Many postwar poets found an aesthetic manifesto in Fragmenter af en dagbog (1948; “Fragments of a Diary”) by Paul la Cour, who was influenced by contemporary French poetry. Jens August Schade also had an important influence on postwar poets, as did the poets Gustaf Munch-Petersen and Morten Nielsen, both of whom had died in their 20s before the end of World War II. A revival of poetry followed Denmark’s liberation (1945), and the existentialist periodical Heretica (1948–53) became the voice of a group of young writers who regarded a Christian philosopher, Vilhelm Grønbech, as their spiritual progenitor. Two outstanding poets apart from the Heretica group were Halfdan Rasmussen, who also wrote excellent nonsense verse, and Erik Knudsen, also a brilliant satirical playwright. Both studied contemporary problems and reacted against the antirationalism and anti-intellectualism of the Heretica movement. Tove Ditlevsen was another important poet, as well as a novelist and short-story writer, unattached to any group; her often intensely personal work reflects the loneliness of life in the poorer quarters of Copenhagen.

Klaus Rifbjerg, a distinguished short-story writer and poet, became the dominant novelist in Denmark after he published Den kroniske uskyld (“Chronic Innocence”) in 1958. He was a writer of great inventiveness and linguistic originality who made keen observations of contemporary society in his realistic novels. In a more satirical vein, Leif Panduro examined the place of the individual in society, paying special attention in his novels and television dramas to the problems of middle age and the emptiness of a welfare-state society. A more philosophical approach was taken by Villy Sørensen, whose Kafkaesque stories are in the sphere of absurdist literature. Both Sørensen and Rifbjerg belong to a modernistic tradition of cultural radicalism that found a forum in the journal Vindrosen (1959–63; “Wind Rose”), which they coedited. Peter Seeberg, another philosophical writer who debuted in the 1950s, was influenced by existentialism and by the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein. Seeberg’s novels, plays, and short stories use experimental techniques to explore the nature of reality; some of his stories, for instance, take the form of such documents as necrologies or recipes, the narrative voice of these stories thus being removed altogether. The documentary novel, a popular genre in the 1960s in all the Nordic countries, had its principal exponent in Thorkild Hansen, whose trilogy on the Danish slave trade—Slavernes kyst (1967; Coast of Slaves), Slavernes skibe (1968; Ships of Slaves), and Slavernes øer (1970; Islands of Slaves)—was well received. In the 1980s, fictional biographies based on authentic documents gained popularity. Among Danish prose writers at the end of the 20th century, Peter Høeg won the greatest international following. His novel Frøken Smillas fornemmelse for sne (1992; Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow, or Smilla’s Sense of Snow), a thriller interlaced with social criticism and scientific tidbits, became an international best seller.

The modern poetry that became a hallmark of Danish literature after World War II gave rise to the mature works of Frank Jæger, a member of the Heretica circle; Thorkild Bjørnvig, who expressed a nihilistic outlook on life; and Ivan Malinovski, a visionary explorer of the relationship between humanity and nature and one of the early editors of Heretica. Further experimentation resulted in so-called system poetry, examples of which are Per Højholt’s collections of poems Praksis (1977–89; “Praxis”) and Inger Christensen’s Det (1968; “It”) and Alfabet (1981; “The Alphabet”). A melancholic sense of displacement pervades the poems of Henrik Nordbrandt, the leading Danish poet during and after the 1970s. He has been called the “eternal traveler” of Danish literature: the themes of constant mobility, departure, and arrival characterize his poems, which often show the influence of Asian writings.

The 1970s saw an upsurge of women authors, some consciously writing for the feminist cause and others content to portray life as experienced by women. Kirsten Thorup depicted, with irony and disillusionment, the alienated lives of the powerless in modern society; her work was rooted in modernism. The language of Dorrit Willumsen, another modernist focusing on the question of identity in a materialistic society, reflects the emptiness of the lives of her female characters. In the 1980s she turned to the semidocumentary historical novel with Marie: en roman om Madame Tussaud’s liv (1983; Marie) and Bang: en roman om Herman Bang (1996: “Bang: A Novel About Herman Bang”) to probe the interplay between individuals—artists in particular—and societal demands. Dea Trier Mørch, a politically committed author and a member of the Røde Mor (“Red Mother”) artist collective, scored her greatest success with Vinterbørn (1976; Winter’s Child), a sensitive novel about women from various social circumstances at a maternity hospital. It gave voice to Trier Mørch’s belief in women’s potential for solidarity and communality. Provocative and shunned by leftist radicals and doctrinaire feminists alike, Suzanne Brøgger was among the first to confront bourgeois concepts of sexuality and love with her Fri os fra kœrligheden (1973; Deliver Us from Love). With an emphasis on fluidity and change, she rejected all preset categorizations, writing with robust humour across genres and transgressing the boundary between personal experience and fabulation. Pia Tafdrup, who debuted in 1981 and became one of the foremost contemporary poets in Scandinavia, addresses existential questions through her highly visual and sensual poetry; her works use the female body as a metaphor for nature as well as an element of nature. Among other prominent women writers are Hanne Marie Svendsen, a storyteller known for her magical realism; Juliane Preisler, who explored the archetypical female universe in many genres; and the poet Kirsten Hammann.