ABOUT THIS PROJECT

Projects never happen on islands. That is especially true of this project. 

My journey with NSU, the Nordic Summer University, started when I read a call for papers about feminist philosophy - a rather small field of studies that hardly exists. Some months before I had promised myself never again go to any philosophy conferences, as I was disappointed by the senior male people getting all the space to talk and present their view of the world without having any intention of listening or be inspired by other people around them. But I decided to give it one more chance. So I went to Latvia, expecting the worst but thinking I’d always go to the beach if it was really horrible.

I hardly spend any time on the beach that week. Except the evening when we had a reading of Antigone on the beach together, and that time we had a workshop walking along the shoreline, talking and thinking together. And listening. Listening to people from different backgrounds, from different levels of study, from other walks of life. There was a lot of compassion in that listening, a lot of eagerness to learn from others. It was a very special experience, being included in NSU from the moment I arrived. Being part of the General Assembly, being part of an organisation that had a long-standing tradition of openness and democracy, while acknowledging the difficulty in achieving all their own standards. 

So, this project is mostly indebted to the coordinators of the study circle I became a part of, Synne Myrreböe, Valgerður Þorgerðar Pálmadóttir and Johanna Sjöstedt. And the other participants in the feminist philosophy circle, and in the other circles as well. The more I returned to the NSU events, the more circles I visited, the more impressed I became with how NSU functions. 

For two years now I’ve been a board member as well, especially concerned with the financial situation of the organisation. Glad to have been able to secure the funding from The Nordics to organise the anniversary research project which funds ten different research and artistic projects to celebrate the 70-year existence of the Nordic Summer University, I’m very pleased that I have been able to spend some time researching the history of NSU and present my findings now in this publication. 

This project is a culmination of many of my personal interests and professional training. Being a philosopher, I’m interested in how words form thought and how thought changes over time. How do these changes take place, which forces act upon this? These were the central questions I started out with, not knowing what I would end up with. In the process, I discovered I truly enjoy going through archival material, shifting through material and deciding what is important and what is not, sticking closely to the original research question I set myself, but also allowing to broaden the question when facts emerged that shed light on a part of the research question. 

The archive of NSU that is held at the Danish National Archive contains much more than what I will be able to present in this publication. There are many questions that formed in my mind as I went through the material, but being limited by time, I had no opportunity to go into all the aspects of NSU history. I hope others, today and in the future, will take up these questions and present more elements of the rich history of NSU.