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97-711: The Greece runestones ( Swedish : Greklandsstenarna ) are about 30 runestones containing information related to voyages made by Norsemen to the Byzantine Empire . They were made during the Viking Age until about 1100 and were engraved in the Old Norse language with Scandinavian runes . All the stones have been found in modern-day Sweden , the majority in Uppland (18 runestones) and Södermanland (7 runestones). Most were inscribed in memory of members of
194-445: A common gender with the definite suffix -en and the definite article den , in contrast with the neuter gender equivalents -et and det . The verb system was also more complex: it included subjunctive and imperative moods and verbs were conjugated according to person as well as number . By the 16th century, the case and gender systems of the colloquial spoken language and the profane literature had been largely reduced to
291-477: A guttural or "French R" pronunciation in the South Swedish dialects ; consequently, these dialects lack retroflex consonants . Swedish is a stress-timed language, where the time intervals between stressed syllables are equal. However, when casually spoken, it tends to be syllable-timed . Any stressed syllable carries one of two tones , which gives Swedish much of its characteristic sound. Prosody
388-629: A voiced dental fricative as th in English them . The ʀ sign represents the yr rune , and ô is the same as the Icelandic O caudata ǫ . Every runic inscription is shown with its ID code that is used in scholarly literature to refer to the inscription, and it is only obligatory to give the first two parts of it. The first part is one or two letters that represent the area where the runic inscription appears, e.g. U for Uppland , Sö for Södermanland and DR for Denmark . The second part represents
485-537: A change from tauþr into tuþr . Moreover, the øy diphthong changed into a long, close ø , as in the Old Norse word for "island". By the end of the period, these innovations had affected most of the Runic Swedish-speaking area as well, with the exception of the dialects spoken north and east of Mälardalen where the diphthongs still exist in remote areas. Old Swedish (Swedish: fornsvenska )
582-528: A conversation. Due to the close relation between the Scandinavian languages, a considerable proportion of speakers of Danish and especially Norwegian are able to understand Swedish. There is considerable migration between the Nordic countries , but owing to the similarity between the cultures and languages (with the exception of Finnish ), expatriates generally assimilate quickly and do not stand out as
679-747: A group. According to the 2000 United States Census , some 67,000 people over the age of five were reported as Swedish speakers, though without any information on the degree of language proficiency. Similarly, there were 16,915 reported Swedish speakers in Canada from the 2001 census. Although there are no certain numbers, some 40,000 Swedes are estimated to live in the London area in the United Kingdom. Outside Sweden and Finland, there are about 40,000 active learners enrolled in Swedish language courses. In
776-629: A large proportion of the remaining 100,000 in the Scandinavian countries, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia. Over three million people speak Swedish as a second language, with about 2,410,000 of those in Finland. According to a survey by the European Commission , 44% of respondents from Finland who did not have Swedish as a native language considered themselves to be proficient enough in Swedish to hold
873-425: A more abstract sense, such as that set of fish; while fisken means "the fish". In certain cases, the definite form indicates possession, e. g., jag måste tvätta hår et ("I must wash my hair"). Adjectives are inflected in two declensions – indefinite and definite – and they must match the noun they modify in gender and number. The indefinite neuter and plural forms of an adjective are usually created by adding
970-640: A national search for historic monuments in the late 17th century. Several stones were documented by Richard Dybeck in the 19th century. The latest stone to be found was in Nolinge, near Stockholm, in 1952. Scandinavians had served as mercenaries in the Roman army many centuries before the Viking Age, but during the time when the stones were made, there were more contacts between Scandinavia and Byzantium than at any other time. Swedish Viking ships were common on
1067-435: A noun. They can double as demonstrative pronouns or demonstrative determiners when used with adverbs such as här ("here") or där ("there") to form den/det här (can also be "denna/detta") ("this"), de här (can also be "dessa") ("these"), den/det där ("that"), and de där ("those"). For example, den där fisken means "that fish" and refers to a specific fish; den fisken is less definite and means "that fish" in
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#17327657462041164-598: A presentation of the Greece runestones based on information collected from the Rundata project, organised according to location. The transcriptions from runic inscriptions into standardised Old Norse are in Old East Norse (OEN), the Swedish and Danish dialect, to facilitate comparison with the inscriptions, while the English translation provided by Rundata give the names in the standard dialect, Old West Norse (OWN),
