating the dominating discourses surrounding farmed animals and human pregnancy. The article investigates these matters by discussing the relations between the characters, the farmed animals and the farmed landscape as portrayed in the short story, and in doing this, examines what the relations convey about the portrayal of human, non-human and pregnant corporeality and identity in the text. It does this using Stacy Alaimo’s term trans-corporeality , Karen Barad’s notions of intra-action and Ann-Sofie Lönngren’s adaption of this theory to literary analysis. The article suggests that the text offers an understanding of the material situatedness of the literary pregnant subject and the dairy cow as partly shared and argues that it shows the potential of literary representation to articulate these intersecting positions. In doing this, it suggests that the text negotiates the societal power structures that are at play in the Western cultural understanding of pregnancy as well as in the farming environment, in an ethical and political manner.

The influences that translational practice has on other social systems, especially literary polysystems have been attracting scholarly attention from both inside and outside translation studies. Translational activities are considered as a kind of cultural importation bringing new genres and styles of writing to the literary target polysystem. Besides, translation is also believed to be an integral means of canon formation, not only introducing a foreign literary work to the target audience but also making its way to the centre, that is the canon of the target literary polysystem. The present article will suggest a mechanism of canonization of translated literature on the basis of the investigation of influential factors in translation. The mechanism will then be applied to a historical review of the Chinese translations of H. C. Andersen’s tales, hoping to offer some insights into the dynamics and complexity of the canonization of translated literature and the roles that translational activities play in the process. The article also attempts to show that historical accounting of translation should be humanist. Perspectives taken by the narrator and other human factors are vital for the composition of a history of translation.

Computers, smart-phones, tablets etc. expose most people to new cultural and artistic practices made possible through digital technologies. Among these practices and objects for scholarly research and analyses is literature – electronic literature. The article addresses the increasingly interactive and performative role of the reader and the need for transaesthetic, analytical and methodological approaches to multimodal literature. A brief historical background, the “current” terminology of electronic literature and a short outline of Scandinavian electronic literature are included, before Johannes Heldén’s Astroecology is discussed.

This paper takes concepts from spatial theory and globalization discourse and uses them in order to analyze the narrative function of descriptions of nature in romantic Icelandic poetry from the beginning of the 19 th century and an Icelandic TV-Series from 2015. In Iceland’s romantic poetry of the early 19 th century, especially in poems written by Bjarni Thorarensen, sublime nature is described as a form of guardian against foreign influences that threaten the way of living on the peripheral island. This romantic concept of Icelandic nature is closely connected to narrative patterns in the process of the Icelandic Nation-Building, as it characterizes Icelanders as simultaneously defined and protected by the harsh conditions on the island. The paper takes a comparative look at the underlying narrative concepts of nature in two of Bjarni Thorarensen’s poems and a recent Icelandic TV series, Baltasar Kormákur’s Ófærð (2015), that presents a different concept of Icelandic nature in its relation to a (threatening) global influence. The series depicts a globalized world in which crime does not only affect remote communities as an evil from the outside but as a local evil connected to forces on global scale. Nature as a narrative device in the TV series thus does not protect Icelanders from global forces, as it did in Bjarni Thorarensens poems in the early 19 th century, but instead functions a catalyst that reveals the evil from the outside and the evil from within.

The article examines the relation of structural, thematic and cinematographic means in the second season of the Danish/Swedish TV-series Bron / Broen and sets them in relation to the claim of „double storytelling“ of a good story and a political or ethical message. After an attempt at visualizing the complexity of the plot construction, the focus is directed toward an analysis of the medialisation of crime as well as its detection. Scandinavian society is depicted as a surveillance state which the series does not explicitly question. The brutal crimes committed in the name of an ecological cause are presented as an outcome of extreme violence and personal evil, which turn the alleged social criticism into cultural pessimism and depict a very dark picture of the world.

Danish television has been able to produce a remarkable number of successful primetime dramas over the last years from Forbrydelsen (The Killing, DR 2007-12) to Herrens Veje (Ride upon the Storm, DR 2017-). Many of them are Nordic Noir crime dramas, yet the list also includes political thrillers and family dramas. This article briefly summarizes main reasons for the prolific production environment at public service broadcaster Danmarks Radio (DR). Some of the exceptional circumstances of Danish television demonstrate why the relatively small country was able to produce shows that found devoted audiences around the world. While the DR production framework has received much attention, this article takes a closer look at narrative composition, issues of characterization and the presentation of themes. Analyzing the first episodes of Borgen (DR 2010-13) and Herrens Veje , the article proposes that it is specifically the combination of multiperspectivity of the leading protagonists and how their life is linked to wider cultural, social and political debates, that can be identified as one main outcome of the fruitful collaboration between DR and various creative personnel. While both shows adhere to the main characteristics of complex serial drama as identified by Jason Mittel and Trisha Dunleavy, there are also some noticeable differences, including their strong public service ethos, their unusual Danish settings, the avoidance of transgressive protagonists, character-centred storylines and their slow, indulgent pace.

This article analyses the three recent Nordic Noir television series Bordertown ( Sorjonen ) from Finland, Trapped ( Ófærð ), from Iceland, and the Danish-Swedish The Bridge ( Broen / Bron ). All series are located on national borderlands, and this article aims to discern the significance of using such borderland settings. Departing from Doreen Massey’s emphasis on places as being inherently inter-linked with other places, the article characterises the various ways foreign influences are represented and narrativised in these three series.