STENMARK FREI DUO
2023-06-29 19:00 (America/New_York) | NY
Our popular Summer Jazz Series returns to Scandinavia House! This summer we’re presenting performances from some of Scandinavia’s most talented young jazz musicians, composers, and singers on Thursday evenings in June and July. On June 29, see a performance by Stenmark Frei Duo, featuring Oskar Stenmark on flugelhorn and Addison Frei on piano.

Oskar Stenmark and Addison Frei have collaborated in numerous constellations in New York City, ranging from full jazz orchestra to an intimate duo setting. Frei attended Juilliard School while Oskar got his degree from Manhattan School of Music, New York’s two top music universities. In tonight’s program, the duo will present original material mixed with jazz and folk from Sweden and the U.S.

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TIMOTHY JOHNSON
2023-07-06 19:00 | NY
Our popular Summer Jazz Series returns to Scandinavia House! This summer we’re presenting performances from some of Scandinavia’s most talented young jazz musicians, composers, and singers on Thursday evenings in June and July.

On July 6, see a performance by Norwegian guitarist, composer, and educator Timothy Johnson with Matt Wong (piano), Kanoa Mendenhall (bass), and Jongkuk Kim (drums).
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PATTERNS, PATTERNS, PATTERNS!
2023-07-08 13:00 - 15:00 | NY
Join us at Scandinavia House for a family-friendly art workshop on Nordic pattern design! In this activity for children ages 5-12 and their families, participants will learn about Swedish and Finnish patterns by Marimekko, Hilma af Klint, and more.

Kids will then learn how to collage patterns of their own under the guidance of Icelandic Teaching Artist Melkorka Helgasdottir, also known as Korka.
All materials are provided.
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EVIL FLOWERS BY GUNNHILD ØYEHAUG
2023-07-11 18:00 | NY
Read and discuss Scandinavian literature in translation as part of our Nordic Book Club, now online! Each month we select a novel from some of the best Nordic literary voices. On July 11, we’ll be discussing Evil Flowers by award-winning Norwegian writer Gunnhild Øyehaug (Present Tense Machine), who recently discussed the book with us in a virtual talk streaming here.
In Evil Flowers, a precise but madcap collection of short stories now in translation by Kari Dickson, Gunnhild Øyehaug extracts the bizarre from the mundane and reveals the strange, startling brilliance of everyday life. A section of a woman’s brain slips into the toilet bowl, removing her ability to remember or recognize types of birds — though she is an ornithologist. Medicinal leeches ingest information from fiberoptic cables, and a new museum sinks into the ground.

Across 25 stories, Øyehaug renovates the form again and again, confirming Lydia Davis’s observation that her every story is “a formal surprise, smart and droll.” Inspired by Charles Baudelaire, a dreamer and romantic in the era of realism, Øyehaug revolts against the ordinary, reaching instead for the wonder to be found in fantasy and absurdity.
Brimming with wit, ingenuity, and irrepressible joy, these stories mark another triumph from a dazzling international writer.
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MY MEN
2023-07-12 12:00 - 19:00 | NY
Join us on July 12 for a book talk with Norwegian author Victoria Kielland on My Men, a fictional account of one broken woman’s descent into inescapable madness, out on June 27 from Astra Publishing House! Kielland will discuss her novel, which is based on the true story of Norwegian maid turned Midwestern farmwife Belle Gunness, the first known female serial killer in American history, with translator Damian Searls.
Among thousands of other Norwegian immigrants seeking freedom, Brynhild Størset emigrated to the American Upper Midwest in the late 19th century, changing her name and her life. As Bella, later Belle Gunness, she came in search of not only fortune and true faith but, most of all, love. In this literary reimagining of her harrowing true story, Kielland’s Belle grows increasingly alienated, ruthless, and perversely compelling in her pursuit of the American Dream. Raw, visceral, and altogether hypnotic, My Men is a brutal yet radically empathetic glimpse into the world of a woman consumed by desire.

