John Linnell (1792-1882), after Edward Price (active c.1823-1854), View Across the Fiord from Herrinsholmen, circa 1826-27 from series Seven Views in Norway, etching on paper (UCL Art Museum LDUCS-1456).
Celebrate The European Day of Languages on 26 September by learning a Nordic language!
Did you know that 26 September is The European Day of Languages (EDL)? This celebration was first introduced in 2001 during the European Year of Languages when the Council of Europe’s Committee of Ministers ultimately decided to make EDL a yearly occurrence. The day is an opportunity to promote multilingualism, linguistic diversity and language learning.
At Norvik Press we are obviously big fans of this yearly celebration and of the many activities organised to draw attention to Europe’s linguistic and cultural diversity. So why not mark the day by learning something new about one of the languages of the Nordic Region?
You can do this, for instance, by exploring The Language and Culture Show and Tell series, a set of free online language tasters and related materials created around objects mostly from UCL Art Collections. In January 2023, the series also became the basis of the UCL Art Museum exhibition called ‘Not Just Words: Learning Languages through Art and Objects’, which one of our Directors, Dr Elettra Carbone, co-curated with Dr Andrea Fredericksen (Curator, UCL Art Museum).
The ‘Not Just Words’ exhibition in the Summer of 2024. Photographer: K. Holst.
The series and the exhibition show how a collection-based approach to language learning can successfully and simultaneously promote the importance of language awareness and the relevance of university collections to academic and non-academic audiences. Many modern languages spoken in the Nordic Region are represented in this series, including Danish, Faroese, Finnish, Icelandic, Norwegian and Swedish. We hope you enjoy these resources and wish a happy EDL to all our readers and followers!