I.

Introduction

Danish Literature, entire body of literature written throughout Denmark, in Latin and German as well as in the Danish language. Down through the ages Denmark has been influenced by the main movements of the leading European literatures, especially German, French, and English.

II.

Middle Ages

The earliest literature of Denmark is preserved only in fragmentary form. Inscriptions in the runic alphabet dating from about ad 800 to about 1100 have been found on burial stones, weapons, and various utensils. These runic inscriptions reveal the emergence of concise prose and alliterative verse (see Runes). More significant as literature are the ancient heroic lays (narrative poems) that were recited orally. Among the most famous were the lays of “Hagbard and Signe,” an early Danish version of the Romeo and Juliet motif, and the grandiose poem “Bjarkemaal,” which tells of the death of King Rolf and his warriors.

During the early Middle Ages most of the literature in Denmark was in Latin. The Danish clergy produced histories, biographies of saints, and ecclesiastical studies in Latin. Danish historian Saxo Grammaticus stands out among individual writers for his celebrated historical work Gesta Danorum (Deeds of the Danes), written in Latin about 1200. This imaginative, poetic, and didactic work on the earliest periods of Danish history has had an enormous influence on creative literature in Denmark. Translated into Danish, it became a rich source of inspiration, especially to the romantic poets with their interest in the glorious deeds of the past.

Books of laws and rudimentary medical textbooks began to be written in the Danish language during the 13th century. Among important later works were the collection of old Danish proverbs by Peder Laale, written about 1300; the Lucidarius, an early encyclopedia; and the Rimkroniken (Rime-Chronicle, 1495), a versified Danish history. From 1300 to the early 1500s Danish gradually gained ground on Latin as a vehicle of literary expression. The most important works in Danish during this period are the folk ballads, transmitted orally and not written down until the 16th century.

Modern ballad scholars usually distinguish between five groups of ballads: ballads of chivalry, ballads of magic, historic ballads, heroic ballads, and satirical ballads. The best of the medieval folk ballads show a sophisticated and unique blend of lyric, epic, and dramatic elements. The first verse and the refrain usually set the lyrical mood of the ballad; the action is carried forth swiftly and economically; and the characters are portrayed through their behavior and speech.

III.

The Reformation

In the 16th century, Denmark felt the impact of the great European movements of humanism, Renaissance, and Reformation that reached the country from Germany. The most influential of these movements was the Lutheran Reformation. Lutheranism was adopted officially as the state religion in 1536. Much of Danish literature during the early 16th century consisted of polemical religious writing. In 1550 the first Danish Bible was published, largely through the efforts of the Lutheran humanist Christian Pedersen. Bishop Peder Palladius portrayed 16th-century Danish life in his Visitatsbog (Visitation Book). Early hymn writing was represented by Hans Sthen and the beginnings of Danish dramatic literature by Hieronymous Ranch.

During the 17th century, Danish literature was influenced by the classical interests and humanistic approach that marked the Renaissance. Poet Anders Arrebo patterned his long poem Hexaemeron (The Creation, 1661) on a work by French poet Guillaume Du Bartas. Bishop Thomas Kingo composed numerous hymns, many of which are still used in the Danish church. The most notable prose appeared in the memoirs of Leonora Christina, the daughter of King Christian IV.

IV.

The Enlightenment

Two main currents ran through Danish literature of the 18th century: an intellectual or rationalist movement and a more emotional trend. Through the work of the poet, playwright, and historian Ludvig Holberg, 18th-century Danish literature developed the attitudes of reason and tolerance characteristic of the Enlightenment. The emotional current manifested itself in religion, especially in the pietistic movement (see Pietism). The outstanding spokesman of pietism in sacred poetry was hymn writer Bishop Hans Brorson.

Holberg was by far the most important Danish writer of the 18th century. Although born in Norway, he spent most of his life in Denmark. Holberg tried his hand at a great many literary genres—mock heroic poetry, satirical travel writing, the essay, and historical research. But his most significant contribution to Dano-Norwegian literature was his 33 comedies written for the stage. The best of his plays are still performed at the Danish Royal Theater.