This event will take place at Scandinavia House. Advance registration is recommended; sign up at the link above.
“This fascinating, off-kilter novel about a female serial killer is an unexpectedly thrilling read.”
—Karl Ove Knausgård, author of My Struggle and The Morning Star
“Kielland’s dense, lyrical novel offers both insight and opacity . . . Despite the subject matter, this novel is not your typical thriller. The language, in Searls’ translation, is dense, poetic, and deeply figurative.” —Kirkus Reviews

THE GUILTY
2023-07-13 19:00 | NY
This summer at Scandinavia House, see the critically acclaimed Nordic films that inspired American remakes in the series “The Nordics Do It Better”! You’ve seen the Hollywood version — but did you know how good the original was?

On July 11, see 2018 Danish crime thriller The Guilty /Den Skyldige (dir. Gustav Möller, Denmark, 2018), which was in 2021 was remade as the Netflix film The Guilty, starring and produced by Jake Gyllenhaal. When police officer Asger Holm (Jakob Cedergren) is demoted to deskwork, he expects a sleepy beat as an emergency dispatcher. But that all changes when one night he receives an emergency call from a kidnapped woman — who states that she is currently being driven out of Copenhagen against her will — and he embarks on an increasingly hair-raising journey to probe the mystery by any means necessary.

As he uses others as his eyes and ears to bring the missing woman to safety, a ticking clock and his own personal demons conspire against him, and the search to find her and her assailant will take every bit of his intuition and skill.
In this innovative and unrelenting Danish thriller that uses a single location to great effect, director Gustav Möller expertly frames the increasingly messy proceedings against the clean Scandinavian sterility of the police department, while Cedergren’s strong performance places the audience squarely in Holm’s tragically flawed yet well-intentioned mindspace. Shortlisted as the Danish submission for Best Foreign Language Film at the 91st Academy Awards, The Guilty was hailed as “a masterclass in wringing breathless tension from just a few key ingredients” (Wendy Ide, Observer).

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LET THE RIGHT ONE IN
2023-07-19 19:00 | NY
This summer at Scandinavia House, see the critically acclaimed Nordic films that inspired American remakes in the series “The Nordics Do It Better”! You’ve seen the Hollywood version — did you know how good the original was?
On July 19, see the critically lauded Swedish romantic horror film Let the Right One In /Låt den rätte komma in (dir. Tomas Alfredson, 2008), based on the 2004 novel of the same name by John Ajvide Lindqvist, which was later adapted to the 2010 American film Let Me In (starring Kodi Smit-McPhee and Chloë Grace Moretz) and the 2022 Showtime TV series Let the Right One In. A fragile, anxious boy, 12-year-old Oskar is regularly bullied by his stronger classmates but never strikes back. His wish for a friend seems to come true when he meets Eli, a pale and serious young girl who has just moved in next door with her father, and who only comes out at night. Coinciding with her arrival, a series of inexplicable disappearances and murders occur — in which blood seems to be the common denominator.

As Oscar begins to realize that Eli may be more than she first seemed, a subtle romance also begins to blossom between them, as Eli gives him strength to fight back against his aggressors. But as he also becomes increasingly aware of the tragic and inhuman dimensions of Eli’s plight, he also cannot bring himself to forsake her.
Hailed as “a spectrally beautiful vampire film that’s more than the sum of its chills and estimable technique” (Manohla Dargis, NY Times), Let the Right One In won numerous awards including four Guldbagge Awards, the Founders Award for Best Narrative Feature at Tribeca Film Festival, the Méliès d’Argent (Silver Méliès), and others. Swedish filmmaker Tomas Alfredson weaves friendship, rejection and loyalty into a disturbing and darkly atmospheric, yet poetic and unexpectedly tender tableau of adolescence.

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FANTASTICAL BUILDINGS
2023-07-22 13:00 - 15:00 | NY
Join us at Scandinavia House for a family-friendly art workshop on fantastical buildings! In this activity for children ages 5-12 and their families, participants will learn about wonderful Scandinavian architecture such as Icelandic turf houses, the Finnish Pavilion at NY’s World Fair, and more.

