Jette Ostan Vejrup | Public figures' migration stories

Unknown artist

My name is Jette and I am a foreigner living in Slovenia. 30 years ago, I moved here from Denmark for love. It was not difficult for me to move; I liked it here, I felt well received. But I was a young actress and the biggest challenge for me in the new surroundings was to make the Slovene language my language. Mother tongue is identity, it is the gateway to emotions, to humour; it is the connection to early memories and experiences. Does the new language change your identity? And who are you then—always a foreigner with an accent? Would I be able to learn this language well enough to work as an actress? And what about the audience, people that would always know the language far better than me—how would they accept a foreigner playing parts and telling stories in “their” language? These were some of the questions that followed me for many years. At the same time my need to keep in touch with my mother tongue was big and when we had children it got even bigger. Language is so much more than words. It is access to culture and landscapes, to food and to the seasons and how we talk to each other, and I knew that if they were to have a profound contact with their Danish identity, the language had to be theirs from the very beginning. So I was learning Slovene to be able to live and work in a new country, while they were learning Danish to be who they are. I did learn the language (a never-ending process!) and I got to work as an actress, which was more than I ever thought possible. And the children, who are now grown up, did learn their mother tongue. And I am not sure how it happened—today, all three of them live and study in Denmark. I moved south, they moved north. So, there is now a lot of moving up and down, a lot of coming back, a lot of leaving, a lot of visiting—living with two cultures, two languages is a complex enrichment that challenges us with a new view on identity. (A thought: my husband’s old Slovene aunt who lived her whole adult life in Italy and spoke Italian fluently, at old age started rapidly forgetting Italian words and turned back to her mother tongue! Is this what happens?) I am thinking about all the books we have been transporting over the years from Denmark till Slovenia—by train, car, plane, mail. That was before the rise of e-books. Novels, poetry, dictionaries, Danish translations of classics, children’s books, cartoons, graphic novels, cookbooks, history books, art books, illustrated bibles, you name it. A lot of our books, especially the children’s books in both Slovene and Danish, are now carefully put in boxes in the attic, patiently waiting for the next generation of multi-language kids to hear stories and to be taken in to the vast landscape of different languages and through the gateways to emotions, humour, the seasons, pancakes, rituals and how we talk to each other. --- This story was contributed by the National and University Library of Slovenia