Editor’s note

Eva Robards

The world is opening up ... at least among our member societies: many are now planning events at which it will be possible to meet in person. Sankt Hans/midsommar is an obvious outdoor opportunity which appears on several programmes, such as those of the Danish-Scottish Society, Danish YWCA, and the Nordic House/Danish Church in Hull—so Sankt Hans will be celebrated from Edinburgh in the north to London in the south. Also walks, summer parties, lunches and coffee gatherings appear in the programmes.

Things are not likely to return back to exactly what we had before the pandemic, though. Caution will still have to prevail, and Zoom has created a valuable additional stage-setting. More or less reluctantly, a number of our societies have discovered the benefits of this platform. Admittedly, the direct personal contact is missing, but nobody has to travel on a dark evening, and— in particular—the presentation can be opened up to other societies wherever they are in the country. This is a welcome development, as it is at the heart of CoScan to share information and events. For each of these societies it may also be a way of getting new members.

Some societies excel in using Zoom: the Manchester Swedish Language Meetup Group has been holding their meetups twice every week, and through monthly meetings the Anglo-Swedish Society in London has presented a wide range

2 of talks (which afterwards are available on YouTube). Among other societies exploring Zoom are the Anglo-Danish Society, Anglo-Norse Society, Danish Women, Northants Anglo-Scandinavian Society, Norwegian Scottish Association, Orkney Norway Friendship Association, Scottish Norwegian Society (Glasgow), Welsh-Norwegian Society, and York Anglo-Scandinavian Society. And, for the Danish, Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish churches, Zoom has been a most valuable tool for reaching out to their audiences.

To find out what is going on in the different CoScan member organisations, you can consult our CoScan website— and use the link to the society you are interested in to make contact. From this follows that it is important that information about events are forwarded and that contact details are correct for both the website and the magazine (send to eva.robards@coscan.org.uk, please).

Now, briefly, turning to this edition: Mark Elliott presented a summarised history of CoScan in the year of its 70th anniversary. In this issue Lise Hodgson gives a personal account of former times, of which she has more knowledge than most of us. As usual we highlight a couple of member societies, this time the Anglo-Swedish Society of Gothenburg and the Northants Anglo-Scandinavian Society. Continuing our general pattern, the culture section then follows with articles of general interest, book reviews and recent Scandinavian books translated into English and, lastly, we travel with students to Sweden, Norway and Iceland.