| A Dane's Lament "......after commercial relationships with England increased, English - and in due course, American - literature took the lead. A great deal of English was read, for after all, the language was taught in Danish schools, and much English literature was translated into Danish. Shakespeare featured permanently in the repertoire of Denmark's Royal Theatre; in fact the Danes became generally familiar with English intellectual life and thought. That a corresponding English interest in Denmark was not observed (to put the position mildly) did not affect Danish interest in the literature of England and America, be it classical or modern. England was regarded as a sort of sister nation. After all, everybody knew that there was quite a large drop of Danish blood flowing in the veins of every Englishman. At the same time it was borne in mind that Angles from South Slesvig, and later other Danes, had emigrated in thousands to England 1,500 and 1,000 years ago respectively, so they could hardly be blamed for having forgotten "the old country" after such an elapse of time. After all, England had had to go through one thing and another since then, and the two countries had gone their own ways, not only in regard to their histories, but also from a prestige viewpoint. It was discovered (with some surprise) that the English really displayed very little interest in their ancient kinsmen and closest neighbors to the northeast, i.e. the Scandinavian peoples, and in fact knew extraordinarily little about them. There was nothing to be done about it." - From Palle Lauring's A History of Denmark This inexplicable attitude actually dates back hundreds of years. In 1705 George Hicks wrote that the original Danish settlers in England were "...a rude and an illiterate People in all Respects, and for the most part Pirates, [who] corrupted the Anglo-Saxon language." Hicks evidently did not know that the name (Saxon) was originally a synonym for piracy and barbarism and that the language that he spoke originated with the very people that he described as being rude and illiterate. In 1830 A Grammar of the Anglo-Saxon Tongue by Rasmus Rask was translated into English. The English scholar Benjamin Thorpe muted this Dane's contribution to Anglo-Saxon studies by deliberately omitting Rask's dedicatory epistle. And, with the London Society of Antiquaries as a co-conspirator, he stole the ambitious ideas of N. F. S. Gruntvig from Gruntvig's 1830 prospectus for the publication of a large number of central Anglo-Saxon texts! Perhaps Frederick Hammerich was right when he claimed in 1873 that for hundreds of years, the English have resented the fact that their cultural life began with the Scandinavians, and that has made them "blind to their own heritage." For example, there was a time when Anglo-Saxon runes could not be interpreted, so, Scandinavian scholars felt obliged to help out (when the English finally asked them). When the results were considered to be less than satisfactory, English Academia became scornful. In 1840, John Mitchell Kemble sardonically rebuked the northern scholars for being "so obliging as to attempt to decypher them for us" and wrote his own study of runes "to save them this trouble in future." After his rebuke of the Scandinavians, this "first great English runologist of modern times" published a study on a copper dish found at Chertsey. He proclaimed that the inscription on this "ancient" artefact (shown below) was a "mixture of runes and uncials". What does the reader think? |
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| My God, Kemble! It's MODERN GREEK! |
| Astonishingly, it was many years before anyone caught this blunder. Previous Page......Next Page |