| MEET VERNE MOBERG Dedicated to Swedish at Columbia University |
| If anyone is perhaps concerned that SWEA New York's scholarship isn'tgetting into the right hands, stop worrying. If you meet Dr. Verne Moberg, who is responsible for Swedish instruction at Columbia University, you will be sold. She's a resolute woman with a passion for Sweden and the Swedish language and culture, and she does a terrific job for the preservation of Swedish from her cluttered office up there on the heights in SoHa. Her program will receive $5,000 from SWEA NY. The money will be distributed to travel grants to students, funding for translations, and a symposium on "Swedish Women Writers Then and Now." |
| Swedish is taught at the Department of Germanic Languages at Columbia University together with not only German but also Finnish, Dutch, and Yiddish. The instructor in Swedish is Dr. Verne Moberg, a dedicated teacher who comes not from Sweden but from a little town in Illinois but whose parents' roots were Swedish. |
| "It was a Swedish immigrant family. My mother's mother was nineteen when she came here." |
| Verne's mother and grandmother spoke Swedish at home, but Verne wasn't interested. |
| "As a child you didn't want to be different. But I knew certain words that were related to food, plus a few swear words, and then we said grace at the table. |
| "Actually I got a confused image of Swedes. They were best in the world, proud, but at the same time stingy and mean." |
| After school Verne wanted to do something different from what her friends were doing, traveling to Europe's more popular countries such as France and Italy. |
| "I became rather curious about Sweden, about how women's issues were dealt with and about the welfare state." |
| It resulted in a year at a Swedish folk high school and an apprenticeship at Bonniers, the book publishing company, and eventually she started translating Göran Palm and Sven Delblanc into English. |
| Back in the United States Verne worked at Pantheon Books and was involved in the development of The Feminist Press, a publishing company that, just as the name indicates, specialized in women's books. |
| "There I came into contact with women academics. They were free in the summers, at Christmastime, and showed me it is possible to do many other things in the world too, not just office work." |
| So Verne Moberg applied to the University of Wisconsin, and her Ph.D. dealt with Victoria Benedictsson and her writing. After a few years as a Swedish teacher at, among other places, UCLA, Gustavus Adolphus College, and the universities of Wisconsin and Virginia, she has been working for some years at Columbia University, enthusiastically introducing her students to the Swedish language, films, cooking, history, and politics. When I talked with Verne it seemed that she was more tuned in to what was happening at home in Sweden than I was myself. And I had just been home for half a year. |
| We conducted the discussion in Swedish and I wondered if Verne's Swedish pronunciation wasn't closer to standard Swedish than my accent from the province of Skåne.. |
| For Verne Moberg it is important that there be a possibility to study Swedish in New York. This was where Swedes came first. More Swedes have lived in the New York area than in other cities in the U.S., she says. Now Swedes must compete with many other ethnic groups, and the Scandinavian section in Brooklyn is only a memory. So it's crucial that Swedish not encounter the same fate. |
| "We now teach about forty different languages at Columbia. Twenty years ago it was around sixty. Swedish has to struggle, it's a matter of holding one's own. |
| "Usually we get an average of ten new students for each beginning course. In addition there are courses on Scandinavian drama and film -- Ibsen, Strindberg, Ingmar Bergman, and the other Scandinavian greats -- plus courses on Swedish folk tales, Swedish children's literature, and Nordic culture since the Vikings." Our SWEA Ulrika Bengtsson has given a lesson in cooking good Swedish food. Inger Claesson Wästberg, a new New Yorker, SWEA, and spouse of Sweden's Consul General, has spoken about "Disabilities Policies in Sweden and the United States." Inger Claesson Wästberg was earlier Director General for disabilities issues in Sweden. |
| At Columbia there is also theater, or "staged Readings," as Verne prefers to call it. |
| Just now she is translating plays by Kristina Lugn whose drama is a bit bizarre: dark humor, about how it is to be a woman and very popular in Sweden. SWEA is going to sponsor a Lugn performance during the spring. YOU ABSOLUTELY SHOULDN'T MISS IT. |
| Also, don't forget the 11th of March, when there will be a symposium on "Swedish Women Writers Then and Now." |
| Verne Moberg is very glad that SWEA wanted to get involved in the activities at the university. |
| "It's good to know women who know how to organize and get things done, and I hope that SWEA can help help to get out information about what's happening here. It's also useful for our students to come into contact with Swedes. Speaking and hearing Swedish -- it's not always a matter of money." |
| If you want to know more about all the exciting events that are happening at the Swedish Program, ask your computer to find this address: <www.columbia.edu/cu/swedish>. |
| Ann Skogh, SWEA-Bladet, New York Chapter, November 1999 |