Kids will learn how to create their own fantastical buildings using assemblage under the guidance of Icelandic Teaching Artist Melkorka Helgasdottir, also known as Korka.
All materials are provided.
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IN ORDER OF DISAPPEARANCE
2023-07-26 19:00 | NY
This summer at Scandinavia House, see the critically acclaimed Nordic films that inspired American remakes in the series “The Nordics Do It Better”! You’ve seen the Hollywood version — did you know how good the original was?
A vengeance tale with equal parts Coen Brothers humor and Tarantino-style action, In Order of Disappearance /Kraftidioten (Norway, 2016) stars Stellan Skarsgård as the introverted and hard-working snowplow drive Nils, who has just been named “Citizen of the Year” when he receives news that his son has died of a heroin overdose. Disbelieving the official report, Nils soon uncovers evidence that his son was murdered as a result of a turf war between a buffoonish local mob boss known as “The Count” (Pål Sverre Hagan) and his Serbian rivals.

Armed with heavy machinery and a good dose of beginner’s luck, Nils embarks upon a quest for revenge that soon escalates into full-blown war, with the body count spiraling ever higher among drug traffickers, con artists, and kingpins. A wintry thriller with satisfying intelligence — and more than a few laughs — In Order of Disappearance was remade by Norwegian director Hans Petter Moland in 2019 as the American thriller Cold Pursuit, starring Liam Neeson.

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FORCE MAJEURE
2023-08-02 19:00 | NY
This summer at Scandinavia House, see the critically acclaimed Nordic films that inspired American remakes in the series “The Nordics Do It Better”! You’ve seen the Hollywood version — did you know how good the original was?

On August 2, see Swedish director Ruben Östlund’s wickedy funny and precisely observed psychodrama Force Majeure /Turist, which in 2020 was adapted in the U.S. as the film Downhill starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell. Swedish businessman Tomas (Johannes Kuhnke), his willowy wife Ebba (Lisa Loven Kongsli), and their two blond children seem to be a model family during their skiing holiday in the French Alps.

But one perfect, sunny ski day, the family is enjoying lunch at a mountainside when disaster strikes — an avalanche threatens to bury them along with diners at a mountainside restaurant. As people flee in all directions and as his wife and children panic, Tomas makes a decision that will shake his marriage to its core and leave him struggling to reclaim his role as family patriarch.
Force Majeure questions some of our guarded truths: What if you learn that you are not the person you thought you were?

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MARTIN A HANSEN'S THE LIAR
2023-09-12 18:00 - 19:00 | NY
Read and discuss Scandinavian literature in translation as part of our Nordic Book Club, now online! Each month we select a novel from some of the best Nordic literary voices. On September 12, we’ll be discussing Martin A. Hansen’s The Liar, one of the greatest works of modern Scandinavian fiction, out now in new translation by Paul Larkin, who recently discussed the book with us in a talk streaming here.
First published in 1950, The Liar tells the story of Johannes Lye, a teacher and parish clerk on tiny Sand Island off the coast of Denmark, a place that in winter is entirely cut off from the world at large by ice. It is winter when the book begins, and for years now Johannes has lived alone, even as he nurses a secret passion for Annemari, a former pupil. Annemari is engaged to a local man, Olaf, who has left the island but is due to return come spring. She is also being courted by a young engineer from the mainland.

