Danish Literature Mikkel Nordvig, University of Copenhagen

Danish Literature Mikkel Nordvig, University of Copenhagen 1. General Bestsellers. Lars Handesten, Bestsellere — En litteratur- og kulturhistorie om de mest solgte bøger i Danmark, Hellerup, Spring, 574 pp., ignores the perceived dichotomy between quality and quantity in literature and demonstrates how the most popular pieces of literature reflect the development in interests and views in a cultural sphere. Divided into sections, the first about the concept of bestsellers, the book includes a number of categories — gender, genealogy, crime fiction, etc. Through short readings and presentations H. shows how these genres and themes provide the frames for both Danish and translated literature that has won public acclaim in Denmark since the beginning of the 1980s. Using the number of units sold, as opposed to nationality and artistic quality, as the criterion for literary history writing gives a rather different perspective. Current Trends. Ida Bencke, ‘Kroppen er noget andet — Posthumanisme og cyborghjerter hos Ursula Andkjær Olsen’, Kritik, 211:53–64, notes that a number of authors have made their debut over the recent years with works on matters of the body, and studies this through a reading of Ursula Andkjær Olsen’s (1970-) volume of poetry Det 3. årtusindes hjerte (The Heart of the 3rd Millennium), ambiguous, monstrous and pulsating with abrupt and wildly kaleidoscopic text that does not display the body and its functions as bearers of other meanings but as raw existence. Bencke muses over post-humanism, the blurring of the lines between nature and culture, and eco feminist Donna Haraway’s (1944-) concept of the cyborg, a hybrid between the organic and the artificial. B. concludes that ‘In Det 3. årtusindes hjerte, we find a new kind of (body) language where nothing adds up, but instead, there is plenty of room in which to move the inappropriate around in ever changing constellations...’. In other words, we are pointed towards an amorphous state of being with space and time and biology and technology floating freely and eternally. Jon Helt Haarder, Performativ biografisme — En hovedstrømning i det senmodernes skandi- naviske litteratur, Riga, Gyldendal, 314 pp. The writer writing about the life and dealings of the writing writer — Karl Ove Knausgaard (1968- ) is just the tip of the iceberg; in contemporary Scandinavian literature, the merging of author and work is everywhere. Naturally several scholars have taken it upon them to define and name this tendency in which the lines between fiction, documentary and biography are blurred, if not obliterated. H. dubs the ‘genre’ performativ biografisme and describes how the approach to reading and interpreting literature is influenced by the authors’ different ways of performing themselves and their art as one organic identity. Starting with Danish poet Michael Strunge (1958–1986), who viewed the act of media-performing as a genre in its own right, H. discusses a large number of ‘performative biographers’, especially Knausgaard and Danish author/transcendent phenomenon Claus Beck-Nielsen (1963- ). Peter Simonsen, Livslange liv — Plejehjemsromaner og pensionistfortællinger fra velfærdsstaten, Viborg, Syddansk U.P., 336 pp., deals with the overall theme of old age, but the intent is not only to account for Danish literature’s take on senior citizens’ lives and opinions, but to form part of the humanistic research in the field of the welfare state. After a chapter on the welfare state, particularly the Danish, S. approaches a number of pieces of Danish literature from a geronto- 442 Nordic Studies logical angle. Themes such as life in nursing homes — portrayed as both decent and dignified as well as terrible, life on a pension, completion novels (from the German Vollendungsroman), and death — are prominent. War. Klaus Rothstein, Soldatens år — Afghanistan-krigen I dansk litteratur og kultur, Tjele, Tiderne Skifter, 272 pp., (the title means ‘Year of the Soldier’) investigates how the Danish war effort in Afghanistan has influenced literature and culture in general, with the main focus on the literary aspects. R. analyses a broad range of literary works from the very popular to the most sophisticated, showing that the traumatic impact of war and how it affects soldiers and their families is the general object of interest. ‘While there is plenty of body, battle and psychology in Danish literature about the Afghanistan-war, a third [sic] dimension is practically absent, namely depictions, analyses and critique of the war as a global political phenomenon.’ Kasper Green Krejberg, ‘“Se det var noget at snakke om” — Krig som ledemotiv i dansk litteratur’, Reception, 72:10–18, provides a general map of the impact of war on the works of Danish authors such as Herman Bang (1857–1912), Tage Skou Hansen (1925–) and Johs. V. Jensen (1873–1950). Though many Danish writers have experienced their society under direct influence of ongoing warfare or in the aftermath of war, few have hands-on experience from the battlefield. Although Sven Hazel (1917–2012) wrote a number of bestselling novels set in WW2, and recent Danish participation in coalition-driven wars has given rise to some warrior writers, such works mostly contain portrayals of the psychological implications of living in a time of violence, a nation suffering humiliating defeats and the personal cost to soldiers and their families. Hymnology. Salmesang — Grundbog i hymnologi, ed. Peter Balslev-Clausen and Hans Rau Iversen, Ljubljana, Det Kgl. Vajsenhus’ Forlag, 408 pp., approach the topic of the singing of psalms from many angles. Two chapters by Erik Skyum-Nielsen are of particular importance to literary scholarship: ‘The Psalm as a Genre and Tradition’ and ‘Renewal in Danish psalm- poetry’. The first introduces a range of criteria commonly accepted when defining hymns, before descending into areas of dispute, such as the relation between the psalm and the holy text. The second considers the mastodons of Danish psalm tradition: Thomas Kingo (1634–1703), Hans Adolph Brorson (1694–1764), Nikolai Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872) and the three ‘minor mastodons’ of the genre: Hans Christian Sthen (1544–1610), Bernhard Severin Ingemann (1789– 1862) and Jakob Knudsen (1858–1917) and examines how contemporary psalmists contribute to renewal of the genre, though always in the shade of the great predecessors. Literary History. Flemming Conrad, ‘En diktat om dansk litteraturhistorie’, DSt, 109:88–110, examines how Danish literary history was taught around the beginning of the 20th c. by means of a 600-page manuscript dictated by a teacher to a student in 1914–15, revealing that formal and stylistic matters were of little or no concern. Literature was treated as means to an end in installing morals and virtues in the pupils, and writers and poets were evaluated largely on their value as didactic material for promoting Christian and patriotic views. 2. Nationality, Identity and the evolution of ‘Danishness’ Svend Erik Larsen, ‘Dansk fremmedhed eller fremmed danskhed — Tre bøger med litteratur kritik, poesi og oversættelser rejser relevante spørgsmål om indvandrerlitteratur og indvandrerforfattere’, Standart, 14.1:60–63, focuses on Yahya Hassan (1995- ) as an example of migration literature, pointing out that the overwhelming reception of Hassan’s debut collection has to some extent drowned out the literary evaluation of its poetry. Larsen points to the stylistic craftsmanship of a competent and confident writer whose work echoes themes and motifs native to millennia of literary tradition. Deep-rooted anger, the revolt against the father, tradition, religion, and one’s .

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