Thomas Bredsdorff (born 1 April 1937 in Silkeborg) is a Danish literary scholar and critic.
He received a Doctor of Philosophy in 1976 from the University of Copenhagen, where he was professor of Nordic literature from 1978 to 2004. He has written about books and culture for the Danish newspaper Politiken since 1965. He worked for Kristeligt Dagblad from 1959-1964. His books and articles are aimed at both academics and the general public.
Historically, Thomas Bredsdorff researched literature from the 13th through 20th centuries, but mainly focused on 18th-century literature, on which he wrote a thesis (Digternes natur, 1976) and which he later published as the dissertation Den brogede oplysning (2004).
He has been a guest lecturer and visiting professor at many universities abroad, including the University of California, Berkeley in 2005.
Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by about six million people, principally in Denmark, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and in the region of Southern Schleswig in northern Germany, where it has minority language status. Also, minor Danish-speaking communities are found in Norway, Sweden, Spain, the United States, Canada, Brazil, and Argentina. Due to immigration and language shift in urban areas, about 15–20% of the population of Greenland speak Danish as their first language.
Tove Irma Margit Ditlevsen was a Danish poet and author. With published works in a variety of genres, she was one of Denmark's best-known authors by the time of her death.
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Lars Saabye Christensen, is a Norwegian/Danish author.
Dag Solstad is a Norwegian novelist, short-story writer, and dramatist whose work has been translated into 20 languages. He has written nearly 30 books and is the only author to have received the Norwegian Literary Critics' Award three times.
Andreas William Heinesen was a poet, novel writer, short story writer, children's book writer, composer and painter from the Faroe Islands.
Scanian law is the oldest Danish provincial law and one of the first Nordic provincial laws to be written down. It was used in the geographic region of Danish Skåneland, which at the time included Scania, Halland, Blekinge and the island of Bornholm. It was also used for a short period on the island of Zealand. According to some scholars, the Scanian Law was first set down between 1202 and 1216, around the same time it was translated into Latin by the Danish Archbishop Anders Sunesøn.
Karl Ove Knausgård is a Norwegian author. He became known worldwide for six autobiographical novels, titled My Struggle. He has been described as "one of the 21st century's greatest literary sensations" by the Wall Street Journal. Since the completion of the My Struggle series in 2011, he has also published an autobiographical series entitled The Seasons Quartet, as well as critical work on the art of Edvard Munch. He has won the 2009 Brage Prize, 2017 Jerusalem Prize, and 2019 Swedish Academy Nordic Prize.
Kjell Askildsen was a Norwegian writer probably best known for his minimalistic short stories.
Klaus Rifbjerg was a Danish writer. He authored more than 170 novels, books and essays. In 1965 he co-produced the film 4x4 which was entered into the 4th Moscow International Film Festival.
Villy Sørensen was a Danish short story writer, philosopher and literary critic of the Modernist tradition. His fiction was heavily influenced by his philosophical ideas, and he has been compared to Franz Kafka in this regard.
Finnur Jónsson was an Icelandic philologist and Professor of Nordic Philology at the University of Copenhagen. He made extensive contributions to the study of Old Norse literature.
Leif Thormod Panduro was a Danish writer, novelist, short story writer, and dramatist. A dentist by profession, he began in his thirties to write stories about people who can't conform to society's rules for one reason or another. Rend mig i traditionerne, from 1959 is about an adolescent who finally ends up in an asylum because he thinks society is mad. This novel was made into a film in 1979. Fern fra Danmark is about a man who wakes up in a hospital with amnesia but discovers more and more about a not very pleasant self.
Tore Pryser is a Norwegian historian, who has served as professor at the Lillehammer University College since 1993.
Kirsten Thorup, a Danish author, was born in Gelsted, Funen, Denmark in 1942 and now lives in Copenhagen. She is the author of three poetry collections, a volume of short stories, and three novels including Baby which has been translated into English. She has also written for films, television, and radio. Her novel, Den lange sommer, was published in Denmark in 1979.
The Nordic Prize is a literary award presented annually by the Swedish Academy. The recipient is someone from the Nordic countries who has done significant work in any of the Academy's areas of operations or interests. The inaugural award was in 1986 and was founded with a donation from Karen and Karl Ragnar Gierows. The prize amount consists of kr 400,000. The prize has been referred to as the "little Nobel" because it is awarded by the same Academy that gives the Nobel Prize.
Agnete og Havmanden (Danish) or Agneta och havsmannen (Swedish) is a ballad. It is also found in Norway and as a prose folktale published by Just Mathias Thiele in his 1818 Danske Folkesagn, though Thomas Bredsdorff has argued that this prose version is of literary rather than folkloric origin. The ballad too is generally thought to be relatively late in its composition, perhaps from the eighteenth century.
The Danish author Louis Jensen was an innovator in the international literary trends of flash fiction, metafiction, prose poetry, and magical realism. While he published more than 90 books for both adults and children, he was best known for his children's books, which include picture books, short stories, flash fiction, creative nonfiction and novels. His work is characterized by wordplay and playful experiments in form and structure, which have led critics to draw comparisons to Borges, Calvino, Gogol, and the poetry of the Oulipo movement. His work is also rooted in the fairy tale and folk tale tradition, and is deeply influenced by the Danish author Hans Christian Andersen.
Vilhelm Rasmus Andreas Andersen was a Danish author, literary historian and intellectual, who primarily focused on the study of Danish literature. He was one of the first to use the term "Golden Age of Culture" to refer to the 1800s, and his focus on bringing Danish literature to the public earned him great popularity. Andersen was instrumental in the development of the School of Radio, as a means of disseminating public education to prevent loss of cultural identity and treasures.
Lars Lönnroth is a Swedish literary scholar.