Scandinavian Studies UW-Madison

As part of our 150th anniversary year of celebration, we’re excited to welcome Dr. Natalie Van Deusen back to Madison! Dr. Van Deusen will be presenting “Reading Disability in Old Norse Literature” on Thursday, October 9, from 4:00pm–5:00pm in 1418 Van Hise. See you all there!!

"Every year since 1989, a hotel built out of snow and ice is constructed anew, and welcomes guests in the Swedish village of Jukkasjärvi. This year’s edition, Icehotel 34, recently opened, displaying new themes for its rooms and many new ice sculptures. Icehotel is both an art exhibition and a functional hotel—and this year features more than a dozen art suites, a main hall, and a ceremony hall. Gathered below are photographs of this year’s version, and of several incarnations from previous years."

A Photo Visit to Sweden’s Icehotel Images of recent versions of Sweden’s annual Icehotel—part art exhibit, part hotel

We’re excited to announce that Swedish musicians Maja Heurling, Ola Sandström, and Livet Nord will be visiting campus during the first week of October. Along with a few class visits, they’ll be performing Irrbloss: Songs from the Poetry of Signe Aurell on Tuesday, October 4, at 6:00pm at Tripp Commons in Memorial Union. The performance is free and open to the public: https://folklife.wisc.edu/event/signe-aurell-irrbloss/

Signe Aurell was a Swedish woman who came to the United States in 1913, worked as a laundress and seamstress, joined the Industrial Workers of the World, and wrote poetry and essays—including her self-published poetry collection, Irrbloss (Will-o’-the-Wisp)—during her seven years living in Minnesota.

Musicians Maja Heurling and Ola Sandström collaborated to set music to a selection of poems from Irrbloss, blending folk stylings and the Swedish visa tradition together to amplify the importance and continued relevance of Aurell’s words. In doing so, the group has employed the Swedish visa tradition to interpret not just Aurell’s poetry, but also the migration histories of the over one million Swedes who came to the United States.

The performances will feature songs based on the poetry of Aurell, as well as stories from her life in both Sweden and the United States.

"By 1952, Svalbard’s walruses were nearly gone, due to more than 300 years of ivory hunting. So the Norwegian government banned commercial hunting of these endangered creatures, and they began to rebound. In 2006, there were 2,629 walruses in Svalbard. The latest study, in 2018, put that number at 5,503. It’s now common to see clusters of these social animals sunning by the water’s edge. They fill the air with their cacophony of vocalizations, like friends chatting and singing late into the night."

A Welcome Comeback for Norway's Walruses A hunting ban has fostered the return of a nearly extinct species