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Dream, 1st  October 1954

Bohr appears and explains to me that the difference between v and w corresponds to the difference between Danish and English. He says I should not just stick with Danish but should move on to English. He then invites me to a big party in his institute, which has been newly refurbished (new house).

More people appear, some of them strangers, some of them known to me, and they are all going to the party. In the background, I can now hear ltalian voices. An elderly Dane whom I do not know is there with his wife, and also my colleague Jost from Zurich (extraordinarius professor for theoretical physics and a close fellow worker). I can see that the party is an important event.

I wake up excited and the word vindue immediately comes into my mind, so that I count it as part of the dream.

A philological postlude.  The dream immediately aroused particular interest, and I began to think about the linguistic symbolism: yes, in the 10th and 11th centuries (when England was ruled by the Danish King, Canute the Great), a lot of Danish words passed into English. In Danish, the letter w does not exist, but in English those Danish words that begin with v (it is Pronounced like the w in modern German, never like f)  were always written with w.

One example is the word for the German "Fenster": (from the Latin fenestra): vindue (Danish) ;  window (English).