Hello buddies, my danish is getting rusty and I want to improve it by reading more...

I'm mostly looking for fiction but Kierkegaard is easy to come by so thanks for the reminder.
And yeah, I know, but I don't see my danish speaking friends anymore so I'll have to make do with reading for now.

"Kongens fald" or "The fall of the king" for which Johannes V. Jensen got the nobel prize in literature. Also one of the greatest books i have ever read.

Also "Fædrene Æde Druer" by Gustav Wied, i don't know how to translate the title, since it's a danish idiom, but i guess you do know some danish.

Very nice, thank you.
From what I read the idiom means that the coming generations gets to pay for the sins of their predecessors or something. Sounds right? Same moral as the "society grows great when men plant trees whose shade they know they'll never sit in" quote.

Yes, that'ts the idea. A full, literal translation of the title would be "The fathers eat grapes". Where the full idiom is: "The fathers eat grapes, their sons become sour" only in danish it rhymes.

Gustav Wied is almost forgotten today, but he was one of the greatest danish writers. So passionate about his writing that he allegedly killed himself due to a bad review.

>you also have to speak it

>speaking a language that sounds so ridiculous even Norwegians make fun of it

I think most people that say danish is an ugly language can't understand it. It flows so smoothly, I remember in my danish class when you got to the point where you could speak without hesitation or pauses and it felt real good.

Both norwegian and swedish is so jumpy compared to it.

Seconding this, but obviously you have to read Pontoppidan too. Lykke-Per is his masterpiece.
JP Jacobsens Niels Lyhne is a classic too.

If you're only looking for classics, that should keep you going for a while.You could also check out the publishing house Gladiator. They have a series called Sandal serien, where they're re-publishing classics that the canon forgot. Some of it is pretty good, and it's pretty much the only place to find women writers prior to 1960 or so.

This. Norwegian has a lot of ups and downs, like they're singing or something, and Swedes are just a mess.

>mfw youtube.com/watch?v=vupHdbcogNo
Favorite song we sung in middle school, only one I really remember too.

Nice point. I totally forgot about Karen Blixen ("Syv Fantastiske fortællinger" short stories that she wrote under the name Isak Dinesen.

What about Tom Kristensen's Havoc?

True, forgot about her. But yeah, the story of her publishing kind of speaks for itself.

"Froken Smillas fornemmelse for sne" (Smilla's Sense of Snow) by Peter Hoeg.

This looks real cool, like a danish Under the volcano.

Kierkegaard is obvious. He can be difficult even to native speakers, but his prose is legitimately the best I've ever read in the languages I know.

Dan Tùrell is a household name, and I think he, better than most, encapsulates parts of the quintessentially danish.

Norwegians are just butthurt that we used to literally own them.

Very good choice too. It's thematically similar to works like Nausea, Steppenwolf and The Stranger, but vastly, vastly superior in my opinion.

How does it feel to be the worst Scandinavian country in terms of literature?

Fine, given superiority in philosophy, cinema and physics, to name a few :^)

>Norwegians are just butthurt that we used to literally own them.
And after 1814 we've surpassed you guys in every way imaginable.

Well Sweden does have 8 nobel prizes in literature. Norway and Denmark both have 3 and Finland has 1. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Nobel_laureates_in_Literature

>sweden it's the country which gives the nobel prizes
>suddenly a lot of swedes get the nobel prize in the literature, including one member of the committee which gives the prize

:^)

afaik one swede killed himself with scissors after he was awarded the nobel prize in literature

Danish cinema is to Norwegian cinema what James Joyce is to John Green.

But I don't want to argue. Jeg elsker jer fjeldaber.

Okay, I'll agree with that. Norwegian cinema is horrendous.

> tfw in the future a post-modernist swedish writer, writes a piece of ergodic literature that is part fiction and part factual proof that "nobel prize was an inside job" and gets a nobel prize.

Bruh, I've always dreamt of reading Kruimeltje. I guess you'll do it for me.