1261-689: A special branch of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland has official status as the regulatory body for Swedish in Finland. Among its highest priorities is to maintain intelligibility with the language spoken in Sweden. It has published Finlandssvensk ordbok , a dictionary about the differences between Swedish in Finland and Sweden. From the 13th to 20th century, there were Swedish-speaking communities in Estonia , particularly on
1358-442: A suffix ( -t or -a ) to the common form of the adjective, e. g., en grön stol (a green chair), ett grönt hus (a green house), and gröna stolar ("green chairs"). The definite form of an adjective is identical to the indefinite plural form, e. g., den gröna stolen ("the green chair"), det gröna huset ("the green house"), and de gröna stolarna ("the green chairs"). Swedish pronouns are similar to those of English. Besides
1455-413: A village, Gammalsvenskby ("Old Swedish Village"). A few elderly people in the village still speak a Swedish dialect and observe the holidays of the Swedish calendar, although their dialect is most likely facing extinction. From 1918 to 1940, when Estonia was independent, the small Swedish community was well treated. Municipalities with a Swedish majority, mainly found along the coast, used Swedish as
1552-546: Is 18 m (59 ft) in circumference. Most of them are adorned with various runestone styles that were in use during the 11th century, and especially styles that were part of the Ringerike style (eight or nine stones) and the Urnes style (eight stones). Since the first discoveries by Johannes Bureus in the late 16th century, these runestones have been frequently identified by scholars, with many stones discovered during
1649-676: Is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family , spoken predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland . It has at least 10 million native speakers, making it the fourth most spoken Germanic language , and the first among its type in the Nordic countries overall. Swedish, like the other Nordic languages , is a descendant of Old Norse , the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during
1746-440: Is a rune or other sign that cannot be identified. A series of three full stops ... shows that runes are assumed to have existed in the position, but have disappeared. The two dividing signs | | divide a rune into two Latin letters, because runemasters often carved a single rune instead of two consecutive ones. §P and §Q introduce two alternative readings of an inscription that concern multiple words, while §A, §B and §C introduce
1843-892: Is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages . In the established classification, it belongs to the East Scandinavian languages , together with Danish , separating it from the West Scandinavian languages , consisting of Faroese , Icelandic , and Norwegian . However, more recent analyses divide the North Germanic languages into two groups: Insular Scandinavian (Faroese and Icelandic), and Continental Scandinavian (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish), based on mutual intelligibility due to heavy influence of East Scandinavian (particularly Danish) on Norwegian during
1940-481: Is generally seen as adding specific Central Swedish features to the new Bible. Though it might seem as if the Bible translation set a very powerful precedent for orthographic standards, spelling actually became more inconsistent during the remainder of the century. It was not until the 17th century that spelling began to be discussed, around the time when the first grammars were written. Capitalization during this time
2037-663: Is likely that some parts of it would have existed in heathen oral tradition at least as far back as the 10th century. The law remained in force until it was replaced by the Younger Gulating Law in 1267 which in turn lasted until 1274 when Magnus the Lawmender imposed his "Law of the Realm", which incorporated 130 chapters from the Gulating Law. The Older Gulating Law is preserved in seventeen manuscripts with
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#17327657462042134-538: Is marked primarily through suffixes (endings), complemented with separate definite and indefinite articles . The prosody features both stress and in most dialects tonal qualities. The language has a comparatively large vowel inventory. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative , a highly variable consonant phoneme . Swedish nouns and adjectives are declined in genders as well as number . Nouns are of common gender ( en form) or neuter gender ( ett form). The gender determines
2231-513: Is often one of the most noticeable differences between dialects. The standard word order is, as in most Germanic languages , V2 , which means that the finite verb (V) appears in the second position (2) of a declarative main clause . Swedish morphology is similar to English; that is, words have comparatively few inflections . Swedish has two genders and is generally seen to have two grammatical cases – nominative and genitive (except for pronouns that, as in English, also are inflected in
2328-638: Is one of the official languages of the European Union , and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council . Under the Nordic Language Convention , citizens of the Nordic countries speaking Swedish have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for interpretation or translation costs. The Swedish Language Council ( Språkrådet )
