Vil du gerne lære dansk? Danish is a modern Scandinavian language closely related to Norwegian and Swedish. Denmark is the gateway to Scandinavia and the North Atlantic, and Danish is also spoken as a second language in Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Iceland.
We offer three levels of instruction in Danish at UW (beginning, intermediate and advanced). Each autumn quarter a new sequence of Danish starts with DAN 101. If you already speak some Danish, you may test into a higher level for Credit by Special Examination. As a UW student, you are encouraged to study in Denmark via UW Study Abroad and are eligible for scholarships, including the Metzon and Nielsen Scholarships for Danish Studies. You can also look at this directory of helpful information and scholarships for students wishing to study in Denmark here.
The Department of Scandinavian has an undergraduate major and minor in Danish. The Danish major offers a current European perspective on culture, gender, politics and society, as well as cinema, folklore, history and literature. The UW faculty in Danish consists of a full professor as well as a Visiting Lecturer in Danish.
With admission to our Graduate Program, qualified students holding a BA may pursue the MA or PhD degree in Scandinavian Studies with an emphasis in Danish.
Contact Professor Marianne Stecher-Hansen, for further information about Danish by calling 206-543-6084 or marianne@uw.edu.
Related Faculty
Acting Instructor of Danish
Department Chair, Professor
Georg and Nina Pedersen Endowed Professor of Danish Studies
Latest News
- SPR 26: Danish for Professionals AUT 26: Decoding the Danish Model for Sustainability (January 30, 2026)
- UW Study Abroad Fair (January 20, 2026)
- Danish Program Holiday Letter (November 26, 2025)
- UW celebrates 50 years of Danish Studies! (May 12, 2025)
- The Georg and Nina Pedersen Endowed Professorship (January 23, 2023)
Related Research
- Doxtater, Amanda Elaine. Visions and Victims Art Melodrama in the Films of Carl Th. Dreyer. Madison, Wisconsin: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2024.
- Stecher-Hansen, Marianne, ed. Nordic War Stories: World War II as History, Fiction, Media and Memory. New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books.
- Nordic War Stories - The Second World War as Fiction, Film and History, edited by Marianne T. Stecher
- Toomet, Tiina. Female Agency and Violence in Danish and Estonian Folk Ballads. Master's Thesis, Scandinavian Languages and Literature, University of Washington, 2020.
- Stecher [Stecher-Hansen], Marianne T., "Efterskrift - Erindringsfortællinger og Essayistik," in Blixen, Karen, Skygger paa Græsset & Essays. Edited by Nicolas Reinecke-Wilkendorff. 1. Tekstkritiske og kommenterede udgave ed. Værker / Karen Blixen. Kbh.: Danske Sprog- og Litteraturselskab/Gyldendal, 2020, pp. 515 - 592.
- Nielsen, Jan Henrik Krogh. "People's Faces:" Levinasian Ethics in Per Olov Enquist, Villy Sørensen, and Knut Hamsun. PhD Dissertation, University of Washington, 2019.
- Stecher [Stecher-Hansen], Marianne. Review of Mads Bunch, Isak Dinesen Reading Søren Kierkegaard. On Christianity, Seduction, Gender, and Repetition. In Danske Studier (2017): 197 - 202.
- Marianne T. Stecher. Review of Hans Christian Andersen: European Witness. By Paul Binding. Comparative Literature Studies, vol. 54, no. 4, 2016: 794 - 798.
- Kastbjerg, Kirstine Marie. “Reading the Surface: The Danish Gothic of B.S. Ingemann, H.C. Andersen, Karen Blixen and Beyond.” University of Washington, PhD dissertation, 2014
- Marianne T. Stecher, The Creative Dialectic in Karen Blixen's Essays: Gender, Nazi Germany, and Colonial Desire (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2014).