by Lesley Darling Gustavus Adolphus College Luffare. While in a course on sustainable living, I wandered through the Swedish countryside with a group of wonderful, easy-livin’ Swedes. Rather than list the numbers, facts, and statistical quotes about my time, I want to say that the people I spent my time with sought something different, something …
By Lesley Darling Gustavus Adolphus College How does one take qualitative human experience and chart it? How does one quantify emotion? After an eight-month course on sustainable living in rural Sweden, I returned to my Midwestern undergraduate career both illuminated and disenchanted. Inspired and actualized through my land-living life in Sweden, I felt disillusioned by …
By Emmon Rogers University of Wisconsin–Madison “Who peyntede the leon, tel me who?”(Geoffrey Chaucer, “The Wife of Bath’s Prologue,” in The Canterbury Tales Complete, ed. Larry D. Benson (Boston: Wadsworth Cengage Learning, 2000), I.692), [“Who painted the lion, tell me, who?” translated from Middle English by the author] runs Geoffrey Chaucer’s famous allusion to Marie …
By Linnea Rock University of Wisconsin–Madison A story of adventure and development with sorrows, triumphs, and love, along with magical qualities, dire situations, and complex characters is perhaps one of the most entertaining types of tales. “Inchelina,” by Hans Christian Andersen, was published in 1835, a time in which women did not have the same …
By Ryan Gesme University of Wisconsin–Madison During the Viking Age, the Norsemen traveled from their northern dwellings to trade, plunder, and control much of Northern Europe. While the documentation of the Viking raids in Western Europe, especially in the British Isles, has been well researched for many years, there is still a lack of scholarship …
By Ben Pflughoeft University of Wisconsin–Madison The early sixteenth century heralded transformations to the organization of Sweden’s state formation, which elevated the poor and sparsely populated country to the status of a powerful and influential Scandinavian empire. Imperial Sweden, a dynamic government, proved itself to be an eclectic state of military, centralist, and localist influences …
By Adam Rieder University of Wisconsin–Madison Societies inherently possess many problems. These problems can range from hierarchical issues to problems concerning collective action. In many of his tales, Andersen is critical of these very issues. “The Year’s Story” is no exception. Written in 1852, “The Year’s Story” is a story about the changing of the …