From old folk dresses varying for each district to the Sverigedräkt, a national dress for all of Sweden
Swedish folk costumes, Folkdräkter, are an important part of a Swedish cultural heritage, and are symbols for local and national identity. There are 840 different variations (550 female outfits and 290 male ones). Some of them have a rather long history, dating back from the 17th century. Members of the Swedish royal family wears a blue and yellow dress with daisy decorations on some occasions – that dress is much more recent!
Different types of Swedish folk costume
Swedish folk costumes vary by region of origin, but in some they are more common, Dalarna has a very rich folk costume culture for example.
Some from Dalarna (Leksand, ?, Rättvik), central Sweden; and Norrbotten, northern Sweden
Each district had its own tailor, and some areas with natural boundaries and good communications within the district itself but poorer connections with the outside world would develop their own designs. Among typical features are flower patterns and headgear of all kinds, from bonnets to horn-shaped hats.
Postcard with a folk costume from Dalarna. Illustration by Lena Wikman,
in the 1850s, with the industrialization of Sweden,folk costumes started to be abandoned – but around 1900, with the National romantic period, upper classes amused themselves by wearing them. Some artists also depicted them, Among others Jenny Nyström and Carl Larsson:
[…] In addition we need the bright colors of the peasant costumes. They have an invigorating effect on our senses that is all too often under-estimated and they are necessary as a contrast to the deep green pine forest and the white snow
Carl Larsson, from ‘Ett hem’ (A Home)
I got a couple postcards from Swedish penpals with paintings featuring folk costumes, by Carl Larsson (and I got a tiny Hello kitty in a svenska dräkten from the same person!) and Stina Sunesson
The invention of the Swedish National dress, Almänna svenska nationaldräkten
In 1983 Queen Silvia wore the Svenska dräkten on Sweden’s National Day, 6th June, starting a tradition. The dress she wore was relatively recent, designed by a woman called Märta Jörgensen.
Märta Jörgensen was an apprentice gardener when came to the Royal Castle of Tullgarn, in the province of Södermanland in 1900. There, all female employees wore a costume inspired by a traditional dress from Österåker, by decision of the then queen Victoria.
She then married and moved to Dalarna working as a teacher. In Falun she set up the Swedish Women’s National Costume Society, Svenska Kvinnliga Nationaldräkts-Föreningen in 1902. Her goal was to ‘achieve freedom from the dominant foreign fashion through the introduction of a national dress for Swedish women’, that had to be of a simple cut and design, influenced by national romanticism.
She designed two models, one for everyday wear, Blue with a yellow apron as the Swedish flag; the other for special occasions, with a red bodice, representing the Swedish-Norwegian Union (that lasted until 1905).
left one has been used by the royals, the right one is based on the few pictures I could find online.
The Costume Society had over 200 members in 1910, but interest decreased after WW2. Swedish folk costumes enjoyed however a comeback in the 70s. Queen Silvia wearing it on Sweden’s national day in 1983 made it the official national costume.
Side note – Definitions for Swedish folk costumes
Swedish folk costumes are called in various ways: folk folkdräkt (folk dress), landskapsdräkt(national costume), sockendräkt(provincial costume), bygde- or hembygsdräkt(parish or district costume), härads-dräkt (old jurisdictional county costume). The Swedish Museums have decided that the term folkdräkt can only be used for costumes from areas with a well documented, locally distinctive form of dress.
Norwegian, Danish, Finnish and Swedish Christmas markets in Rotterdam. Christmas decorations, imported typical Nordic products for sale, a cafe with lunch and cakes in each of them!
Lucia brings light in the darkest night of the year and is a mix of pagan and christian traditions. It is celebrated in Scandinavia with processions, saffron buns and church concerts.
Main features in grammar, vocabulary, pronunciation and my experience with studying Íslenska (Icelandic) and Suomi (Finnish)
Some time ago I made an Instagram post comparing these two languages, which I started simultaneously during the hard lockdown in spring 2020 (you can see it on @chiara.klara.claire, as a summary of this article). With this article I’ll dig in deeper and talk about more aspects.
A short overview of Icelandic and Finnish main characteristics:
Icelandic belongs to North Germanic languages, as Swedish, Norwegian and Danish and Faroese, the closest of all to it (learn how totell them all apart) . It is still very close to what Old Norse was and retained a highly inflected grammar and ð/þ.
Finnish is an Uralic language, sister language of Estonian and related to Sámi languages but completely unrelated to its Scandinavian Neighbors. Its grammar is as complex as Icelandic but as an agglutinative language, lacking however genders.
In a language difficulty ranking 1-5 with 5 being the hardest, Icelandic was category 4 and Finnish between 4 and 5.
You can find useful language resources at the end of this article!