Here are my two top picks:

Henrik Pontoppidan's Lykke-Per (publ. 1898-1904), a 'dannelsesroman' or, in German, 'Bildungsroman', and is considered 'classiclly Danish' because the protagonist is confronted with themes central to Danish history and the Danish experience such as the heritage of pietism/fideism (Lykke-Per's real surname is 'Sidenius'), the folkloric tradition (although a novel, the beginning line 'I en af de ostjyske småkobstæder' is an echo of this (cf. Isak Dinesen's Babette's Feast for something similar)), and a whole range of socio-economic, historical stuff like Germany, the Jews, etc., and it clearly deals with existentialist philosophy like Kierkegaard and Nietzsche.
Other than that, I found it well-written and with moments of pure excellence, and I could relate to Lykke-Per on a sappy, personal because he is, essentially, a fuck-up who doesn't know what he's got til it's gone. Pontoppidan edited the book himself a bunch of times without any serious changes, but try to get a reprint of the earlier editions.

Should you prefer verse, read Fr. Paludan-Müller's Adam Homo. It's a verse epic but highly satirical like Pontoppidan, and it contains verses and keen reflections that easily rival Homer or Dante (at times). Also once again, the protagonist is also essentially a fuck-up who only ends up being redeemed because of the grace of God. A flawed masterpiece.

And a note regarding Paludan-Müller: The author himself later revised Adam Homo and there's great debate surrounding the final judgement surrounding these two editions. I read the unchanged 1848 edition and have no knowledge of what was changed or not, but Paul v. Rubow (acclaimed scholar) called the later version 'castrated' whereas one of his students would go on to defend the later edition as the true masterpiece.

the final judgement of these two editions*
fuck

Dan Turell was too much of a hippie beatnigger and too much of a city-dweller to have anything to say about what was/is Danish. Fuck him.

Thanks for all the tips guys, I really appreciate it.

I'm assuming you've already read him, but H. C. Andersen is a must.

The ministry of culture made a perfectly decent official canon some years ago. If you want to be "dannet" according to the gubment.
kum.dk/uploads/tx_templavoila/KUM_kulturkanonen_OK2.pdf

I don't read a lot of Danish literature myself, although some recent novels I've read and enjoyed were Den lange rejse by Johannes V. Jensen (Nobel prize winner and author of Kongens fald, another canonical work) and Den danske borgerkrig 2018-2024 by Kasper Colling Nielsen, a sci-fi-ish collection of stories that were much more inventive and surreal than the title suggests.

Thirding Johannes V. Jensen, anything by him really. I think I liked Skovene more than Kongens Fald.

And there's H.C. Andersen of course.
I think a lot of Danes now are a burnt out on him because he's constantly used to attract tourists and we're just sick of hearing the name, but his use of the Danish language was lovely even if some of his fairy tales were a bit bland.

Personal favourite; Snemanden

as an englishman to me that idiom sounds like the opposite of "planting trees they'll never sit under"

If the fathers eat grapes and the sons become sour, it must be because the fathers glutted themselves on life's fruits to the point that there was nothing left for the sons, thus making them sour.

the moral there being moderation with an eye on the wellbeing of future generations.

amirite?

It's Jeremiah 31:29-30, slightly modified:
29 In those days they shall say no more, The fathers have eaten a sour grape, and the children's teeth are set on edge.

30 But every one shall die for his own iniquity: every man that eateth the sour grape, his teeth shall be set on edge.

So yeah you rite

Kierkegaard m8

Read Helle Helle if you're into minimalism. Her writing is very simple in terms of the required vocabulary. Obviously, that literary style includes alot of everyday plain talk and doing about and thus requires a lot of perception by the reader...

I would you suggest you read Isak Dinesen and not Karen Blaxen
It's obvious that thought went into her English writing, such as a story in Anecdotes of Destiny where there's an accounting or banking guy, I can't remember if he's actually called a 'bank teller, but he doesn't know the concept of being told a story or tale, and so it's playing on etymologies that don't necessarily translate into Danish, but then again I've never read her in translation except probably in school.
It's also not like she has ever really been appreciated for her literary merits in Denmark, she's mostly neglected at English departments as Isak Dinesen and superficially studied at Danish ones.

Karen Blixen*
And also also Anecdotes of Destiny is published by Penguin but as 'Babette's Feast and Other Tales', a weird choice considering thought once again went into the title as presenting the collection as sort of cyclic and in reaching on the 'real meaning' of anecdotes as 'secrets', although the real title does weirdly appear on the top of the pages.