Tiden flyger, as they might say in Sweden – time flies – but I know better than to be confident of my translation until I’ve checked with a true blue (and yellow) Swede. I’ve translated “time flies” alone and online and because it is an idiom, well, you have to be careful.

The official start date of my self-created Scandinavian course was five weeks ago, and since I was as excited about the idea back then as I am now, I actually started a few weeks before the semester started. Being a student, professor, dean, and provost all in one certainly gives one a lot of flexibility! I should add “International Study Experience Coordinator” to that list, as you’ll see that office plays a role later, too. Read on!

It’s probably a little early for fall break. (I guess I should have a fall break. I just checked with the president, yep he says!). A little early, but my travel schedule with work made this week a natural one-week pause. A good chance to reflect, with my second cup of coffee after an excellent omelette across the street from the entrance to Ankara University. Nothing on my schedule until after lunch, just this reflection, some people-watching, Turkish background music, and this coffee. If I sound content, that’s right. This is living.

Not long after starting my Scandinavian Studies degree (I really need a different word than degree, but I’m not sure what that word is), I created a spreadsheet to track my progress. There are a number of notes there now, in a number of columns. The courses are language, literature, education, and cuisine. I’m making a lot of progress. There are now four columns for language, as I added an introductory text on Old Norse to Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish. Four columns for cuisine as well, since I’ve made recipes from four countries. Three columns for literature, I haven’t moved off the continent yet, but have read a variety of poems, plays, and novels. And education, well, that is a hodgepodge, a collection of notes on a spreadsheet that would turn the stomach of an accountant or anyone leaning toward a Type A personality. I have concentrated on Scandinavian folk high schools, but the author I relied on most, Lene Rachel Andersen, is a proponent of bildung, so I guess I need to add bildung to what I’ve learned about Scandinavian folk high schools and Scandinavian culture in general.

I’ll take a look at each course separately in the future, but for now, before the coffee cools completely, I think it’s really interesting how the different courses have started to reinforce each other, how I’m making connections across courses, how things blur, and how that doesn’t matter, in fact, I think that is making the learning both deeper and more interesting.

Let’s start with folk high schools and see how studying them related to my language learning, literature course, and future study abroad experience. My main educational “texts” are The Nordic Secret and Bildung, both by Andersen. The folk high schools are essentially opportunities for people around 18 years or older to study and live with one another in a mostly non-judgmental, uplifting, sort of way. The programs are partially government funded and they are open to foreigners. I’ve interviewed two Americans who attended folk high schools. They learned the language, of course, largely through getting involved with the activities that were offered. One spent time painting and photographing on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, the other, when they found out she was a Spanish teacher, ended up teaching Spanish to interested Swedes, Swedes with a good sense for bildung, I would say.

Andersen’s review of educational thought from Comenius through the enlightenment, into which she brought so many philosophers and influencers (of the day!), made for the most enjoyable philosophy reading I remember in a long, long time. Connecting with the thoughts of those giants was inspiring, so much so that my Scandinavian Studies program supported two field trips that hadn’t been planned earlier – an excursion to the Comenius Museum and tomb in the Netherlands and coffee (twice!) at the café in nearby Vevey, Switzerland. There is an inscription on the outside wall claiming that Rousseau stayed there. Comenius, by the way, is perhaps best known for his notion that we should base our teaching on what children already know, Rousseau is known among other things for his novel Émile, which laid out a pedagogical program to make learning natural, though to our contemporary sensibilities it misses the mark. Field trips make connections and memories. They make things feel real. 

Learning about the folk high schools led me directly to their websites, both national “clearinghouse” type sites as well as sites for individual schools. There are roughly 80 folk high schools in each of Denmark and Norway, about twice that many in Sweden. I visited a number of them, virtually, reading and watching videos in Scandinavian about what they offer and why you should go there. Eventually I started searching for summer programs that cater to seniors. (Indeed, I’ll be 60 next summer, when my program requires a 3-week stay in Scandinavia). My research about the Medborgarskolar in Sweden led me to distans courses, some of which were just 90 minutes. Just sign up, there is no charge, talk about things in Swedish. I signed up, switched all my energy to Swedish for a bit, both on Duolingo and with my reading, a police story called The Last Winter by Åke Edwardson. And it worked. I was thrilled, I wasn’t the worst or best speaker in our group of five, I fit right in. Plus, the teacher asked us to send topics for the following week, so I asked if we could talk about Swedish folk high schools. I’m a bit of a Johnny One Note, or a dog with a bone, about my Ed course. And now its content was partially in Swedish, all while preparing me for my abroad requirement. Due to some error in the link, I was the only one on that second call the following week, so for the first 30 minutes I got to ask lots of questions. The teacher had even created slides for the course about folk high schools. I emailed her afterwards to see if I could interview the school’s director. We’ll see.
And that novel? I’ve had it in the house for a decade, something I always wanted to read. I needed the motivation of my course to finally do it. More than 450 pages of Swedish, I did it and I am very proud to have done it. It could be in my literature course, but I’ve listed it in my Swedish learning, ultimately who cares where I keep track of it. The fact is I have now read a police detective story in Swedish and believe I can do it again. That, for a learner, is huge.