Many are now familiar with the Danish term “hygge”. It roughly means making each other nice, making sure you’re comfortable and comfortable. From a Danish perspective, this can only succeed if you also know and appreciate the concept of two other terms: “fællesskab” and “fællessang”https://www.sueddeutsche.de/kultur/.”Fællesskab” literally means community, but means more like a feeling of togetherness. But that doesn’t come about primarily on the basis of shared values and ideas, but through doing something together, for example singing together.
Which brings us to “fællessang”, the “communal singing”. For understandable historical reasons, many Germans dread it, but singing together is very popular in Denmark. And not just in older people. Even pubescent teenagers and late-pubescent students get tears in their eyes when they open their folk high school hymn book and sing one of the around 600 songs that are there. The wonderful novel “Meter per Second” by the Danish author Stine Pilgaard shows how this can blossom.
“Meter per Second” was published in 2020 as Pilgaard’s third novel and is now the first, but certainly not the last of her works in German. Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel has translated the text as captivatingly as it deserves. Meters per second, word per sentence, that may sound prosaic, but because every word brings fresh air, it is as clever as it is amusing.
Stine Pilgaard: Meters per second. Translated from the Danish by Hinrich Schmidt-Henkel. Kanon Verlag, Berlin 2022. 256 pages, 23 euros.
In a colorful series of short chapters thrown against the wind, the first-person novel tells the story of a woman in her thirties who ended up in Velling in West Jutland, the “land of short sentences”. Her lover got a job there as a teacher at one of the folk high schools that are so important for the Danish self-image.
Going back to the humanistic ideas of the pastor and folk educator Nikolai FS Grundtvig from the 19th century, the Danish adult education center has little to do with what is understood by the term in Germany. You enter the German adult education center as an adult, attend a course, or two if things go well, and then leave again. But as a young person you go to the Danish adult education center and stay. Gladly for a few months or even a whole year.
It is therefore a kind of boarding school in which, as one can read in Schmidt-Henkel’s concise remarks, it is about a “pedagogy of community, of class discussion and of common searching”. You learn there not for school, but for life. But that means for the teachers: full commitment and full identification. And the same applies to the partners of the teachers, almost at least.
In simple language, the novel praises language as a treasure
“The school, that’s all of you, says the headmistress and points to me. Her voice rises and falls, paints pictures and advertises.” But of course it’s not that simple. For one thing, life as an “appendage” isn’t really satisfying. On the other hand, the girls, who are completely immersed in their role of the committed generation, do more than just make eyes at their loved ones. In addition, the young woman, who became a mother a few months ago, suffers from chronic fatigue and worries whether the child will ever say anything other than “Moo” over and over again. Which also raises the existential question of whether, given the monosyllabic nature of most Jutlanders, this isn’t the appropriate way of communicating anyway.
“You think in prose,” explains the partner with experience in the provinces, “but the people here keep it short.” Haiku, seventeen syllables, nature plus present tense. “Dear heaven, such a wind, yes, really. And Monday again, yes, that’s inevitable.” And no confidentiality, no direct questions, leaving out everything that has to do with the body, lust, sex, pain, death. Well-intentioned advice, which you could also shout into the ever-blowing wind. Not that the narrator doesn’t try to tie her “free-floating associations” to the peg of everyday language. Alone – the heart sitting on the tongue be praise and thanks – it does not succeed.
The fact that it doesn’t succeed is the strength of the novel, both in terms of language and content. “Meter per Second” manages to praise language as a treasure in simple language. And indeed in silence as in speaking, in screaming as in singing, in the grammar-free adherence to the dialect as in the elaborate execution. Basically, the only important thing is that the treasure is raised, even if it doesn’t look like a treasure at first glance, so what is communicated is not always what the other person wants to hear.
If “hygge” were an atmosphere that allowed different perspectives, a lot would be gained
In the professionalized, written form, that may be acceptable. As the nation’s suggestion box, i.e. relationship advisor for a newspaper, the narrator is allowed to be sharp-tongued and press the cool hand of pragmatic reason on the hot forehead of the desperate lovers of this world. The fact that she likes to start with the phrase that “this shouldn’t be about me”, but then freely draws on her own life story only makes the whole thing more self-ironic and funnier.
In addition to this unsentimental wisdom, there are adaptations of traditional adult education center songs in which the narrator can let her linguistic power, but also her frustration and lust flow. Although these adaptations have noticeably lost their magic in the German adaptation, they were actually included in the latest edition of the hymn book in Denmark. Rightly so. They are really beautiful in their smoothness. “Hygge” suitable, but always with that certain something that lets us see the world a little bit differently, clearer, sharper, more beautiful, more colorful.
If one were to understand “hygge” as creating an atmosphere in which one’s own state of mind can be clearly expressed, but one can also simply shut up, ultimately allowing different perspectives as well as different forms of expression and temperaments, then a lot would be gained. A good example of this is Pilgaard’s arguments between the first-person narrator and Emma, one of her husband’s students, who considers it the right of young people to rush into relationships without being asked. But even the first-person narrator has no problem making it clear where she stands.
The narrator takes herself seriously and can therefore laugh at herself
“I clear my throat loudly and try to catch Emma’s eye. There’s laughter here and there, but since I don’t sit down again, silence falls. This might be going a bit far, I say, pointing my index finger at Emma, you can’t give it to him Send dead animals or used sanitary napkins home like a regular stalker. She blinks, the canteen is a thunderous silence.” But the door of encounter has not slammed shut irretrievably. A few chapters later, in the car: “Emma, I say, even if we love the same man, we don’t have to be deadly enemies because of that. She takes a piece of chewing gum out of her pocket and holds it out to me. Would do you good, she says.”
The fact that the togetherness succeeds also has to do with the fact that the narrator takes herself and everyone else seriously in their own way, but despite this, or perhaps because of it, she can laugh about them and herself. On the one hand, it is made clear that the non-stop talking about wet wipes and baby bottles is a sure relationship killer, but on the other hand, the joy about the child can be greater and more stupid than anything else. “Our son has understood that he is the star here, because when I point to him, he takes a artistic break. Maa, he then says solemnly. My friend takes my hand. Maa, we say in unison. We look at our son, enchanted by his journey to the land of the vowels.”
Language is a wonderful thing, let’s just give it space to develop, let it be what it wants and don’t expect that it will always be repaid in the same currency. That is the simple message of this not at all simple novel. “We are from Velling, we are from Velling, olé, olé-olé-olé, we roar across the fjord, answering with a leisurely sigh.”