The current of 18th-century emotionalism and sensibility reached a peak in the exceptionally impassioned lyrical poetry of Johannes Ewald. Ewald also wrote a number of tragedies with subjects from Nordic history and mythology. By his use of ancient Scandinavian legends Ewald became a model for the later romantic poets. His unfinished Memoirs contributed significantly to the development of Danish prose. Both Ewald and Jens Baggesen, a poet of wit and sentiment, were influenced by English writer Laurence Sterne. Baggesen’s rapturous travel book The Labyrinth (1792-1793) is indebted to Sterne’s Sentimental Journey. Ambrosius Stub wrote nature poetry imbued with a freshness and spontaneity unusual in the period.

V.

Romanticism

Like so many other literary movements, romanticism reached Denmark from Germany. A major impetus in its arrival came from Norwegian philosopher Henrik Steffens, who lectured on German romanticism in Copenhagen. Among his students was the young Adam Gottlob Oehlenschläger, whose first book, Digte (Poems, 1803), marks the beginning of the romantic period of Danish literature. Oehlenschläger’s poem “The Golden Horns,” published in Digte, contains many of the principal ideas of romanticism in a nutshell. The deities of Nordic mythology are invoked. Spontaneity and naiveté are praised. Love as a holy force is extolled. Materialism is severely criticized. The mystic romantic belief in “the unity of the universe” is expressed. History and nature are conceived as one, since an event in history is accompanied by a similar phenomenon in nature. Oehlenschläger is one of the finest lyric poets in Danish literature; the technical skill with which he handles a variety of meters is unsurpassed. He also wrote a number of romantic tragedies that had a great influence on the youthful romantic dramas of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen and Swedish dramatist August Strindberg.

The romantic movement in Denmark, of which Oehlenschläger was the undisputed leader, became a period of such creative fertility that it is sometimes referred to as The Golden Age of Danish literature. Other writers of the romantic era were B. S. Ingemann, an author of didactic historical novels and brief songs; Johann Hauch, who wrote dramas, novels, and poetry; and Steen Blicher, whose short stories describe life in the somber Jutland moors. Poet Nicolai Frederick Severin Grundtvig was an able linguist, historian, and scholar who translated Beowulf and Saxo’s Gesta Danorum into Danish. He was also an educator whose reforms led to the establishment of the Danish regional high schools.

A second generation of romanticists gave a new turn to the movement, stressing aesthetic technique and poetic realism. Johan Ludvig Heiberg, who became the arbiter of taste for the period, wrote poetry and light drama. Influenced by German and French literature, he created a new dramatic genre, the vaudeville, a light, elegant comedy interspersed with songs. This genre became immensely popular and ousted Oehlenschläger’s romantic tragedies from public favor. Heiberg’s fairy-tale comedy Elverhøj (1828; Elves’ Hill) remained the most-often performed drama in Denmark into the 20th century. Frederik Paludan-Müller was the author of the verse novel Adam Homo (1841-1848). Novelist Meir Aaron Goldschmidt combined romantic and realistic elements. In his novel The Raven (1867) Goldschmidt gave his finest description of everyday life in Copenhagen.

VI.

Andersen and Kierkegaard

Two internationally famous writers of the romantic period defy all labels and must be considered individually: Hans Christian Andersen created many of the world’s greatest fairy tales and Søren Kierkegaard profoundly influenced modern philosophy, especially the movement known as existentialism.