2425-426: Is part of the more general Urnes style . The stone, which is of greyish granite measuring 2 m (6 ft 7 in) in height and 1.2 m (3 ft 11 in) in width, is raised on a slope some 100 m (330 ft) north of Hägerstalund farm, formerly Hansta(lund). The stone was discovered by Johan Peringskiöld during the national search for historic monuments in the late 17th century. The stone shares
2522-475: Is termed nusvenska (lit., "Now-Swedish") in linguistics, and started in the last decades of the 19th century. It saw a democratization of the language with a less formal written form that approached the spoken one. The growth of a public school system also led to the evolution of so-called boksvenska (literally, "book Swedish"), especially among the working classes, where spelling to some extent influenced pronunciation, particularly in official contexts. With
2619-434: Is testified by the fact that a woman had runestone U 605 made in memory of herself before she departed on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem: "Ingirún Harðardóttir had runes graven for herself; she would go East and out to Jerusalem. Fótr carved the runes." However, Blöndal and Benedikz (2007) state that although there were other reasons for going to Greece, it is certain that most of the runestones were made in memory of members of
2716-527: Is the predominant language; in 19 municipalities , 16 of which are located in Åland , Swedish is the sole official language. Åland county is an autonomous region of Finland. According to a rough estimation, as of 2010 there were up to 300,000 Swedish-speakers living outside Sweden and Finland. The largest populations were in the United States (up to 100,000), the UK, Spain and Germany (c. 30,000 each) and
2813-455: Is the regulator of Swedish in Sweden but does not attempt to enforce control of the language, as for instance the Académie française does for French . However, many organizations and agencies require the use of the council's publication Svenska skrivregler in official contexts, with it otherwise being regarded as a de facto orthographic standard. Among the many organizations that make up
2910-407: Is the sole official language of Åland (an autonomous province under the sovereignty of Finland), where the vast majority of the 26,000 inhabitants speak Swedish as a first language. In Finland as a whole, Swedish is one of the two "national" languages, with the same official status as Finnish (spoken by the majority) at the state level and an official language in some municipalities . Swedish
3007-631: Is the term used for the medieval Swedish language. The start date is usually set to 1225 since this is the year that Västgötalagen ("the Västgöta Law") is believed to have been compiled for the first time. It is among the most important documents of the period written in Latin script and the oldest Swedish law codes . Old Swedish is divided into äldre fornsvenska (1225–1375) and yngre fornsvenska (1375–1526), "older" and "younger" Old Swedish. Important outside influences during this time came with
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3104-748: The Gulaþingslǫg , which was the jurisdiction of the assembly. The assembly served as the model for the establishment of the legislative assemblies of Iceland (the Althing ) and of the Faroe Islands (the Løgting ), areas settled by people from western Norway. The Older Gulating Law is the oldest record of Norwegian law and was possibly first created during the reign of Olaf the Peaceful (1066–1093). The laws were amended and expanded over time, and it
3201-465: The Gustav Vasa Bible , a translation deemed so successful and influential that, with revisions incorporated in successive editions, it remained the most common Bible translation until 1917. The main translators were Laurentius Andreæ and the brothers Laurentius and Olaus Petri . The Vasa Bible is often considered to be a reasonable compromise between old and new; while not adhering to
3298-838: The Black Sea , the Aegean Sea , the Sea of Marmara and on the wider Mediterranean Sea . Greece was home to the Varangian Guard , the elite bodyguard of the Byzantine Emperor , and until the Komnenos dynasty in the late 11th century, most members of the Varangian Guard were Swedes . As late as 1195, Emperor Alexios Angelos sent emissaries to Denmark , Norway and Sweden requesting 1,000 warriors from each of
3395-572: The Borgarting , Eidsivating , and Frostating , were joined into a single jurisdiction during the late 13th century, when King Magnus the Lawmender had the existing body of law put into writing. The Gulating was an annual parliamentary assembly which took place in Gulen, on the west coast of Norway north of Bergen , from approximately 900 to 1300 CE and was one of the oldest and largest parliamentary assemblies in medieval Norway. The assembly site
3492-467: The French vous (see T-V distinction ). Ni wound up being used as a slightly less familiar form of du , the singular second person pronoun, used to address people of lower social status. With the liberalization and radicalization of Swedish society in the 1950s and 1960s, these class distinctions became less important, and du became the standard, even in formal and official contexts. Though
