Apply Your Swedish to Real-World Contexts
Master your pronunciation of Å, Ä, and Ö! Enjoy walking out of class to a nearby café for fika with friends, and celebrate your personal victory when you can order your coffee and kanelbulle in Swedish.
Enrich your experience
Dig into Swedish history, literature, film, and art, and discuss Sweden’s current burning issues. You will enrich your experience by developing your critical and analytical understanding of Swedish culture, as well as your own culture. This will make way for interesting cross-cultural discussions with your Swedish Homestay, Visiting Host, or friends.
Get Out of the Classroom on Field Studies
The best way to understand Swedish culture is to experience it. Examples of field studies include:
- A Café Night will introduce you to the Swedish concept of mysig (coziness)
- A visit to Skansen, the world’s first open-air museum, housing five centuries of Swedish history; or the Vasa Museum, where a sunken and magnificently restored 17th century
warship awaits you - A historical tour of Kungliga slottet (The Royal Palace) on the quaint island of Gamla Stan
- Participate in one of Stockholm’s festivals of lights, All Saints’ Night or Walpurgis Night
If you live in Stockholm, you want to get beyond the tourist surface. To really understand the people and place, you need to see it through Swedish eyes. How do Swedes live in the city? What do they love about it; what does it mean to be a Stockholmer? How do Swedes talk about everyday activities; how can you open up a conversation?
And there are more complex questions. Swedes combine a love for old Swedish traditions and new American culture. They are nostalgic for Sweden’s agrarian countryside, while aspiring to be Europe’s most modern country. They are proud both of their warrior past and their centuries of peace; they believe equally in monarchy and democracy. We discuss all this, and more. Welcome, all curious students!”
-Madeleine Hurd, Ph.D.
DIS faculty member