It would be erroneous to consider Andersen a writer for children only. The wit, humor, satire, and philosophy of his tales (many of them are allegories) can be fully appreciated only by the thoughtful adult reader. Although Andersen was a Christian optimist, believing in the benevolent guidance of divine providence, he did not in his tales and novels completely exclude the more unpleasant facts of reality. A motto for many of his tales could be a sentence he spoke to his mother when, as a young boy, he left for Copenhagen to seek his fortune there. “First,” he said, “you suffer so terribly much, and then you become famous.” Things usually (not always) end happily in his tales, but much suffering must be endured before happiness is achieved. Apart from his 156 fairy tales, Andersen wrote a great many poems, plays, novels, travel books, and a celebrated autobiography Mit Livs Eventyr (1885; The Story of My Life).

The fame of the other world figure, Søren Kierkegaard, increased by leaps and bounds in the first half of the 20th century. In his so-called existential philosophy Kierkegaard distinguished between what he terms three stages, the aesthetic, the ethic, and the religious attitudes toward life. He treated the aesthetic and ethic stages in Either-Or (1843) and Stages on Life’s Way (1845), and the religious in Fear and Trembling (1843) and The Concept of Dread (1844). In Concluding Unscientific Postcript (1846) he attacked the philosophy of G. W. F. Hegel and proclaimed the celebrated existential maxim, “Subjectivity is Truth.” Kierkegaard’s influence on 19th- and 20th-century thought was enormous. His work is the background for the existentialist philosophy of such modern thinkers as Gabriel Marcel, Karl Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

VII.

Realism

In the latter part of the 19th century, romanticism was largely replaced by the literary movements known as realism and naturalism. This development was fostered by critic and biographer Georg Brandes, who began a series of lectures on the “Main Currents of 19th-Century Literature” at the University of Copenhagen in 1871. Brandes was annoyed at the political and literary conservatism in Denmark and wanted to throw the gates open to continental Europe with its political liberalism and literary realism. His remark that literature is only alive insofar as it “takes problems up for debate” created a furor and spawned a rich crop of literature about social problems.

The greatest of the novelists who grouped themselves around Brandes was Jens Jacobsen, author of the naturalistic novels Marie Grubbe (1876; translated 1914) and Nils Lyhne (1880; translated 1896). Jacobsen’s naturalism shows more affinity with the objective naturalism represented by French writer Emile Zola than to Brandes’s focus on social reform. Among other writers influenced by Brandes, but not always following him, were poet Holger Drachmann and novelists Henrik Pontoppidan, Hermann Bang, and Gustav Wied. Pontoppidan’s three major novels—The Promised Land (1891-1895), Lykke-Per (1898-1904), and The Realm of the Dead (1912-1916)—are ambitious and successful attempts to combine sociological descriptions of Denmark with searching psychological analyses of certain aspects of the Danish national character, notably the alleged Danish propensity to indulge in ineffectual daydreams and fantasies. In 1917 Pontoppidan shared the Nobel Prize in literature with Karl Gjellerup, a Danish writer who today is almost forgotten.

Toward the end of the 19th century the influence of French symbolist poets, such as Paul Verlaine and Stéphane Mallarmé, produced a reaction against naturalism in Denmark (see Symbolist Movement). The subsequent revival of lyric poetry in the 1890s included such figures as Viggo Stuckenberg, Ludvig Holstein, Sophus Claussen, Johannes Jorgensen, and Helge Rode.

VIII.

Nationalism

At the beginning of the 20th century, a new nationalistic element and a concern with social realism appeared in Danish literature. While Copenhagen had been the literary capital of Denmark for centuries, the center of literary activity shifted for a few years to the peninsula of Jutland. The so-called Jutland School included some of the finest novelists and poets of early 20th-century Danish literature. Jeppe Aakjær wrote a number of novels in which he angrily condemned the abuse of hired farmhands by wealthy Jutland farmers. Novelist and poet Johannes V. Jensen, winner of the 1944 Nobel Prize in literature, is unsurpassed in his vigorous portrayal of Jutland’s scenery and population.