3589-514: The Ulunda stone and the Hansta stone , but the vast majority of the runestones only tell who raised the stone and in memory of whom. A view held by scholars such as Erik Moltke and Sven B. F. Jansson holds that the runestones were primarily the result of the many Viking expeditions from Scandinavia, or to cite Jansson (1987): When the great expeditions were over, the old trade routes closed, and
3686-518: The United States , particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a significant Swedish-speaking immigrant population. This was notably true in states like Minnesota , where many Swedish immigrants settled. By 1940, approximately 6% of Minnesota's population spoke Swedish. Although the use of Swedish has significantly declined, it is not uncommon to find older generations and communities that still retain some use and knowledge of
3783-631: The Varangian Guard who never returned home, but a few inscriptions mention men who returned with wealth, and a boulder in Ed was engraved on the orders of a former officer of the Guard. On these runestones the word Grikkland (" Greece ") appears in three inscriptions, the word Grikk(j)ar (" Greeks ") appears in 25 inscriptions, two stones refer to men as grikkfari ("traveller to Greece") and one stone refers to Grikkhafnir ("Greek harbours"). Among other runestones which refer to expeditions abroad,
3880-527: The Viking Age . It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish , although the degree of mutual intelligibility is dependent on the dialect and accent of the speaker. Standard Swedish , spoken by most Swedes , is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century, and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties and rural dialects still exist,
3977-581: The nationalist ideas that emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the languages have separate orthographies , dictionaries, grammars, and regulatory bodies. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are thus from a linguistic perspective more accurately described as a dialect continuum of Scandinavian (North Germanic), and some of the dialects, such as those on the border between Norway and Sweden, especially parts of Bohuslän , Dalsland , western Värmland , western Dalarna , Härjedalen , Jämtland , and Scania , could be described as intermediate dialects of
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4074-410: The object form) – although it is debated if the genitive in Swedish should be seen as a genitive case or just the nominative plus the so-called genitive s , then seen as a clitic . Swedish has two grammatical numbers – plural and singular . Adjectives have discrete comparative and superlative forms and are also inflected according to gender, number and definiteness . The definiteness of nouns
4171-399: The 1950s, when their use was removed from all official recommendations. A very significant change in Swedish occurred in the late 1960s, with the so-called du-reformen . Previously, the proper way to address people of the same or higher social status had been by title and surname. The use of herr ("Mr." or "Sir"), fru ("Mrs." or "Ma'am") or fröken ("Miss") was considered
4268-422: The 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse , evolved into Old Norse. This language underwent more changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects: Old West Norse (Norway, the Faroe Islands and Iceland) and Old East Norse (Denmark and Sweden). The dialects of Old East Norse spoken in Sweden are called Runic Swedish , while
4365-552: The Byzantine Empire and died there as Varangians. As they had not fathered any children, their mother Inga inherited their property, and when she died, her brothers Gerðarr and Jörundr inherited from her. These two brothers then raised the two memorials in honour of their nephews, which was probably due to the nephews having distinguished themselves in the South. However, it may have also been in gratitude for wealth gathered by
4462-583: The Gulating was an ' allting ' or common assembly, where all free farmers had the right to participate. Snorri Sturlason ’s Heimskringla recounts that Haakon the Good (935–961) took an active part in the assemblies at Gulen, and under his rule the regions of Rogaland , Agder and Sunnmøre were brought into the area covered by the thing, with Valdres and Hallingdal also being incorporated later. Special legislation, Gulatingslova (the Gulating law),
4559-499: The Icelandic and Norwegian dialect. There is a long-standing practice of writing transliterations of the runes in Latin characters in boldface and transcribing the text into a normalized form of the language with italic type . This practice exists because the two forms of rendering a runic text have to be kept distinct. By not only showing the original inscription but also transliterating, transcribing and translating, scholars present
4656-471: The Modern Swedish period were the gradual assimilation of several different consonant clusters into the fricative [ʃ] and later into [ɧ] . There was also the gradual softening of [ɡ] and [k] into [j] and the fricative [ɕ] before front vowels . The velar fricative [ɣ] was also transformed into the corresponding plosive [ɡ] . The period that includes Swedish as it is spoken today
