The Department of German, Nordic, and Slavic strives to create inclusive excellence by valuing the contributions of people of diverse backgrounds based on their race, ethnicity, culture, veteran status, marital status, socio-economic level, national origin, religious belief, ability, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, and class. This is an ongoing task that requires each of us to unlearn our socialization in cultures where privilege and opportunity are unequally distributed along many of those lines and then to put that learning into practice in our classrooms, syllabi, decision-making structures, and research. Established in 1875, the Department of Scandinavian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison is the oldest Scandinavian Studies department in the United States. Since its founding, the department has offered a variety of courses on literature, language/linguistics, culture, philology, and folklore, within the field of Scandinavian and Nordic.