Such are the chief players in a compact drama, recorded in Johannes’s ironic, self-lacerating, and anything but reliable diary.
Martin A. Hansen’s novel beautifully evokes the stark landscape of Sand Island and the immemorial circuit of the seasons as well as the mysterious passage of time in the human heart, all the while proceeding to a supremely suspenseful conclusion.
“A great work of art. . . . There is a palpable unease in every sentence.” —Tom Kristensen
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SICK OF MYSELF
2023-09-13 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
This fall at Scandinavia House, experience Nordic comedy at its darkest with “Svart Humor”! “If there’s a dead body in Denmark, someone is going to make a joke about it,” director Anders Jensen once said; Nordic comedies are as known for their deadpan, dry wit as for their occasionally noir subject matter, celebrating the “svart/sort” (dark) side of life’s hilarities.
The series kicks off on September 13 with Sick of Myself /Syk Pike (dir. Kristoffer Borgli, Norway/Denmark/Sweden/France, 2022), a biting Norwegian satire hailed as “a 95-minute-long insanity spiral and nihilist’s delight” (Cinemacy)! Self-involved young Oslo residents Signe (Kristine Kujath) and Thomas (Eirik Sæther) are a perfectly toxic match; both are equally insufferable and desperate to be noticed.
But when Thomas’s burgeoning artistic success tips the power balance too far in his favor, rising to fame with his sculptures made of stolen furniture, Signe becomes hell-bent on attracting attention and sympathy, beginning with faking a nut allergy. As she seeks out more drastic ways to reclaim attention within the milieu of Oslo’s culture elite, the results become increasingly grotesque.
A pitch-black “unromantic comedy” shot through with elements of Cronenbergian horror that was one of the highlights of Cannes 2022 (and one of John Waters’ “Best Films of 2022” and NY Magazine’s “Best Movies of 2023” ), Sick of Myself is a delightfully unsparing dissection of our warped, celebrity-obsessed times.
“A cross between the malicious wit of Ruben Östlund’s recent pictures and the lurid excesses of John Waters’ early film Female Trouble… Comedies don’t get much darker than this”—The Guardian
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MY SAILOR, MY LOVE
2023-09-15 19:00 - 21:00 | Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
“A poignant and achingly moving tale of love and loss” — on September 15, see Finnish filmmaker Klaus Härö’s My Sailor, My Love at Scandinavia House!
Howard (James Cosmo) is a widowed sailor living alone on the coast of Ireland. As he struggles to care for himself, his daughter, Grace (Catherine Walker) hires Annie (Bríd Brennan) to help out around the house. Though Howard initially rejects this imposition, Annie’s charm and gentle care win him over, and the two fall in love. But where Annie’s large and loving family welcomes Howard into their lives, the new relationships only serve to illuminate the depth of pain and hurt between Howard and Grace, who is facing challenges of her own. As her resentment tears at an otherwise idyllic love story, they must learn to heal wounds of the past.

A windswept drama deftly balances a universal family saga with a tender and timeless romance, My Sailor, My Love is “filled with sage wisdom and vulnerable people struggling to do the best that they can even when they are at their worst…a lovely indie” (San Jose Mercury News).
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SOLD OUT — REYKJAVÍK: A CRIME STORY
2023-09-20 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
*This event is now sold out.*
Prime Minister of Iceland Katrín Jakobsdóttir and international best-selling crime fiction author Ragnar Jónasson discuss their collaboration on Reykjavik: A Crime Story, a lauded novel set during a transformative time in Iceland’s history — 1986, a year that saw the city’s 200th anniversary and the Reagan-Gorbachev conference. The event will be moderated by Otto Penzler (owner of The Mysterious Bookshop, NYC).
In 1956, 14-year-old Lára decides to spend the summer working for a couple on the small island of Videy, just off the coast of Reykjavík, only to disappear without a trace in early August. As time passes, the mystery becomes Iceland’s most infamous unsolved case. What happened to the young girl? Is she still alive? Did she leave the island, or did something happen to her there?
Thirty years later, as the city of Reykjavík celebrates its 200th anniversary, journalist Valur Robertsson begins his own investigation into Lára’s case.
But as he draws closer to discovering the secret, and with the eyes of Reykjavík upon him, it soon becomes clear that Lára’s disappearance is a mystery that someone will stop at nothing to keep unsolved…
Books will be available for purchase and signing.
“A slow-burning, spellbinding whodunit. Agatha Christie, to whom it’s dedicated, would be proud” —Kirkus Reviews
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NORWEGIAN 1 — HYBRID LANGUAGE CLASSES
2023-09-26 17:45 - 18:45, 2023-09-27 17:45 - 18:45, 2023-10-03 17:45 - 18:45, 2023-10-04 17:45 - 18:45 | NY
Learn the Nordic languages in classes offered this fall at Scandinavia House! In this beginner’s course, you will build your Norwegian vocabulary, pronunciation, and grammar skills, while also learning about Norwegian culture and life. By the course’s end, you should be able to conduct simple conversations in Norwegian.
You will get to practice conversations and reading in class, and there will be a focus on pronunciation, and Norwegian vowels and sounds, which may be new to your ear. Students are welcome to bring personal experiences, anecdotes, and facts about Norway into class discussions. There will also be at-home assignments focusing on reading, writing, and grammar, as well as an optional end-of-semester presentation.
Outside of class, students are encouraged to watch Norwegian shows, and movies, read simple text, and have Norwegian podcasts on in the background.
The required text will be provided via pdf, before the first class.
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THE ART OF MAKING PICTURE BOOKS
2023-09-26 19:00 - 20:30 | NY
Join us September 26 for a discussion with award-winning author and artist Marika Mijala, translator Mia Spangbenberg, and Etana Editions children’s book publisher Jenni Erkintalo, in celebration of the release of Rosie Runs! They’ll discuss their work across artmaking, translation, and children’s book-making, while sharing visuals from Rosie Runs, which is out August 15 in translation from Elsewhere Editions.
An illustrator of children’s books for all of the major publishers of Finland as well as worldwide, Marika Maijala has received awards including the 2020 State Award for Illustration Art, and was chosen in 2021 as one of the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Awards candidates of Finland. Rosie Runs (Ruusun Matka), which was made using her distinctive oil-pastel artmaking technique, follows a very special trip made one day by Rosie the race dog, and was released in the Finnish language in October 2018 by Etana Editions. Illustrations from Rosie’s Journey were selected in The Bologna Illustrators Exhibition 2019, and the book was also nominated for The Nordic Council Children and Young People’s Literature Prize 2019.

