Program Overview

There has long been a strong Scandinavian influence on Scotland and the wider Celtic world.

This innovative joint honours programme presents the opportunity to study the languages, literatures and cultures of neighbouring northern European nations which have taken differing routes to modernity, both socially and politically.

Scottish Ethnology
Ethnology is the discipline which studies the culture and traditions of developed societies. It is sometimes described as being at the intersection where history and anthropology meet.

Focusing on Scotland, but also looking at comparative material from elsewhere, you will study the varying ways in which a modern European nation expresses itself culturally.

The programme explores questions like:

• How do customs, beliefs, social organisation, language, music and song help to create and shape identity in the modern world?
• How do we use and make sense of the past from within our present?
• How can this understanding help us to shape our future?

A highlight of the programme is the chance to work with the rich range of materials in the School of Scottish Studies Archives. These materials include thousands of hours of recordings of songs, music, stories, rhyme and verse in Scots, Gaelic and English, as well as in dialects now extinct.

By the end of the programme, you will have developed the practical and intellectual tools to handle traditional resources, modern media and digital data. In this way, you will be ready to navigate and influence contemporary culture and society.

Scandinavian Studies
Scandinavian languages and cultures are increasingly popular. The region's television, film and literature attract global critical acclaim, and the socio-economic concept of the Nordic Model is widely studied.

On our programme, you have the opportunity to develop advanced spoken and written language skills in modern Danish, Norwegian or Swedish while exploring Scandinavian culture, past and present.

You do not need to know any of the Scandinavian languages when you start, as courses are available for beginners. Over the course of your four years, you will specialise in one of them but gain an understanding of the other two we teach to degree level at Edinburgh.

You will spend Year 3 in either Denmark, Norway or Sweden gaining lived experience of Scandinavian culture. Combined with studying options from other disciplines in Years 1 and 2, our approach will give you the mix of specialist skills and broad Intercultural Competence valued by graduate employers around the globe.