Novelist Martin Nexø, noted for his criticism of social conditions in Denmark, dealt realistically with the problems of workers. His best-known works are the novels Pelle the Conqueror (1906-1910; translated 1913-1916) and Ditte: Daughter of Man (1917-1921; translated 1920-1923), both of which champion the cause of the workers. The motion-picture Pelle the Conqueror (1988) won an Academy Award for best foreign film. Similar approaches characterized the work of the novelists Jakob Knudsen and Harald Kidde.

After World War I (1914-1918) the literary movement known as expressionism influenced such poets as Emil Bønnelycke and Tom Kristensen. Paul la Cour and Jens August Schade wrote pure poetry, avoiding themes of social concern. Important prose writers of the period between the two world wars were Martin Hansen and short-story writer H. C. Branner.

Storyteller Isak Dinesen achieved worldwide fame with her Seven Gothic Tales (1934) and the autobiographical Out of Africa (1937), which was made into a prize-winning film in 1985. Dinesen was the pseudonym of Baroness Karen Blixen-Finecke, and Out of Africa, like her tales, reflects the author’s aristocratic philosophy of life. Dinesen’s fantastic tales project a world in which art and life are closely interwoven. Her work had a powerful influence on a younger generation in Scandinavia in their reaction against the social and political orientation of literature of the 1930s and 1940s.

The political concerns that dominated Danish literature during World War II (1939-1945) gave way to an expression of pervasive anxiety during the postwar period, evidenced in the existentialist probings of writers connected with the literary journal Heretica, published between 1948 and 1953. The works of Hans Christian Branner, such as his novel The Riding Master (1949), are profound analyses of modern humanity’s situation in a world seemingly bereft of values.

Poets Thorkild Bjørnvig, Ole Sarvig, and Ole Wivel were concerned with the situation of the individual in the modern world—as were the novelists Villy Sørensen and Klaus Rifbjerg, editors of another periodical, Vindrosen (1959-1963). Sørensen’s novels and short stories, parables of modern life influenced by Hans Christian Andersen and Austrian Franz Kafka, include Tiger in the Kitchen, and Other Strange Stories (1953; translated 1969). Rifbjerg, a writer in several genres, wrote the novel Anna, I, Anna (1969; translated 1982); an English translation of the third edition of his Selected Poems appeared in 1985. His plays, like his novels, deal with contemporary European bourgeois life. Danish drama of the 20th century is represented, also, by the plays of Kaj Munk, with religious overtones and denunciation of fascism, and by the works of Kjeld Abell.

Mythology and myth-making continue to interest contemporary Danish writers, who have also been influenced by magic realism imported from Latin America. Henrik Stangerup used a mythologizing style in Vejen til Lagoa Santa (1981; The Road to Lagoa Santa, 1984), a fictionalized biography of 19th-century Danish naturalist P. W. Lund, who spent the last 35 years of his life in Brazil. Another writer influenced by magic realism is Peter Høeg, author of the suspense novel and international bestseller Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne (1992; Smilla’s Sense of Snow, 1993). In his earlier Forestilling om det tyvende århundrede (1988; The History of Danish Dreams, 1995), Høeg offers a fairytale retelling of Danish history through the dreams of its characters over several generations. Ib Michael creates fables in which past and present merge. His first novel to be translated into English is Prins (1997; Prince, 1999).

In a more realist vein, Jens Christian Grøndahl explores marriage and questions of love and identity in novels such as Tavshed i Oktober (1996; Silence in October, 2000) and Andet lys (2002; An Altered Light, 2005). Kirsten Thorup writes about society’s lowest stratum, its outcasts and misfits, in novels such as Baby (1973; translated, 1980). Danish women writers who probe women’s lives, roles, and identities include novelist and poet Vita Andersen; novelist and short-story writer Dorrit Willumsen, who produced a fictionalized biography of Madame Tussaud, Marie (1983; translated 1986); and Suzanne Brøgger, whose most significant novel is Jadekatten (1997; The Jade Cat, 2004). Contemporary poets include Thorkild Bjørnvig, Inger Christensen, Per Højholt, Pia Tafdrup, and Sven Ulrik Thomsen.