Of all the Scandinavian/Nordic languages, which is the best to learn for literature?

whoever said finnish is musical cant have ever heard the language. while its not nordic, its not slavic either, its the family with estonian and hungarian

It's not even indo european.

Finnish is not technically Nordic and is very different compared to them

Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are all very alike OP, it doesn't take much extra effort to become equally fluent in all of them. Icelandic is somewhat different compared to those. You get the most bang for your buck going for any of the three.

I have to refer you to this Finnish is incredibly monotone compared to the others. If anyone sounded kid-like and whimsical it's the Danish.

>someone asks for danish lit
>mention two norwegians

There you have it, OP. Learn Norwegian.

Tom Kristensen, Jeppe Aakjær, Martin Nexo, Klaus Rifbjerg, Tove Ditlevsen. Also Georg Brandes, Herman Bang, Pontoppidan.

Scandifag here. The sagas are tiresome and boring; I read them in high school.

I would learn whatever of the 3 scandinavian languages where I find the lit most interesting (norwegian, swedish, danish), as they are very alike. I think danish is probably the best intro starting point, also to get into the other two. And it is the most Veeky Forums as well.

Henrik Pontoppidan that is.

>Icelandic lit

Sagas and... that's it.

>Danish lit

Kierkegaard, HC Andersen and... that's it.

>Norwegian lit

Ibsen
Hamsun
Vesaas
Bjorneboe
Knausgård

>Swedish lit

Strindberg
Söderberg
Lagerlöf
Moberg
Lagerkvist
Martinson
Many, many more

Shallow swedish fuck. Listen. Just because you don't KNOW about danish lit, doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

Mention 5 essential Danish authors then, besides Kierk and Andersen.

Swefag here,

Some dialects of Norwegian are very beautiful, whereas some are ugly as hell. Norwegian dialects vary very much, whereas Sweden has had an anti-dialect policy for about 100-150 years. Danish isn't as ugly as some say, but it is by far the most difficult to understand, since a huge part of spoken Danish is to "swallow" consonants, meaning to many non-Danes, Swedes included, Danish sounds like a long strand of vowels.

Any of the three makes you understand the other, at least in written form. Swedish is as per usual more progressive than the others, meaning we have gotten rid of a lot of grammatical rules that used to make us more like the other Germanic languages. Older works (first WW and before) will have a grammar more like German and Danish.

I think you should go for Swedish, simply because I think it's easier for a foreigner to learn. The many different literatures (traditions, whatever you want to call it) within the three languages have just as much in common as they are different.

If you want to know why we think the way we do up here, read the Icelandic sagas (tl;dr: strong farmers with lots of honour want to live independent of authorities and leave for Iceland, then start vendettas with each other).

I'm gonna make an infographic about how to get into Swedish Veeky Forums for foreigners sometime next week, see you then.

Tbqh, if you know 1 of the Scandi languages very well, it's not hard to understand the other languages at all, especially in written form.

I mean, I read Danish and Swedish news sites every day, along with my native Norwegian ones.

Swedish/Norweigan.

They are mutually intelligable and have the best lit.

Written Danish is so far removed from spoken Danish it's not even funny at this point. Don't even bother.

Icelandic is like learning elvish, it's pretty but pretty useless.

im going to begin learning swedish, so can you email me the link when you are done? i'd be very interested. thanks!

tsunieloboost@gmail

>Norwegian
>Ibsen
>Learning Norwegian to read Ibsen
K

It's Finno-Ugric, not Slavic

Cool, consider an exchange semester/year in Lund or Uppsala if you are a student. People will want to speak English, just tell them sternly that they have to speak Swedish with you and they'll be glad to.

im not sure of the logistics of that, i'm planning on doing an exchange to a korean uni//a iranian uni, as i've been studying korean and farsi for quite a while. we'll see how it plays out i guess, thanks man.

Joyce literally did that.

Nah he didn't. Ibsen wrote in Danish, so Joyce must've learned Danish.

>Implying there's any meaningful difference

t. Norskmann

>t. Norskmann

lol yeah right

Still waiting here, danskjävel.

>mongols
>slavic

Look in the fucking thread, there's literally a bunch of names a couple of replies earlier.

But I'll bite.

Ludvig Holberg, Henrik Pontoppidan, Herman Bang, Georg Brandes, Karen Blixen.

>Sagas and... that's it.

He doesn't know about based Halldór...

Written Norwegian/Danish are practically the same.

Spoken is naturally another matter.

L I T E R A L L Y W H O

Holberg was Norwegian and Blixen wrote in English so that's like saying people should learn Russian to read Nabokov.

To be fair, written Norwegian and Danish is almost identical

1) Holberg was Danish norwegian. As far as I'm aware, he wrote works in danish (I've read some).
2) Blixen wrote a bunch of stuff in danish.

Literally educate yourself.

Holberg also wrote stuff in Latin, that doesn't make him Roman.

Blixen's most well-knowned works were written in English.

Holberg, Pontoppidan, Scherfig, Nexo, Oehlenschlaeger, Blixen, Grundtvig, Johannes v. Jensen.

>Written Norwegian/Danish are practically the same.

That really isn't true anymore. It was in the beginning of the 20th century, before massive amounts of standardization and changes to the orthography of Bokmål, but it's not really true anymore.

I mean, a Dane can understand written Bokmål without problem and vica versa, but saying they are "practically the same" isn't true.

Norway was under the danish crown during Holbergs life

He was born in geographical Norway, which was part of the danish kingdom at the time. He lived, studied and wrote in Copenhagen all his life and wrote in Danish. The norwegian folks want to claim him all they want, but he was a dane.

youtu.be/QzXGdy8Et30

Well you flatland kikes didn't allow Norwegians to write in their vernacular, and neither did you allow a university to be built in Norway.

