2012/02/09 15:06
Jeg har tidligere blogget om tyske stednavne i Danmark.Jeg gik for nylig tilbage til den artikel i Politiken, som mit blogindlæg var baseret på, og fandt denne kommentar af Poul Petersen fra Vangede (jeg har rettet stavefejlene):Tidligere gik jeg kraftigt ind for, at det danske mindretal fastholdt deres danskhed, og fandt naturligvis at det tyske mindretal nord for grænsen havde...
2011/11/07 22:28
Jeg opdagede rent tilfældigt, at Russerne synger 2005 – også kendt som Russangbogen – ligger på nettet i PDF-format.Jeg sad med fornøjelse og bladede den igennem, mens jeg mindedes gamle dage, da jeg faldt over et eklatant eksempel på historieforfalskning.På side 67 skriver de flg. om Vi har en lang vej hjem: "Denne sang har en fascinerende historie. Teksten blev en...
2012/03/13 23:12
To what extent is Britain (or the British Isles) the same kind of construct as Scandinavia (or the Nordic countries)?
Both Britain and Scandinavia have a long and complex history, with periods of political unification and others with separate kingdoms and plenty of wars.
Scandinavia’s united period was a long time ago (1397–1523), while Britain only started falling apart when Ireland became independent again less than a century ago. On the other hand, the British Isles are to some extent more heterogenous than Scandinavia – the former is a mixture of Celts, Anglo-Saxons and Norman French, while the latter consists of the descendants of the Vikings with some Finns, Lapps and Germans thrown in.
In both cases in can be hard to pinpoint exactly what Britishness/Scandinavianness means. For instance, John Major’s description of Britishness – “Britain will still be the country of long shadows on cricket grounds, warm beer, invincible green suburbs, dog lovers and pools fillers and, as George Orwell said, ‘Old maids bicycling to holy communion through the morning mist’” – is so clearly a description of England that does not apply to Scotland and Ireland. In the same way, it’s very hard to define Scandinavian culture in one sentence. And yet, Scandinavians do recognise the similarities intuitively, and Scandinavians abroad tend to hang out together, for instance at international conferences.
So there are definite similarities. And just as Scandinavia does exist in spite of having been separate countries for half a millennium, Britain will always exist whether Scotland becomes independent in 2014 or not. Actually, Scottish independence might actually lead to a reevaluation of the concept, so that it ceases to be about a political construct and starts being about what actually binds people on these islands together, whether they live in Ireland, Wales, Man, Scotland or England.
2011/12/06 22:42
I joined the Danish-Scottish Society shortly after moving to Scotland, but I was not a very active member due to the fact that almost all events took place in Edinburgh (which seems to have a much bigger Danish community than Glasgow). For a couple of years, some people tried to arrange events in Glasgow, but they didn't typically attract more than ten participants, so eventually I let my membership lapse.However, these days I'm living with three bilingual children who really...
2011/11/14 20:16
Chinese names tend to consist of a surname that is one syllable long, followed by a given name of either one or two syllables. This means that converting a non-Chinese name by sound results in something which doesn't look like a name to a Chinese. (For instance, the Danish prime minister, Helle Thorning-Schmidt, is called 赫勒·托宁-施密特 Hèlēi Tuōníng-Shīmìtè in Chinese.)Because...
2011/10/31 8:00
En dansk netavis, som skal forblive unævnt, skrev forleden noget ævl om den "amerikanske højtid halloween".Hallowe'en stammer fra Skotland (og måske Irland), og selvom den nok er kommet til Danmark via USA, kunne man da godt være sig oprindelsen bevidst.For...
2011/06/18 23:50
There's an interesting article in The Herald describing how a charity is planning to build a thousand huts in Scotland.It's interesting, because despite Scotland's similarity to the Scandinavian countries, the hut culture is entirely different (or rather, it's non-existent): "In...
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