The Scandinavian global influence has been gaining momentum, dominating home design trends with its minimalistic approach and contributing the concepts of “hygge” and “lagom.”
For a while, Ukrainians had few opportunities to explore Nordic culture and meet people who share an interest in Scandinavia. But with the foundation of the Ukrainian-Scandinavian Center in 2017, it has become much easier.
The center is “a Scandinavian platform where different people with common interests can meet,” Dmytro Novashok, chairman of the board at the Ukrainian-Scandinavian Center, told the Kyiv Post.
The center is registered as a non-profit that mostly lives off their students’ payments. Some of their projects are supported by the embassies of Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Finland, which have provided funds, promotion or organizational resources for the center’s events.
2014 start
It started as an initiative of four enthusiasts in 2014. After they completed their studies in Norway and returned to Ukraine, the four realized there was no place for fans of Scandinavia. So Anastasia Antonyk, Anatolii Kyryliuk, Kateryna Kolomiets and Oleh Sashchenko decided to provide the opportunity.
First, they organized a Ukrainian-Scandinavian summer school in Chernivtsi, a city of 265,000 located 530 kilometers southwest of Kyiv. The two-to-three-week camp brought together Ukrainians who wanted to learn Nordic languages and Scandinavians who wanted to learn Ukrainian. Aside from language classes, the participants explored each others’ cultures at lectures and traveled around Ukraine together.
By 2017, the initiative grew into a full-fledged cultural center with an office in Lviv, the regional capital of 730,000 people more than 500 kilometers west of Kyiv. Just a year later, another office of the Ukrainian-Scandinavian center opened in the capital. “It has become bigger than they expected,” the center’s head says.
There are no academic studies on Scandinavian languages in Ukraine, while few schools offer private classes, Novashok says. Ukrainian-Scandinavian Center, meanwhile, offers four-month courses of Norwegian, Swedish, Danish and Finnish.
The classes are based on textbooks developed by native speakers, offering a comprehensive introduction to the Scandinavian countries by not only focusing on grammar and vocabulary, but also paying a great deal of attention to local people’s mindset, cultures and traditions.
3 start dates
The courses are available for different levels and cost Hr 14,000 ($500). Enrollment starts three times a year: in August for the fall course, in January for the one in spring and in May for the studies in summer.
Over the four years since the center’s foundation, nearly 250 students attended its classes. However, the audience has been growing rapidly after the center started offering online learning during the COVID‑19 pandemic, attracting students from all corners of Ukraine.
“It turned out that in other cities, there is this same need for learning Scandinavian languages,” Novashok says. “They are just fond of this culture, languages, and they come to us to learn them for personal growth,”
Why they study
There are also those who have a professional interest since they do business with the Nordic region or work for international companies closely tied to the area. A smaller share is made of Ukrainians whose relatives live in Scandinavia.
Aside from the classes, the center organizes speaking clubs, creating an opportunity for their students to talk to native speakers and practice their knowledge. There are also lectures focused on topics that might be of interest for the students, including Nordic history, Ukrainian-Scandinavian business connections and professional ethics.
But it’s not a one-way street. Since 2020, the center has also started offering online classes of Ukrainian to foreigners in Nordic countries. Novashok says that the demand mostly comes from foreigners living in Scandinavia who are eager to learn about Ukraine or those who are motivated professionally.
The center has been forced to move most of its activities online for the time of the pandemic, however, they hope to resume in fall and continue moving towards the goal of becoming the biggest Nordic community in Ukraine, similar to what Goethe-Institut is for Germans here or British Council for the U.K. expats.
“So that everyone knows that if there’s something that concerns Scandinavia, it has to do with us,” Novashok says.
Sign up for a language course or other events at www.ukr-scandinavian.org.