4753-601: The Swedish Language Council, the Swedish Academy (established 1786) is arguably the most influential. Its primary instruments are the spelling dictionary Svenska Akademiens ordlista ( SAOL , currently in its 14th edition) and the dictionary Svenska Akademiens Ordbok , in addition to various books on grammar, spelling and manuals of style. Although the dictionaries have a prescriptive element, they mainly describe current usage. In Finland,
4850-416: The Varangian Guard who died there. Still, some runestones tell of men who returned with increased wealth, and an inscription on a boulder in Ed was commissioned by a former captain of the Guard, Ragnvaldr . The reasons for the runestone tradition are a matter of debate but they include inheritance issues, status and the honouring of the deceased. Several runestones explicitly commemorate inheritance such as
4947-513: The Viking Age. The older version of the Westrogothic law , which was written down by Eskil Magnusson , the lawspeaker of Västergötland 1219–1225, stated that "no man may receive an inheritance (in Sweden) while he dwells in Greece". The later version, which was written down from 1250 to 1300, adds that "no one may inherit from such a person as was not a living heir when he went away". Also
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#17327657462045044-514: The Viking ships no longer made ready each spring for voyages to east and west, then that meant the end of the carving and setting up of rune stones in the proper sense of the term. They may be called the monuments of the Viking voyages, and the sensitive reader may catch in many of their inscriptions the Viking's love of adventure and exploits of boisterous daring. Sawyer (2000), on the other hand, reacts against this commonly held view and comments that
5141-502: The administrative language and Swedish-Estonian culture saw an upswing. However, most Swedish-speaking people fled to Sweden before the end of World War II , that is, before the invasion of Estonia by the Soviet army in 1944. Only a handful of speakers remain. Swedish dialects have either 17 or 18 vowel phonemes , 9 long and 9 short. As in the other Germanic languages, including English, most long vowels are phonetically paired with one of
5238-594: The analysis in a way that allows the reader to follow their interpretation of the runes. Every step presents challenges, but most Younger Futhark inscriptions are considered easy to interpret. In transliterations, * , : , × , ' and + represent common word dividers , while ÷ represents less common ones. Parentheses, ( ) , represent damaged runes that cannot be identified with certainty, and square brackets, [ ] , represent sequences of runes that have been lost, but can be identified thanks to early descriptions by scholars. A short hyphen, - , indicates that there
5335-414: The annual publication Fornvännen , 1954 is the year of the issue of Fornvännen and 20 is the page in the publication. There are as many as 18 runestones in Uppland that relate information about men who travelled to Greece , most of whom died there. Runestone U 73 ( location ) was probably erected to explain the order of inheritance from two men who died as Varangians. It is in the style Pr3 which
5432-504: The colloquial spoken language of its day, it was not overly conservative in its use of archaic forms. It was a major step towards a more consistent Swedish orthography . It established the use of the vowels "å", "ä", and "ö", and the spelling "ck" in place of "kk", distinguishing it clearly from the Danish Bible, perhaps intentionally, given the ongoing rivalry between the countries. All three translators came from central Sweden, which
5529-487: The composition of the Scandinavians in the Varangian Guard. These two provinces are those that have the greatest concentrations of runic inscriptions. Not all those who are commemorated on the Greece runestones were necessarily members of the Varangian Guard, and some may have gone to Greece as merchants or died there while passing by on a pilgrimage . The fact that a voyage to Greece was associated with great danger
5626-403: The declension of the adjectives . For example, the word fisk ("fish") is a noun of common gender ( en fisk ) and can have the following forms: The definite singular form of a noun is created by adding a suffix ( -en , -n , -et or -t ), depending on its gender and if the noun ends in a vowel or not. The definite articles den , det , and de are used for variations to the definitiveness of
5723-541: The dialects of Denmark are referred to as Runic Danish . The dialects are described as "runic" because the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet . Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, which had only 16 letters. Because the number of runes was limited, some runes were used for a range of phonemes , such as
5820-417: The different parts of an inscription as they may appear on different sides of a runestone. Angle brackets, ⟨ ⟩ , indicate that there is a sequence of runes that cannot be interpreted with certainty. Other special signs are þ and ð , where the first one is the thorn letter which represents a voiceless dental fricative as th in English thing . The second letter is eth which stands for
5917-494: The fateful Ingvar expedition to Persia . Blöndal & Benedikz (2007) note that most of the Greece runestones are from Uppland and relate it to the fact that it was the most common area to start a journey to Greece, and the area from which most Rus' originated. However, as noted by Jansson (1987), the fact that most of these runestones were raised in Uppland and Södermanland does not necessarily mean that their number reflects
