The aim of this article is to investigate the use of fixed binomials and the productivity of their syntactic structure (A + conj + B) in Danish titles of media products. The study is based on a corpus of 137 titles from literary and non-literary texts, films, songs, albums, newspapers, and magazines published in print and online. The analysis shows that the titles contain both fixed and occasional word pairs, indicating a specific naming strategy. The titles are generally short and often consist solely of binomials used in their basic or slightly modified (reduced) forms. Occasional word pairs based on the syntactic pattern A + conj + B were identified in 66 cases (48,2%) across all groups of titles. These occasional binomials frequently display phonological features characteristic of fixed binomials, such as alliteration, rhyme, and rhythm. Differences in the distribution of fixed binomials and occasional word pairs across title groups can be explained by their communicative function: titles of literary texts more frequently contain fixed word pairs, whereas titles of non-literary and specialist texts more often consist of occasional word pairs.
Review: Hanna Dymel-Trzebiatowska, Helena Garczyńska, Maja Chacińska (eds.): Przyjaźń niejedno ma imię. Księga pamiątkowa dedykowana Profesor Marii Sibińskiej. Gdańsk: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego, 2025. 310 pp.
The prevailing perspective in scholarly literature is that Old Icelandic exhibits free word order in terms of sentence constituent linearity. However, when examining head-complement order, the consensus is that Old Icelandic represents an OV language transitioning towards VO, as seen in modern Icelandic. This paper aims to elucidate the fundamental order of Old Icelandic by classifying languages based on the position of constituents (S, V, O) within sentences. The investigation begins with the question of what statistical insights can be gleaned from IcePaHC, an annotated corpus documenting the entire history of the Icelandic language from its earliest written records (1150) to contemporary times (2008). In this study, data were analyzed using the HistobankVis System, which allows for the extraction of percentages across various time periods. The findings suggest that Old Icelandic should be characterized by two predominant orders (SVO and VSO) rather than as a free-order language.
In 1929, Hjalmar Bergman was commissioned to write a play for the opening ceremony of the 1930 Stockholm Exhibition, an event that established functionalism as the dominant trend in Swedish architecture. The rejection of his proposal by the progressive organisers, art historian Gregor Paulsson and architect Gunnar Asplund, was something of “an odd story” according to Bergman himself, who, in an interview, asserted that the play was refused “for functionalist reasons”, and because of the tribute it paid to traditional Swedish handicraft. Some time before the interview, Bergman had ironised about this contemporary expression of Modernism in his radio play Tankar om funktionalism (Thoughts about Functionalism). In this article, Bergman’s personal assessment of the functionalist doctrine, according to which the purpose of architecture should dictate its form, is discussed and related to the improbable room at the centre of the Borck family home in the novel Farmor och Vår Herre (1921; Thy Rod and Thy Staff, 1937). While earlier readings of the puzzling ‘rooms of wonder’ that appear in Bergman’s generally solid houses of fiction have applied psychological and biographical lenses to interpret what may look like purposeless nooks and crannies, this essay departs from the historical context to show Bergman’s understanding – if not appreciation – of functionalism.
Two of the most frequent verbs of the Swedish language, få (with the basic meaning ‘receive’) and bli (with the basic meaning ‘become’), share several characteristics. Both verbs are polysemic: få can express possession, permission, prohibition, causativity, inchoativity, and succeeded attempts; bli can express inchoativity, durativity, and future time. Both verbs take part in a variety of different syntactic constructions, such as functioning as a passive auxiliary. Depending on the meaning and function, they can be described as more lexical elements or rather grammatical: metaphorically speaking, få and bli can hence be seen as either building blocks or mortar. Together with the high frequency and the semantic and syntactic complexity, the two verbs share an additional common trait: they are the inchoative counterpart to the two most basic verbs of the Swedish language, ha ‘have’ and vara ‘be’, respectively. Whilst there exist studies covering the different meanings and functions of få, an equivalent study of the verb bli is currently lacking. This article presents a mapping of both verbs, followed by a brief reflection on their inchoative nature.