So while it's true he was a citizen of Denmark-Norway, and had to relocate to Copenhagen to get an education, and wrote in Danish, he was Norwegian.

But of course, Danes will do anything to excuse their imperialism, as do all imperialists.

Stop bringing your personal sense of inferiority into this. Holberg lived in Denmark, he wrote in Danish. If you want to read Jeppe på Bjerget as a forringer, you learn fucking danish, the language in which it was written.

Norway has been independent for a couple of hundred years, and you still bitch about this stuff? Man, I have no sense of national pride in a kingdom that died a long ass fucking time ago. We danes have been cucked for a long time, no sense of grandiose imperialism here.

Danskere i denne tråd, hvilken del af landet kommer I fra?

*foreigner

You literally made the argument that a person who is born in Norway, is somehow a Dane because of political bullshit.

It's like saying a Indian born in British India, is somehow a native Brit, just because the British were imperialists.

firehundreårsnatta never4get never4give

A guy born in the Kingdom of Denmark, at the time legally a dane, who spent ALL HIS LIFE (apart from a bit of traveling) in Copenhagen.

Say I was born in Algiers and Moved to France as a wee young lad and lived there all my life. Would you say I wasn't french?

By your logic, Camus was an african.

>Camus was an african.

Well he was, you moron.

I stand corrected.

I will be sure to dismiss the next idiot who bring up Camus when discussing french literature.

Camus was an ethnic frenchman living in french-occupied Algerie.

I guess we're both corrected, because Camus wasn't even Algerian at all, ethnicallyThe point I was trying to make anyway is that if you are born as a subject of a state that is occupying you, doesn't mean you are from that place.

You are literally saying that everyone born in Norway during the Nazi occupation actually are German.

But literature written in the Danish language is DANISH literature, no?

And Norway wasn't 'occupied', it legally entered a union with the Danish kingdom with main seat in Copenhagen.

A further point, as mentioned a hundred times, Holberg lived in Copenhagen most of his life. He only spent his childhood near Bergen.

Would you call an american citizen, who has lived in the US all his life but was born in Cuba, a cuban?

>But literature written in the Danish language is DANISH literature, no?

Sure it is, but he wasn't a Dane, which is the only thing I disputed you sperglord.

>Would you call an american citizen, who has lived in the US all his life but was born in Cuba, a cuban?

Considering the fact that the greater American society will never completely accept him as one of their own, just like the majority of Americans will never accept blacks as their own, no, he obviously isn't American.

I am the sperglord? I mentioned him as a rec on danish lit, and you go all boo hoo imperialism on me?

>the norwegian folks want to claim him all they want, but he was a dane

You started with the shots, I was merely correcting you.

kek.
Whatever man.

It's true though. You Americans are literally "muh heritage" for a reason.

OP here

I'm leaning towards Danish currently. I went to Copenhagen once and it was nice. Also my oneitis know some Danish so maybe she'll love me again if I can speak to her in Danish :(

That's one of the most offensive things I've ever read

Do Finns hate all Slavs, or just the subhuman Russians?

The never met other slavs than russians and there are good and obnoxious russians, but all slavic languages are pretty damn ugly. Almost german-tier, but german is objectively uglier due to the -sch and -zsch thing they do. Serbian is the worst tho

>Srbsk

I mean really, JUST

Feels good to see some animosity between nordics not involving Sweden for once.

Also I'm stealing the term "flatland kikes".

>speak Danish

lel good luck, user-kun

Its often considered musical and so on, tho. Why do you find it monotonous or something else?

We're talking about reading literature here, not just using the language to understand the news or to communicate as a tourist.

I think generally the hate is just for the Russian state (or the former Soviet Union), not so much the people. Sometimes you hear shit about obnoxious Russian tourists but that is about it.

However, we do consider ourselves more "European" and more civilized than Slavs.

J.P.Jacobsen's 'Niels Lyhne' is the best book I have ever read! Danish literature at its finest.

You can't expect a country with that very little history and big egos to not try to compensate for that lack
All people from the USA (not america senpai) literally have a short dick complex about their history

>Black man
>Born in and spends whole life in the USA
>By every possible idea of national identity and legal right is an American
>Isn't an American
What the fuck am I reading?

But he wasn't born in Norway because there wasn't a Norway. He was born in Denmark. It would be like saying that someone born in modern Italy around the city of Rome if actually a citizen of the Papal States and not Italian. But this makes no sense because the Papal States doesn't exist (well I suppose there is the Vatican but this hypothetical person was born in the historical lands of the Papal States and no in the reduced territory of the Vatican). And why stop at the Papal States? Why not go back to the Lombards or the Romans?

>born in
thaaaaaaat's it, now you understand it
It's a little exageration, but things actually work like that in most countries, if not all, fampai

Being from a country isn't about acceptance. If it was then if enough people just didn't want to be from that country you wouldn't be, regardless of who you are and what you did.
>George Washington
>Nah isn't American

Norway has existed since 872, m8.

But not at the time of the birth of Holdberg matey.

I dont want to get into a scandinavian dick-measuring competition, but I can add that Ive recently gotten into the swedish classics and Ive found it great this far and I would definately recommend Strindberg and Martinsson. I am swedish though, and I have basically no experience of the literature of our scandinavian neighbours, so I dont really know if my advice is that useful.

Can't believe no one has mentioned Henrik Stangerup yet. Reading his Logn Over Logn has been my best reading experience so far, never read anything like him.

I'd advise against it over Norwegian or Swedish.
Not because it's not worth learning, but because modern Danish is harder to master than Swedish or Norwegian, yet easy to pick up after you learn either of the two aforementioned languages.
Furthermore, Norwegian is the one closest to Icelandic if you want to later take the jump and read the Sagas and related literature.