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#17327657462046014-545: The firm establishment of the Christian church and various monastic orders, introducing many Greek and Latin loanwords. With the rise of Hanseatic power in the late 13th and early 14th century, Middle Low German became very influential. The Hanseatic league provided Swedish commerce and administration with a large number of Low German -speaking immigrants. Many became quite influential members of Swedish medieval society, and brought terms from their native languages into
6111-430: The industrialization and urbanization of Sweden well under way by the last decades of the 19th century, a new breed of authors made their mark on Swedish literature . Many scholars, politicians and other public figures had a great influence on the emerging national language, among them prolific authors like the poet Gustaf Fröding , Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf and radical writer and playwright August Strindberg . It
6208-614: The islands (e. g., Hiiumaa , Vormsi , Ruhnu ; in Swedish, known as Dagö , Ormsö , Runö , respectively) along the coast of the Baltic , communities that today have all disappeared. The Swedish-speaking minority was represented in parliament , and entitled to use their native language in parliamentary debates. After the loss of Estonia to the Russian Empire in the early 18th century, around 1,000 Estonian Swedish speakers were forced to march to southern Ukraine , where they founded
6305-484: The language, particularly in rural communities like Lindström and Scandia . Swedish is the official main language of Sweden. Swedish is also one of two official languages of Finland. In Sweden, it has long been used in local and state government, and most of the educational system, but remained only a de facto primary language with no official status in law until 2009. A bill was proposed in 2005 that would have made Swedish an official language, but failed to pass by
6402-490: The last millennium and divergence from both Faroese and Icelandic. By many general criteria of mutual intelligibility, the Continental Scandinavian languages could very well be considered dialects of a common Scandinavian language. However, because of several hundred years of sometimes quite intense rivalry between Denmark and Sweden, including a long series of wars from the 16th to 18th centuries, and
6499-496: The most complete being DonVar 137 4to, also known as Codex Rantzovianus , which dates to around 1260 and is kept at the Danish Royal Library . The law covers a diverse range of topics such as enforcing correct Christian practice (including the banning of blót and other aspects of Old Nordic religion), whaling rights, weregild and inheritance. Violence was dealt with by fines, which were imposed not only on
6596-577: The narrowest possible margin (145–147) due to a pairing-off failure. A proposal for a broader language law, designating Swedish as the main language of the country and bolstering the status of the minority languages, was submitted by an expert committee to the Swedish Ministry of Culture in March 2008. It was subsequently enacted by the Riksdag , and entered into effect on 1 July 2009. Swedish
6693-421: The national standard languages. Swedish pronunciations also vary greatly from one region to another, a legacy of the vast geographic distances and historical isolation. Even so, the vocabulary is standardized to a level that make dialects within Sweden virtually fully mutually intelligible. East Germanic languages West Germanic languages Icelandic Faroese Norwegian Danish Swedish In
6790-725: The nephews overseas. At the same time, the monument served to document how the property had passed from one clan to another. Sawyer (2000), on the other hand, suggests that because the two inscriptions do not mention who commissioned them, the only eventual claimant to the fortune, and the one that had the stones made, may have been the church. The runemaster has been identified as Visäte . ' þisun Þessun ' merki mærki ' iru æʀu ' gar gar ' eftʀ æftiʀ ' suni syni ' ikur Inguʀ. Swedish language Swedish ( endonym : svenska [ˈsvɛ̂nːska] )
6887-424: The north. An early change that separated Runic Danish from the other dialects of Old East Norse was the change of the diphthong æi to the monophthong é , as in stæinn to sténn "stone". This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain and the later stin . There was also a change of au as in dauðr into a long open ø as in døðr "dead". This change is shown in runic inscriptions as
6984-593: The old Norwegian Gulaþingslög contains a similar law: "but if (a man) goes to Greece, then he who is next in line to inherit shall hold his property". About 3,000 runestones from the Viking Age have been discovered in Scandinavia of which c. 2,700 were raised within what today is Sweden. As many as 1,277 of them were raised in the province of Uppland alone. The Viking Age coincided with the Christianisation of Scandinavia , and in many districts c. 50% of