In the historical and cultural study of the impact of magical practices on everyday life in the Nordic region, a significant role is played by the examination of the composition, distribution, and use of black magic books commonly known as svartebøker. The widespread practice of composing, using, and transmitting these books is well-documented throughout the North as early as the 15th century. These are composite manuscripts that blend Latin formulas, invocations to saints and demons, remedies for improving one’s fortune or the health of livestock, spells to harm someone. However, comparisons across various manuscripts suggest that svartebøker generally followed a predetermined pattern based on local legends and beliefs, incorporating motifs of European scope. This pattern is reflected in the textual architecture of svartebøker across the Scandinavian region, likely creating a veritable canon of magical book composition. By analyzing some manuscripts from the Scandinavian area, this article seeks to highlight indispensable recurring patterns, widely diffused and reiterated over time, points that not only legitimize the remedies and formulas contained in the books but that also canonize a magical narrative structure. In addition, through folklore research, an attempt will be made to trace the origins of these patterns.
Nuuk, the capital of Greenland, occupies a unique place in contemporary Danish-language literature as both a modern Nordic city and a site marked by colonial history. This urban setting is a common feature of Lotte Inuk’s Sultekunstnerinde (2004) and Mads Peder Nordbo’s Pigen uden hud (2017). Through a close reading of significant passages from the two books, respectively a young adult novel with a clear autofictional component and an ‘Arctic noir’, I will focus on the architecture of (literary) Nuuk, with particular attention to a specific and ‘uncanny’ type of building: the characteristic concrete boligblokke built in the years of the so-called modernization, symbol of the centralization policies favored by Denmark starting from the 1950s. In Sultekunstnerinde, these buildings are ‘reconstructed’ and presented to the reader as places of childhood, while a recurring setting in Pigen uden hud is the controversial Blok P – which, in the fiction of the novel, is ‘reinvented’ as the setting of brutal murders of its inhabitants. The emphasis on spatiality and architecture, given the symbolic significance of these buildings, will be combined with a postcolonial reading.
Simon Stålenhag’s popularity has grown in recent years. Situated between picture books and anecdotal narration, his works have circulated widely and even inspired an American TV series. This paper focuses on Ur varselklotet (2014), a science fiction graphic book combining evocative images with short prose passages that both narrate personal anecdotes and serve as captions. The story recounts events from the narrator’s childhood and adolescence in the 1980s and 1990s, set against the backdrop of the Stockholm region. In a snowy landscape, the ruins of a fictional, now-abandoned particle accelerator, the world’s largest, loom: arch towers, metal spheres, and robotic machines blend seamlessly into the scenery. This analysis aims to explore how Stålenhag’s imagined architectures enable a rereading of Sweden’s political and economic history through a dystopian lens. Through visual and narrative elements, the author critiques Sweden’s transformation from a perceived “happy island” in Europe to a vulnerable state exposed to the consequences of 1990s neoliberal economic reforms. The dystopian imagery reflects disillusionment with a declining welfare system and the erosion of collective structures due to privatisation. Stålenhag thus uses retro-futurist aesthetics to comment on national identity, memory, and the socio-economic shifts of recent decades.
This special issue of Folia Scandinavica Posnaniensia, “Architextures. Building, Writing, Speaking in Nordic Literatures and Languages”, explores intersections of architecture, literature, and language. It investigates writerly responses to architectural styles, architecture as narrative settings, as a model for textual construction, and as metaphor for language structures. The contributions are grouped into three sections. The first section addresses the narrative potential of buildings and urban environments in the authorships of Hjalmar Bergman, Kjell Westö, Lotte Inuk, Mads Peder Nordbo, Simon Stålenhag, and Jonas Karlsson. The second considers textual structures as architectural forms, from saga archetypes to the organisation of Nordic svartebøker. The third focuses on the building blocks of language through studies on Old Icelandic word order and Swedish verbal polysemy. Through a variety of perspectives, this volume fosters new connections between space, structure, literary and linguistic discourses in Nordic studies.
This article focuses on the role and evolution of the Female Avenger in the Íslendingasǫgur, its patterns and narrative structure, by analysing and comparing two episodes from Gísla saga Súrssonar and Harðar saga. Þórdís (Gísla) and Þorbjǫrg (Harðara) draw upon an earlier Germanic archetype, best exemplified by Guðrún Gjúkadóttir, bringing about vengeance at the dinner table. However, where they differ is in the aftermath of said dinner. Building on the foundations laid by Guðrún, these two women set themselves apart from most other female characters by taking revenge into their own hands, instead of recurring to the usual, codified ways of getting revenge through inciting male relatives into doing it. Their brothers are their keystones, and their complex relationships make or break Germanic narrative structures. The turning point comes when both women betray their brothers, leading to their husbands having their brothers-in-law killed, news of the killing reaching the women at the dinner table, and the consequent decision to violently avenge their brothers. The reason for the appearance of this new structure might be found in a cultural shift, it might be purely narratological, or a mix of both. This paper seeks to answer this question.
