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.