In today’s event, the three speakers will discuss topics including how Nordic children’s picture books are made; how authors and illustrators work together, as well as the role of the editor and publisher; the importance of images as well as pre-production work; the meaning and the work of translators; and trends and challenges in the Nordic children’s picture book world.
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NORWEGIAN 3 — HYBRID LANGUAGE CLASSES
2023-09-26 19:00 - 21:00, 2023-10-03 19:00 - 21:00 | Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Learn the Nordic languages in classes offered this spring at Scandinavia House! In this intermediate-level course building upon Norwegian 2 (or its equivalent), all four core skill areas (listening, speaking, reading, and writing) are covered, with an emphasis on conversational Norwegian. Continue to expand your vocabulary and master grammatical structures, while enhancing your conversational abilities, and deepening your cultural knowledge of all things Norwegian, through study of themes related to daily life.
You will get to practice more in-depth conversations in class which will put your grammatical structures to the test, all the while building on your listening, and speaking skills. Focus will be given to pronunciation, Norwegian structure, tone, and flow. Students will have the opportunity to engage in discussion by bringing topics that interest them about Norway into class, including anecdotes, and personal experiences. There will also be weekly at-home assignments, and more, focusing on reading, writing, and grammar, as well as a recommend end-of-semester presentation.
Outside of class, students are encouraged to read Norwegian articles, listen to podcasts and/or audio books, and watch Norwegian shows and movies, weekly.
The required text will be provided via pdf, before the first class.
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THE GRUMP: IN SEARCH OF AN ESCORT
2023-09-27 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
This fall at Scandinavia House, experience Nordic comedy at its darkest with “Svart Humor”! “If there’s a dead body in Denmark, someone is going to make a joke about it,” director Anders Jensen once said; Nordic comedies are as known for their deadpan, dry wit as for their occasionally noir subject matter, celebrating the “svart/sort” (dark) side of life’s hilarities.
On September 27, see The Grump: In Search of an Escort (dir. Mika Kaurismäki, Finland, 2022)! The Grump’s (Heikki Kinnunen) everyday life working on his farm in rural Finland has been rolling along, albeit troubled lately by memories of his big brother Tarmo, who moved to Germany years ago.
When one day The Grump crashes his beloved 1972 Ford Escort, the car is hauled off to the junkyard; no other car will do, so he sets off in search of the nearest model — which happens to be in Germany.
After a robbery and an injury, the Grump finds himself reunited with his estranged sibling. As the two continue the hunt for the vehicle amid numerous disagreements, they also begin to understand their shared history of loss, leading them on a touching (if cantankerous) journey of reconciliation and forgiveness.
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NORWEGIAN 4 — HYBRID LANGUAGE CLASSES
2023-09-27 19:00 - 21:00, 2023-10-04 19:00 - 21:00 | Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Learn the Nordic languages in classes offered this spring at Scandinavia House! Designed for intermediate learners who have taken Norwegian 3 or equivalent, this course continues to expand and refine your speaking, listening, reading, and writing skills, enabling grammatically correct conversations, and language structure. A stronger focus will be given to pronunciation, Norwegian structure, tone, and flow.
You will get the opportunity to hone in your knowledge of grammatical structures, thus engaging more confidently in conversations and discussions in class, expanding your vocabulary, and fine-tuning your listening skills. Students are actively encouraged to talk more in-depth about their own experiences in Norwegian.
There will also be weekly at-home assignments, and more, focusing on reading, writing, and grammar, as well as a strongly recommend end-of-semester presentation. Students are strongly encouraged to watch and read Norwegian news, and articles, watch Norwegian shows and movies, and listen to podcasts and audio books, as often as possible, on a weekly basis at a minimum. These classes are conducted in Norwegian, with the occasional English word/sentence.
