Oral Tradition in Norway: Folktales, Myths and Medieval Ballads

Vytautas Magnus University, K. Donelaicio 52-514

15:00, Wednesday, 23 October 2013,

The lecture focuses on Norwegian trolls, the witch of the Black Death, and medieval ballads of black metal. To put it in more academic language, the lecture presents beliefs in beings of nature, myths of origin and myths predicting coming events, and on the development of medieval ballads first sung at court in Bergen to their present use at the concert scenes of black metal bands like Tyr.

Sigrid Aksnes Stykket, born 1950, University Lecturer in Norwegian Literature, Folklore and Traditional Culture, and Fantasy Literature at Telemark University College, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Bø in Telemark, Norway.

Special fields: Scandinavian medieval ballads, folklore and oral tradition, fantasy literature, Norse literature and language, Faroese language and history.

“The last three years I have been leading a pilot project developing an online course based on the Norwegian literature and language course of TUC (Telemark University College), which has become a success to the extent that we now are unable to accept all applicants, and have put a limit at 100 students a year”.

Writings: (2007) Dei sigler med fløy (MA thesis), Oslo, University of Oslo (https://www.duo.uio.no/handle/10852/26572)

Conference contributions:

May 1993: A Woman’s Place: “A Woman’s Place in the Scandinavian Medieval Ballad”

May 2012: Tales of Death: “Death in the Ballad

2nd International Scientific Conference “Sustainable Multilingualism: Research, Studies, Culture”

On 27-28 September VMU hosted the 2nd international scientific conference Sustainable Multilingualism: Research, Studies, Culture organised by the Institute of Foreign Languages. The  conference aimed at assembling international researchers, experts, language teaching professionals, and other stakeholders to share research insights and discuss multilingualism viewed from perspectives of various fields including language policy, language didactics, foreign language teaching, linguistics, translation and others.

The conference started with the plenary session on the issues in the EU language policy. The first plenary presentation was delivered by the president of the European Language Council (ELC), the chair of the European Commission’s Business Platform and the Professor of English philology at Berlin Freie University Wolfgang Mackiewicz, the other presentation was given by the member of ELC Board and the Associate Professor at the Department of Language and Business Communication at the University of Aarhus, Denmark, Karen M. Lauridsen.

Photos of the 2st International Scientific Conference “Sustainable Multilingualism: Research, Studies, Culture”, 27-28 September, 2013

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M. de Cervantes club invited to travel to Spain

On the 20th of May, at Vero Cafe@VDU (S.Daukanto 28) the last event in the Spring semestre of M. de Cervantes Spanish language and culture club occured. Everyone was invited to travel to Spain. The organizers were joking that the exam session which was started with Spanish Spring week was a great success.

Spain attacts travellers with its beaches, immense mountain ranges, picturesque nature, rich architecture heritage , exclusive cuisine traditions and festivals. However, not everyone has had an opportunity to visit this country of contrasts. Therefore, the event “¡Buen viaje!” was a great opportunity to discover many important facts about Spain which may be very useful while visiting this warm southern country. During the event everyone could listen to spanish songs and taste spanish sweets.

The event “¡Buen viaje!” was the last activity in the project Primavera en español/Ispaniškas pavasaris which, having won the competition of student organizations support, was granted partial funding by Vytautas Magnus University. Such financial support helped M. de Cervantes club organize a wide range of events devoted to the spread of the Spanish culture.

Event poster

It is good to learn Polish, it is even better to go to Poland!

Travelling has many benefits. First, you not only see different places, but also get to know different cultures and languages. According to  St. Augustin, “the world is a book, and those who do not travel, are reading only the first page of it”. We are six students of VMU (Solveiga Lukminaitė, Dovilė Urbanavičiūtė, Audronė Šopauskaitė, Ieva Žindžiūtė, Monika Rudvalytė and Erika Kisieliūtė) who were given a great opportunity to visit Warsaw on 7 – 10 May and to see its old town, museums, park and other remarkable places. Such opportunity was given to us for good Polish language results; the whole trip was financed by Poland Institute in Vilnius. We are very grateful to the director of the institute, dr Malgožata Kasner, and to all of those who helped in organizing this trip.

Our introduction to Warsaw started in the old town. Here we admired wonderful architecture, elegant churches and monuments devoted to well-known Polish people. Afterwards we visited the Royal palace (Zamek Królewski), Jewish History Museum (Museum Historii Żydów Polskich), Warsaw Museum of Rebellion (Muzeum Powstania Warszawskiego), Chopin Museum (Museum Chopina), Copernisus Science Centre (Centrum Nauki Kopernik), Palace of Science and Culture (Pałac Kultury i Nauki), Park Łazienkowski and many other places. We also visited Warsaw University (Uniwersytet Warszawski), where we met and talked with the students  and the head of the Baltic Studies Institute, dr Irena Szulska. We were impressed by the musical “Deszczowa Piosenka” (Teatr ROMA) and sang together with its actors. The whole trip was a success – the weather was wonderful and we were full of nice impressions. In Warsaw we not only visited various interesting places, but also got acquainted with the students of Warsaw University and had an opportunity to improve our Polish language skills.

Each of us experienced a lot in Warsaw, therefore we recommend everyone to visit Poland and not to forget its wonderful capital.(Erika Kisieliūtė)

So, we are inviting everyone to learn Polish and to discover the marvellous Polish culture!

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1st International Scientific Conference “Multilingualism and Language Studies in Higher Education”

The conference was held on 8-10 December, 2011 at Vytautas Magnus University (Kaunas, Lithuania).

The aim of the conference was to assemble researchers, international experts, language teaching specialists, politicians, heads and teachers of higher education language centres and institutions, and other social stakeholders for the discussion about the state and problems concerning multilingual competence development in higher education.

The conference discussions were proceeded in four stages:

  • Plenary sessions
  • Round table discussions
  • Oral, poster, and virtual presentations
  • Language forums

After the conference, the book was published. The book contains summaries of presentations for International scientific conference „Multilingualism and Language Studies in Higher Education“ in English, Lithuanian, French, German, Spanish and Latvian languages, including conference programme, list of conference participants and project information. The presentations investigated the issues on language policy, development of plurilingual competence in higher education, language diversity, multilingualism for economic competitiveness and content and language integrated learning. Also the electronic edition of selected papers “Research in Multilingualism” was issued. The volume of selected papers presents research in issues in language policy, language teaching and learning in higher education, development of plurilingual competence and intercultural dialogue.

Photos of the 1st International Scientific Conference “Multilingualism and Language Studies in Higher Education”, 8-10 December, 2011:

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