Summer 2024: June 10 – June 28
Cost: $600
This three-week, in-person course is an intensive study of the Danish language, aimed specifically at Kierkegaard scholars. The course provides a foundation of basic grammar, phonetics, and linguistic structures for developing a good reading knowledge of Danish, and aims at enabling readers of Kierkegaard to examine the text in the original. Research fellows, undergraduate researchers, and community members are welcome to apply.
The course will be held at St. Olaf College, Monday-Friday, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm. Homework can be expected to take approximately one hour per day.
This is not an official course of St. Olaf College and does not provide official institutional course credit.
CLICK HERE to listen to helpful recordings of commonly studied passages spoken in Danish.
The preferred application deadline is Monday, May 1st, but late applications will be considered if the class has not reached its maximum capacity.
Apply Here
Please contact HKL@stolaf.edu with any questions.
About the Instructor
Anna Hamilton was born in Denmark and Danish is her first language, although in her adult life English has been her primary language. She still speaks Danish regularly with family and Danish friends. Anna comes from a family of linguists and speaks several languages including Danish, Swedish, and some French, German and Russian. Her degree is in Russian Studies.
Over the last few years she has had the pleasure of knowing and working with Kierkegaard scholars at St. Olaf. Her approach is to quickly engage students in translating short passages of Kierkegaard’s writings. This is very different from learning tourist Danish, in two significant ways. First, it grapples with the issues of reading/translating philosophical writings. Second, it recognizes that the Danish of 19th century Copenhagen has characteristics that simply aren’t present in contemporary Danish.