Please note that in order to take this course, you should be comfortable using the simple past tense and present perfect, and have knowledge of regular and irregular verbs, as well as their irregularities and rules. You should also be able to use indefinite, definite, and plural forms of masculine, feminine, and neuter nouns; conjugate adjectives; and apply intermediate Norwegian sentence structure, including “inversion.”
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ULF LINDE: ESSAYS FROM A LIFETIME IN THE ARTS
2023-09-30 14:30 - 16:00 | NY
Join us September 30 for a discussion on the first English-language anthology of writings by Swedish art critic and museum director Ulf Linde: Essays from a Lifetime in the Arts. Curator, critic, and artist Robert Storr will discuss Linde’s career with Kersten Lind Bonnier and Peter Galassi, who edited and translated the book, which will be out on October 3 from Artbook/D.A.P.
Ulf Linde (1929-2013) played a key role in the early years of Moderna Museet, where in 1961, he produced the first replica of Marcel Duchamp’s Large Glass, approved and signed by the artist. While Linde was a major voice in Sweden for over six decades, he is little known outside of Scandinavia.
This anthology rectifies that oversight, making available Linde’s most rigorous and illuminating essays: studies of Swedish painters and other modern masters such as Picasso. Matisse. Picabia and Giacometti, as well as a bevy of theoretical texts including his ambitious final essay on the art of drawing.
The volume is generously illustrated and features an introduction by Olle Granath, former director of Moderna Museet and Sweden’s Nationalmuseum.
The talk will take place at Scandinavia House. Registration recommended; sign up at the link above.
“This fascinating selection of beautifully translated texts demonstrates [Linde] was in fact one of the most powerful critics of the era”—Daniel Birnbaum, Artistic Director of Acute Art & former Director of Moderna Museet
“A vital contributor to both Moderna Museet and the Centre Pompidou in their early years, Ulf Linde was a leading critical voice in Sweden for half a century… Now readers of English can enjoy the breadth of his adventurous, exacting, versatile, and eloquent writings”—Laurent Le Bon, President of Centre Pompidou
“Ulf Linde’s wonderful essays bust out in unexpected directions, bringing a spirit by turns playful, celebratory, scholarly, and daringly idiosyncratic to subjects as diverse as Duchamp, Matisse, Giacometti, Duke Ellington, Wallace Stevens, and Early Christian illuminated manuscripts. Linde, who began life as a jazz musician, has a gift for intellectual improvisation. He lets his ideas fly. His great subject is the enchantment of modern art. Open this beautifully produced book and you’ll find yourself getting to know a writer of head-spinning range and originality.” — Jed Perl, author of Authority and Freedom: A Defense of the Arts
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SWEDISH ADVANCED INTERMEDIATE — HYBRID LANGUAGE CLASSES
2023-10-03 18:10 - 19:50 | Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Learn the Nordic languages in classes offered at Scandinavia House! This course held both online and in-person at Scandinavia House is aimed for students who are slightly more advanced in Swedish, and are able to speak the language without too much effort, as well as easily read novels. Students will engage in conversation and discussions, and themes will be of a more philosophical nature, involving global questions and fiction. Grammatically, various structures and conjugations will be reviewed so students can refine their speech and writing. Students will be assigned a book to read during the semester.
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KEYBOARD CONVERSATIONS® WITH JEFFREY SIEGEL: MOZART AND FRIENDS
2023-10-03 19:30 - 21:00 | Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
The cross-pollination of three musical geniuses produced masterpieces that continue to enthrall after more than two centuries. This upbeat evening features Haydn’s Gypsy Rondo, Beethoven’s God Save the King, and Mozart’s dazzling, infinitely inventive Variations on Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star—to name a few!