7081-441: The only acceptable way to begin conversation with strangers of unknown occupation, academic title or military rank. The fact that the listener should preferably be referred to in the third person tended to further complicate spoken communication between members of society. In the early 20th century, an unsuccessful attempt was made to replace the insistence on titles with ni —the standard second person plural pronoun)—analogous to
7178-477: The only groups which are comparable in number are the so-called " England runestones " that mention expeditions to England and the 26 Ingvar runestones that refer to a Viking expedition to the Middle East. The stones vary in size from the small whetstone from Timans which measures 8.5 cm (3.3 in) × 4.5 cm (1.8 in) × 3.3 cm (1.3 in) to the boulder in Ed which
7275-515: The order in which the inscription is presented in official national publications (e.g. Sveriges runinskrifter ). Thus U 73 means that the runestone was the 73rd runic inscription in Uppland that was documented in Sveriges runinskrifter . If the inscription was documented later than the official publication, it is listed according to the publication where it was first described, e.g. Sö Fv1954;20 , where Sö represents Södermanland, Fv stands for
7372-402: The original Germanic three- gender system. Nouns , adjectives , pronouns and certain numerals were inflected in four cases; besides the extant nominative , there were also the genitive (later possessive ), dative and accusative . The gender system resembled that of modern German , having masculine, feminine and neuter genders. The masculine and feminine genders were later merged into
7469-480: The reform was not an act of any centralized political decree, but rather the result of sweeping change in social attitudes, it was completed in just a few years, from the late 1960s to early 1970s. The use of ni as a polite form of address is sometimes encountered today in both the written and spoken language, particularly among older speakers. Swedish is the sole official national language of Sweden , and one of two in Finland (alongside Finnish ). As of 2006, it
7566-468: The rune for the vowel u , which was also used for the vowels o , ø and y , and the rune for i , also used for e . From 1200 onwards, the dialects in Denmark began to diverge from those of Sweden. The innovations spread unevenly from Denmark, creating a series of minor dialectal boundaries, or isoglosses , ranging from Zealand in the south to Norrland , Österbotten and northwestern Finland in
7663-404: The runestones that mention Greece constitute the largest group of them. In addition, there is a group of three or four runestones that commemorate men who died in southern Italy, and who were probably members of the Varangian Guard. The only group of stones comparable in number to the Greece runestones are those that mention England , followed by the c. 26 Ingvar runestones raised in the wake of
7760-409: The same message as U 72, together with which it once formed a monument, but U 72 was moved to Skansen in 1896. The latter stone relates that "these stones" were raised by Gerðarr and Jörundr in memory of Ernmundr and Ingimundr. Consequently, U 73's phrase "Inga's sons" and "they died in Greece" refer to Ernmundr and Ingimundr. Ernmundr and Ingimundr had inherited from their father, but they departed for
7857-444: The short /e/ (transcribed ⟨ ɛ ⟩ in the chart below). There are 18 consonant phonemes, two of which, / ɧ / and /r/ , vary considerably in pronunciation depending on the dialect and social status of the speaker. In many dialects, sequences of /r/ (pronounced alveolarly) with a dental consonant result in retroflex consonants ; alveolarity of the pronunciation of /r/ is a precondition for this retroflexion. /r/ has
7954-428: The short vowels, and the pairs are such that the two vowels are of similar quality , but with the short vowel being slightly lower and slightly centralized. In contrast to e.g. Danish, which has only tense vowels, the short vowels are slightly more lax, but the tense vs. lax contrast is not nearly as pronounced as in English, German or Dutch. In many dialects, the short vowel sound pronounced [ɛ] or [æ] has merged with
8051-435: The stone inscriptions have traces of Christianity . In Uppland, c. 70% of the inscriptions are explicitly Christian, which is shown by engraved crosses or added Christian prayers, while only a few runestones are explicitly pagan . The runestone tradition probably died out before 1100, and at the latest by 1125. Among the runestones of the Viking Age, 9.1–10% report that they were raised in memory of people who went abroad, and
8148-510: The subject in a clause, a trait that is restricted to North Germanic languages: Gulating Gulating ( Old Norse : Gulaþing ) was one of the four ancient popular assemblies or things ( lagting ) of medieval Norway . Historically, it was the site of court and assembly for most of Western Norway , and assembled at Gulen . It functioned as a judicial and legislative body, resolving disputes and establishing laws. Gulating, along with Norway's three other ancient regional assemblies,
8245-514: The three kingdoms. Stationed in Constantinople , which the Scandinavians referred to as Miklagarðr (the "Great City"), the Guard attracted young Scandinavians of the sort that had composed it since its creation in the late 10th century. The large number of men who departed for the Byzantine Empire is indicated by the fact that the medieval Scandinavian laws still contained laws concerning voyages to Greece when they were written down after
