The magnificent Ms Gråbøl was on the Skavlan talk show last night. (She was speaking in Danish but mercifully there were Swedish subtitles.)
We are already big fans and she managed to further consolidate her status as one of the most intelligent thoughtful actresses of our time. Nice sense of humour too.
She talked at some length and with great honesty about her year struggling against breast cancer. She pulled no punches and was frank about how difficult it was to be brave and heroic and accept help from other people. It was a great relief for her to be part of an ensemble when filming Fortitude.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/life-after-the-killing-sofie-grbl-is-set-to-star-in-new-sky-atlantic-drama-fortitude-9966023.html
I’ve posted a clip from her first movie. You all speak fluent Danish, eh?
I love her an an actor and she seems a very good egg (from what I can tell from interviews).
She was on Woman’s Hour a few months ago and was very intelligent, articulate and sensitive, seemingly.
A bit of a girl-crush of mine. I think ‘The Killing’ was a major step forward in the portrayal of women on TV : just more complex, subtle and unpredictable than usual, and not wholly likeable.
I was genuinely surprised by how delightful and playful she was when watching the DVD extras – I felt a bit ashamed that I’d unconsciously drifted into expecting her to be like the character she was playing.
A Danish friend tells me she often used to play very emotional, slightly ‘girly’ parts, so he was wryly amused (in that Scandi way) to see her becoming very famous in the UK for the Lund role.
We also watched the 3 seasons of The Killing in reverse order, so were slightly surprised to see Sarah Lund quite normal and well adjusted at the start of Season 1.
I was genuinely surprised by how delightful and playful she was when watching the DVD extras – I felt a bit ashamed that I’d unconsciously drifted into expecting her to be like the character she was playing.
Yes she was very delightful and playful on Woman’s Hour; I really , really liked her. She also did that Guardian short quiz thingy in the magazine and was very interesting: funny and perceptive but obviously pretty independent and not to be messed with.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/jul/26/sofie-grabol-the-killing-interview-q-and-a
“Intelligent, articulate and sensitive” sums her up very well.
I imagine she’d be very good at a dinner party. Amusing yet not afraid to talk about deeper, more difficult issues.
Don’t know much about her pre-Killing career, Aard.
Flickering Lights, in which she has a smaller role, is excellent
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8bbzxy0y_iM
If you speak Swedish you can’t understand Danish? I did not know that.
In other fave Scandy actor news, Sidse Babett Knudsen out of Borgen has a new fillum out, The Duke of Burgundy. Bradshaw’s a fan: http://www.theguardian.com/film/2015/feb/19/the-duke-of-burgundy-review-peter-strickland
Sidse in someat a bit rude?
Better steer clear of that for my own good.
Best possible taste, obvs.
Mike, if you live in Skåne in the south of Sweden (which used to belong to Denmark), you probably understand Danish. They have a very thick accent and sometimes I find those Southern Swedes tough to understand.
Up here in Stockholm and further north, Danish is a mystery when spoken but quite easy to read. Norwegian is far easier for Swedes.
Hence Broen, where people are whizzing backwards and forwards between Lund and Copenhagen with no trace of linguistic difficulty.
I’ve only seen Skåne from the air but even that told me quite apart from anything else that it’s geographically different from the rest of Sweden.
None of my antlered brethren for starters.
Two “that”s – nice going mister PhD in English 🙁
Skåne is flatter than a pancake and there are certainly no moose or mooching.
Impressive that Danish TV has produced two hit shows in which there are interesting, complicated female characters, played by Sidse and Sofie, who are not just twenty something glamour pusses.
In fact there also been several Danish films in the same mould, like the wonderful Italian for beginners.
I don’t think Danish is that difficult to understand, unless they speak very fast and/or have a particularly difficult local accent. But that’s mainly thanks to the last ten or so years of getting to see Danish films and television.
In my childhood we rarely got to hear Danish so imagine the cold sweat I was in when a Danish relative we’d never met before decided to pop in on his way through Sweden after vacationing in Norway, and I had to translate all of his conversation to my mother.
She was born with impaired hearing and despite hearing aids she relies heavily on the ability to read lips. As she was busy frying dinner when he showed up and his thick Danish accent didn’t leave many clues, lip-wise, I had to step in to get a meaningful dialogue going…
Before he (at last, from my perspective) drove away, never to be seen in Stockholm again, he gave me a lovely silver ring with a huge amethyst as a reward for my efforts.
That seemed like an appropriate valuation!
The biggest stumbling block for Swe-Dane understanding isn’t, as you might think, the Danish tendency to slur and gargle their way through the words. There are actually lots of traps to fall into where the two languages use more or less the same word, but meaning very different things. You can seriously misunderstand each other (and it’s not just Swedes not getting Danish, I’ve met plenty of Danes having difficulties understanding Swedish as well).
But, as KFD said, it’s easier in writing!
“slur and gargle” – so that’s not just us then! I’ve watched many hours of Danish dramas and often have severe difficulty believing that the noises they make actually constitute language. However, I realise as an Englishman this is well in the pot/kettle department. In my job I meet many people who are over here from many different countries and they always say that their biggest issue in learning the language is the way the natives speak – specifically, swallowing half of the words we use.
Perhaps they’d be better learning English in Wales, where the enunciation of English syllables can be quite percussive in comparison.
Really? I’ve seldom had any problems hearing what the English say, some extreme local accents excluded.
But I remember trying to watch some weekly Scottish comedy show many years ago; the build-up to the jokes was usually quite interpretable, then there was a slight pause after which they would spit out the punchline so fast and in such exaggerated Scottish that I never once got the joke.
I think in Scandinavia generally you are probably very well conditioned from the cradle to listening to a variety of English speakers because of your “subs not dubs” policy with films and TV. See also the Benelux countries. That and the international language of ROCK!!! of course.
An example of what you describe, Lo. At the time of the fall of the Ceacescu regime I happened to be in Copenhagen and reading the paper. There had been shootings and general disturbance.
The paper said that the atmosphere was “roligt”. Fun? What?
The Danish word roligt of course means calm. Now there’s a difference in meaning!
And now an interview with Sidse.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/10465576/Borgen-Sidse-Babett-Knudsen-interview.html
In depth article about Danish TV. Some interesting points.
http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2013/01/07/danish-postmodern