Hailed by the New York Times for “an achievement of a sort seldom heard,” internationally acclaimed pianist Jeffrey Siegel returns to Scandinavia House for his ever-popular series of Keyboard Conversations® —a brilliantly polished concert-with-commentary in which captivating remarks precede world-class performances of piano masterpieces. The concert concludes with a brisk Q & A – all questions welcome!

Keyboard Conversations® make friends for classical music for the newcomer and enrich the listening experience for the avid music lover as well.
The 2023/24 series will continue with “A French Musical Feast” on February 13; “Chopin and Liszt” on March 19; and “Three Great Romantics” on April 30, 2024.
Thanks to a generous loan by Victor Borge’s grandson Finn, concerts will be performed on Victor Borge’s personal Steinway piano.
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DRIVING MUM
2023-10-04 19:00 - 21:00 | NY
This fall at Scandinavia House, experience Nordic comedy at its darkest with “Svart Humor”! “If there’s a dead body in Denmark, someone is going to make a joke about it,” director Anders Jensen once said; Nordic comedies are as known for their deadpan, dry wit as for their occasionally noir subject matter, celebrating the “svart/sort” (dark) side of life’s hilarities.
On October 4, see Hilmar Oddsson’s “enjoyably dark and dour comedy road movie” (Screen Review), Driving Mum (Iceland, 2022)! When Jon’s (Prostur Leo Gunnarsson) mother passes away in 1980s Iceland, he loses his anchor and the single most dominant person in his life.
Compelled to honor her last wish to be buried in her home village of Eyrarbakki, he sets out on a road trip to take her there — by propping her up in the back seat of his car. Accompanied by the family dog Bresnef (and an imaginary Greek chorus in the background), he soon finds himself on a journey of discovery, meeting a world and its many inhabitants he has never otherwise encountered.
Winner of the Grand Prix at PÖFF – Tallinn Black Nights 2022 and Best Actor at Bifest 2023, Driving Mum is a belated coming-of-age comedy and touching tale of self-discovery, albeit one with a corpse in the backseat.
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SWEDISH INTERMEDIATE 1
2023-10-05 19:20 - 21:00 | Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
Learn the Nordic languages in classes offered at Scandinavia House! In this course held online only, the focus will be primarily on conversation. Students will discuss various subjects brought up in each chapter via the informative texts, with topics spanning subjects such as Swedish cultural and social life, wild animals, historical figures, politics, and others. The grammar is overall a comprehensive repetition of the beginner levels, while also introducing a few new things like reflexive pronouns, the present participle and the conditional. Students will be required to read assigned books over the course of the semester. Intermediate 1 runs over three semesters and can be taken in any order.
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EDVARD MUNCH: TRANSFORMING NATURE
2023-10-07 14:30 - 16:00 | Scandinavia House, 58 Park Avenue, New York, NY, 10016, United States
On October 7, join us for the discussion Edvard Munch: Transforming Nature. Jay A. Clarke, who received a grant from the American-Scandinavian Foundation to conduct research for the current exhibition and publication Edvard Munch: Trembling Earth on view now at the Clark Art Institution through October 15, is Rothman Family Curator of Prints and Drawings at the Art Institute of Chicago. In today’s discussion, Clarke will examine how Munch animated nature to bring meaning to his work. Known primarily as a figure painter, Munch’s best-known images are connected to themes of love, anxiety, longing, and death; yet a large portion of his works feature landscape.
This talk will consider his iconic images from a new perspective, one that resonates with current anxieties around climate instability. His depictions of the natural world celebrate the fecundity of the earth in farming practice and garden cultivation, question the mysteries of the forest, and address psychological states. The lecture will also explore how Munch developed his own pantheistic and philosophical views of nature and used them to transform his surroundings.
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