In Jonas Karlsson’s work the configuration of external or internal, imaginary, concrete or metaphorical spaces is central. The depiction of unstable, aeriform architectures is the primary focus of the short novel Utgången (2012). In this text, the theatre suspended in mid-air serves as a metaphor for the state of suspension experienced by the protagonist and mirrors the opaque identity of the first-person narrator’s dim self. Unstable subjectivities recur throughout the author’s short novels and epitomises the frequently comedic homo karlssonianus. Elsewhere, characterisations of space are equally significant, as seen in the diptych Min kompis på Gondolen, where the building’s suspension reflects the elusiveness of the self and its ethereal identity, and in the short novel Rummet, where the interior of a public office changes its coordinates and physical dimensions. This article investigates spaces in Jonas Karlsson’s literary production within the methodological framework of Geocriticism and in the attempt to highlight connections between the suspended architecture of a location and an elusive subjectivity. What is gained is a novel interpretation of place as thirdspace, hanging afloat the chaosmos, here intended as “the interlocking relationship or space of rhythm and chaos”.
The purpose of this paper is to analyse the short story Melba, Mallinen och jag (1992) and the novel Drakarna över Helsingfors (1996) by Kjell Westö, with focus on the description of the suburbs of Munksnäs and Munkshöjden in the 1960s and 1970s. These two decades represent a pivotal moment in the history of Finland, as the country began to implement a fully capitalistic economy that led to radical socio-economic and cultural changes. From this perspective, the suburbs appear to be the ideal setting in which the new social hierarchy is established and the new economic dynamics unfold, with unavoidable conflicts and social tensions. Drawing on the neo-Marxist theory of Marshall Berman and recent studies on suburbs in city planning and literature, this paper aims to place the post-war Finnish suburbs in the literary tradition that started with Haussmann’s renovation of Paris as portrayed by Baudelaire in Le Spleen de Paris (1869).
This study highlights the importance of targeting practices that facilitate physician-patient communication in language courses for health professionals. The aim of this study is twofold. Firstly, it examines if and how physicians with a second language deploy metaphors to facilitate understanding. Secondly, it investigates how this practice can be enhanced through communicative training. The study comprises two separate parts, each with a different approach, method, and participants. Study 1 investigates the use of metaphors in authentic situations from outpatient clinics, where physicians consulted patients in L2 Norwegian. The data consists of transcripts of video recordings and an interview with one of the physicians. Study 2 examines the outcomes of an intervention during an intensive language course before the physicians’ arrival in Norway. The data in this study include oral and written production, as well as an interview with one of the participants. Study 1 revealed contexts in which migrant physicians deploy metaphors to facilitate their communication in L2 and types of the expressions they use. Study 2 showed that stimulating metaphor awareness might be beneficial for metaphor use in communication and comprehension in visual representation, which in turn can support L2 communication in the physicians’ everyday practices.
This epilogue situates the special issue within discussions from the health humanities more broadly. It is argued that fiction and non-fiction books about issues of health and illness as well as research on the topic proliferate these years, because there has been a dearth of humanistic and existential inputs under a biomedical paradigm. It is suggested that there are three recurring themes that often characterize research on illness representations in literature: 1) Discussions of a medical and literary language use, 2) discussions of illness experiences as narratives, and 3) discussions of difficulties with transferring bodily experiences into linguistic representation.
The purpose of the article is to show the way in which Cordelia Edvardson, the Swedish writer and eyewitness of the Holocaust, forms the work of recreating an identity beyond Auschwitz. Another purpose of this article is to show the way in which this book can promote and influence the creation of memorial images concerning the Second World War and Sweden’s participation in the global legacy of the Holocaust. In doing so, the analysis examines narrative instance and identifies textual strategies that promote the spread of a certain form of collective memory.
