I stopped at the IKEA restaurant because I was in nearby Fully, picking up dog food. Gilligan the Dog is along for the ride, which means he is out in the car so this will have to be a quick update. The fourth of December in Riddes, Switzerland is not so warm. But there’s enough time for a cinnamon roll and coffee, and these few notes.

This restaurant is my chosen graduation venue for my MSelf degree in Scandinavian Studies – the degree I created myself, for myself, this academic year. Graduation is in June 2026. Just my family is invited so far, though really anyone can come. The IKEA restaurant is, after all, pretty darn big. Lots of room here. Lots of meatballs. I love the big sign wishing us all a good meal: Smaklig måltid. The rest of the signs are in French and German, because Riddes is straddling the French-German language border here in bilingual Valais.

The courses I chose for the first semester have complemented each other really well. I’ve studied Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, read literature from Scandinavian countries, some of it in Danish, learned about Scandinavian education for adults in the folk high school systems (for participants 17 and-a-half years old on up), and cooked or baked a dozen times, well beyond my original goal. 

The study of the folk high schools has been particularly rewarding, leading to a number of interesting discoveries. A podcast led me to Lene Rachael Andersen, who leads an effort called Nordic Bildung, and I just completed a ten-week course online with her and a handful of other interesting colleagues about bildung, the educational philosophy of the folk high schools. The educational philosophy of bildung is informing my consulting work, that’s an unexpected plus. It turns out that folk high schools offer distance learning. Free classes in Swedish, for example, that are open to anyone, anywhere. For someone hacking a Scandinavian Studies degree, free language courses are a good find. I’ve got one tonight and one tomorrow morning. They are mostly attended by emigrants living in Sweden, folks studying and working there. Another really nice outcome of learning about folk high schools is discovering the short summer courses they offer. I’m signing up for a writer’s workshop at the end of June, in Åsa, Sweden. That will cover one week of my self-imposed requirement to spend three weeks in Scandinavia next summer. Now that I have specific dates for one week, I have started planning the rest of my stay. A second week will be in Roskilde, a small Danish city with lots of Viking history, including an outdoor village with reconstructed buildings and crafts. It’s called Sagnlandet Lejre. There’s also a Vikingskib Museet in town, and I am planning on sailing on a reconstructed Viking ship. The third week might be another folk high school program, at the International People’s College in Helsingør. I’m a little afraid of trying to understand spoken Danish. If you’ve ever encountered spoken Danish, you might empathize with me. Besides, maybe I should try to spend a week in Norway?

My motivation has been strong all semester, although I noticed I gravitated away from Danish and Norwegian toward Swedish, probably because I have the best handle on that language. I’m reading, in fact, my third Swedish police novel, with a goal of finishing before Christmas. I think I’ll make it, this one is easier than the second one. More dialogue, shorter chapters. I actually lost the second novel when I was two-thirds of the way through. Page 216 if I ever find it again. I generally memorize what page I’m on instead of using a bookmark. Half the time I forget, I’ll admit, but in this case, wherever that book might be, I think it opens rather naturally to page 216.

I need to get back to Danish and Norwegian, or at least Danish. The potential class in the summer will be good motivation. Another motivational trick I learned is that, even if reading in Scandinavian is a bit of a struggle at a B1 (or even B2 now in Swedish?) level, if you struggle through Old Norse for a while the modern renditions of Scandinavian suddenly feel SO much easier. Struggling to understand James Joyce? Hack away at Chaucer for ten minutes, Joyce will be a picnic.

I forgot to mention that, I’ve made it through that Old Norse textbook. I often skipped the grammar explanations and concentrated instead on the sagas, both the synopses in English and the reading and translating practice in Old Norse. I enjoyed learning about runes, but can’t read them. Old Norse wasn’t in the original curriculum, but it’s easy to be flexible when you are the curriculum coordinator, teacher, and student all in one.

Coming up? Swedish emigration to Minnesota in the month of January, and then in the second semester I’ll get back to languages, Scandinavian cuisine, Scandinavian literature (with a focus on stories for children), and a completely new course in current events. I’m planning on following what is going on in Scandinavia through the press, online.

The point of all this (and then I really need to get out to the car and give the dog a treat for his patience, maybe get the car heater on, too) is to demonstrate how easy it is to be an autodidact, how readily available resources are, how you can learn the equivalent of what you would learn at the university by just finding your own materials and colleagues. Think of it as a university of the self, yourself, if you want it to be. A place where you earn an MSelf in whatever it is that interests you, much in the spirit of the Scandinavian folk high school. Much in the spirit of IKEA, for that matter. Construct it yourself!