8342-482: The two cases and two genders of modern Swedish. A transitional change of the Latin script in the Nordic countries was to spell the letter combination "ae" as æ – and sometimes as a' – though it varied between persons and regions. The combination "ao" was similarly rendered a , and "oe" became o . These three were later to evolve into the separate letters ä , å and ö . The first time the new letters were used in print
8439-517: The two natural genders han and hon ("he" and "she"), there are also the two grammatical genders den and det , usually termed common and neuter . In recent years, a gender-neutral pronoun hen has been introduced, particularly in literary Swedish. Unlike the nouns, pronouns have an additional object form, derived from the old dative form. Hon , for example, has the following nominative, possessive, and object forms: Swedish also uses third-person possessive reflexive pronouns that refer to
8536-405: The vast majority of the runestones were raised in memory of people who are not reported to have died abroad. She argues that few men who went abroad were honoured with memorials and the reason is that the runestones were mainly raised because of concerns at home, such as inheritance issues. Such concerns would have arisen when a family knew that a relative would not return from abroad. Below follows
8633-439: The vocabulary. Besides a great number of loanwords for such areas as warfare, trade and administration, general grammatical suffixes and even conjunctions were imported. The League also brought a certain measure of influence from Danish (at the time Swedish and Danish were much more similar than today). Early Old Swedish was markedly different from the modern language in that it had a more complex case structure and also retained
8730-584: The written language is uniform and standardized . Swedish is the most widely spoken second language in Finland where its status is co- official language . Swedish was long spoken in parts of Estonia , although the current status of the Estonian Swedish speakers is almost extinct. It is also used in the Swedish diaspora , most notably in Oslo , Norway, with more than 50,000 Swedish residents. Swedish
8827-428: Was drafted to aid the discussions. While the Gulating was not a democratic assembly in the modern sense of an elected body, it effectively represented the interests of a large number of people rather than a small elite. The laws were typically crafted as social contracts . §35 for instance states, "None of us shall take goods from others, or take the law into our own hands". The laws also applied for every person inside
8924-484: Was during the 20th century that a common, standardized national language became available to all Swedes. The orthography finally stabilized and became almost completely uniform, with some minor deviations, by the time of the spelling reform of 1906. With the exception of plural forms of verbs and a slightly different syntax, particularly in the written language, the language was the same as the Swedish of today. The plural verb forms appeared decreasingly in formal writing into
9021-401: Was established early in the 10th century and the original legislative area covered the regions of Hordaland and Sogn og Fjordane . The Gulatinget Millennium Site is a symbol of the history of this Norwegian representative form of parliament, with traditions reaching over a thousand years back in time. The practice of periodic regional assemblies of leading men predates recorded history, and
9118-484: Was firmly established at the time of the unification of Norway into a single kingdom (900–1030). When Norway was united as a kingdom, the four independent lagting – Frostating, Gulating, Eidsivating, and Borgarting – were the most supreme bodies of law, acting as both legislative assemblies and courts. They provided the institutional and legal framework for subsequent legislative and judicial bodies, and remain in operation today as superior regional courts. Initially
9215-656: Was in Aff dyäffwlsens frästilse ("By the Devil's temptation") published by Johan Gerson in 1495. Modern Swedish (Swedish: nysvenska ) begins with the advent of the printing press and the European Reformation . After assuming power, the new monarch Gustav Vasa ordered a Swedish translation of the Bible . The New Testament was published in 1526, followed by a full Bible translation in 1541, usually referred to as
9312-523: Was not standardized. It depended on the authors and their background. Those influenced by German capitalized all nouns, while others capitalized more sparsely. It is also not always apparent which letters are capitalized owing to the Gothic or blackletter typeface that was used to print the Bible. This typeface was in use until the mid-18th century, when it was gradually replaced with a Latin typeface (often Antiqua ). Some important changes in sound during
9409-537: Was the sole native language of 83% of Swedish residents. In 2007, around 5.5% (c. 290,000) of the population of Finland were native speakers of Swedish, partially due to a decline following the Russian annexation of Finland after the Finnish War 1808–1809. The Fenno-Swedish - speaking minority is concentrated in the coastal areas and archipelagos of southern and western Finland. In some of these areas, Swedish
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