The proliferation of autobiographical accounts of illness, or autopathographies, has attracted considerable scholarly interest. Nevertheless, a notable gap remains in our understanding of how these narratives are received and evaluated. This article addresses this gap by examining the dynamics of value negotiation surrounding two autobiographical illness narratives in Sweden: Kristina Sandberg’s En ensam plats (A Lonely Place, 2021) and Sara Meidell’s Ut ur min kropp (Out of My Body, 2022). Theoretically, the article is grounded in a constructivist framework of value. In addition to exploring how Sandberg and Meidell address the value question in their illness narratives, it presents a detailed analysis of reviews and debate articles to uncover the underlying values expressed in the reception of these narratives. The analysis reveals that the value discussions center on aesthetic, emotional, social, and ethical dimensions, reflecting broader cultural debates about illness and its representation. While Sandberg’s narrative raises questions about the portrayal of illness experiences, Meidell’s narrative provokes discussions about its potential impact on readers. In sum, this article highlights the need for a comprehensive understanding of value creation and negotiation pertaining to illness narratives.
This article has two aims. Firstly, it makes an attempt to shed new light on the representation of sickness in Birgitta Trotzig’s (1929–2011) writings. Secondly, the article, by using its analyses of Trotzig, tries to draw some theoretical conclusions concerning the possibilities of applying a theology of pathology in literary studies. While earlier scholars have interpreted Trotzig’s depiction of sickness by means of secular intertexts, the starting point of this article is Trotzig’s adopting of Christian anthropology as her untranscendable hermeneutic horizon. Thus, it is argued, sickness in her writings should primarily be related to theological contexts. By close reading of a representative text passage, the opening scene of Trotzig’s best known novel Dykungens dotter (The Marsh King’s Daughter, 1985), the article explores which contexts within Christian theology of sickness that would be specially fertile for an interpretation of her sickness discourse. The analyses reveal four theological notions of sickness as intertextually present in Trotzig’s narration: Augustine’s concupiscence, Sören Kierkegaard’s dispair, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin’s decomposition, and Eugen Drewermann’s neurosis. The main theoretical conclusions of the analyses are: (a) that the theological notions of sickness to a high degree differ from a ”natural” experience as well as from the biblical sources, (b) that these notions can contradict each other and generate conceptual conflicts, and (c) that the notions therefore, when applied in literary studies, demand strong hermeneutic control.
Caring, writing and the desire for knowledge are deeply intertwined phenomena in Amalie Smith’s poetry collection I CIVIL and Hanne Ørstavik’s novel Ti Amo, both of which portray women in romantic relations with men who are cancer patients. Through depictions of the women’s initial attempts to maintain the closeness to their partners, the books explore the relational and somatic borderland between symbiosis and separation from the perspective of two informal caregivers. Taking a Lacanian approach, this borderland can be understood as a passage from the symbolic to the real which the women gain access to through their intense desire for knowledge and bodily experiences of jouissance and abjection. As informal caregivers for men who are unlikely to survive their illness, the women experience conflicting relational desires for both intimacy and distance. This article investigates how the passage from the symbolic to the real reintroduces the women to relational challenges from an early developmental stage and thus helps them solve the aforementioned conflict.
The present text serves as an introduction to the special issue of Folia Scandinavica Posnaniensia, “Between Health and Illness,” which is devoted to contemporary discourse on health and illness in Nordic literatures. Even though Scandinavian countries rank highest in happiness and well-being, illness as a literary motif maintains constant popularity and interest among both writers and scholars. The editors provide brief presentations of each contribution, some of which originate from conference speeches held in December 2022 in Poznań.
The present paper offers a study of two contemporary English-language reworkings of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale The Little Mermaid: one by the M. Sickafoose (1995) and one by A. Woon (2016), from the perspective of disability theory. In each of them, the original tale has been reframed into a story featuring a young girl striving to approach her inability to walk while drawing inspiration from the original tale. Due to their use of intertextuality, the texts to be analyzed are discussed as examples of the so-called postmodern fairy tale, aimed at interrogating the relevance of classic fairy tales through the act of retelling. In spite of similarities in terms of theme, plot outline and character construction, the versions selected for the analysis differ in terms of ending scenarios, offering two complementary messages concerning Andersen’s tale. While exploring the changes in the overall understanding of disability underlying the original and the two contemporary versions, the analysis aims to determine the potential of Andersen’s fairy tale as a possible frame of reference while confronting handicap in the social reality of the present era.