Alphabets & ortography
Icelandic Ðð (eth) is as “th” in the, Þþ (thorn) as in think. the former is also present in Faroese, its closest language
a, á, e, é, i, í, o, ó, u, ú, y, ý, æ, ö are all the vowels, each is a distinct letter of the Icelandic alphabet
c, q, w are not present in Icelandic. Z was removed in 1973 and replaced with S in words which had it. It is still present in some historic names as the Verzló school in Reykjavík.
Finnish actually uses only 21 of the 29 letters in its alphabet, which derives from Swedish: b, c, f, g, q, w, x, z, å are not present in native Finnish words. For example, the Swedish name of Turku, city with a significant number of Swedish speakers, is Åbo.
Finnish is the only language in which the frequency of vowels exceeds that of consonants, and both are often doubled: suosittelette. vaapukka, terveellistä, laatikko, karjalanpiirakka. With its relatively small inventory of letters being often doubled, many words change meaning with one letter: muta “mud”, mutta “but”, muuta “other”, muuttaa “to move”
Both languages use a lot of long compound words (common in most Germanic languages) as a way to construct new words. Those long stretches of letters might look obscure, but if you break them into smaller words they are quite normal: Icelandic volcano Eyjafjallajökull is just “island-mountain glacier”. An example in Finnish could be lumipallosotatantere = “snowball fight field”, English would be no different if it removed spaces after all!
Grammar
This is what Finnish and Icelanidc are most (in)famous for, both have an arguably complicated grammar, but more or less hard depending on the aspects.
In Icelandic and Finnish words change depending on their role in a sentence, with the so-called cases. Although to a much smaller extent cases existin English too, in personal pronouns: she becomes her when it’s an object. In the following table you can see how cases change words in these two languages:
(a) beatiful country
in (a) beautiful country
to (a) beautiful country
from (a) beautiful country
Icelandic
fallegt land
í fallegu landi
til fallegs lands
frá fallegu landi
Finnish
kaunis maa
kauniissa maassa
kauniiseen maan
kaunista maasta
Icelandic has 4 cases: nominative, accusative, dative, genitive (nefnifall, þolfall, þágufall, eignarfall) – familiar if you know German or Latin – in which nouns, pronouns and adjectives are declined differently depending on gender: (masculine, feminine, neuter), with weak or strong nouns, and number. Icelandic has no articles but it does have definite forms, which as in Scandinavian languages is marked in the end of the nouns: maður= (a) man, maðurinn= the man). More detailed info here
function
M*
pl.
F*
pl. *
N*
pl. *
nom.
subject
-i; -ur, ll..
-ar
-a; –
-ur; -ir
-a; –
-u; –
acc.
object
-a; -, -l..f
-a
-u; –
-ur; -ir
-a; –
-u; –
dat.
indirect object
-a; -um, -i
-um
-u; –
-um
-a; -i
-um
gen.
possession
-a; -s
-a
-u; -ar
-a
-a; -s
-a
definite form noun declension: *weak; strong.
Finnish uses many suffixes instead of prepositions, with a total of 15 cases, in which nouns, pronouns, adjectives, numerals are declined. The good news is that Finnish has no genders nor articles: even the personal pronoun hän means both he and she.
Verbs are divided in both languages into groups, 3 in Icelandic and 6 in Finnish, depending on which conjugations slightly change, but are not (in my opinion) much harder than in Romance languages as Italian and French. They have different endings for each person, and the infinitive form is sometimes not immediately recognisable knowing a conjugated form.
Vocabulary
As you might have already figured out, Icelandic is more accessible with knowledge of (North) Germanic languages, while Finnish will look completely unfamiliar unless you speak an Uralic language:
Icelandic
Scandinavian (se/dk/no)
German
Dutch
Finnish
apple
epli
äpple/æble/eple
Apfel
appel
omena
book
bók
bok
Buch
boek
kirja
hair
hár
hår
Haar
haar
hiukset
house
hús
hus
Haus
huis
talo
mother
móðir
mor
Mutter
moeder
äiti
night
nótt/nátt
natt
Nacht
nacht
yö
stone
steinn
sten
Stein
steen
kivi
that
það
det
das
dat
se
word
orð
ord
Wort
woord
sana
However, due to its history under Swedish rule -other than having the Scandinavian country as neighbour- Finnish adopted many loanwords from and through Swedish, adapting them to its spelling and pronounciation:
katu – gata (street)
koulu – skola (school)
sokeri – soker (sugar)
tuoli – stol (chair)
suklaa – choklad (chocolate)
pankki – bank
kahvi – kaffe (coffee)
During the 19th century, Icelandic started avoiding borrowing neologisms found in most European languages with its Linguistic purism policy, creating new vocabulary with Old Norse roots for new concepts: Theatre is Leikhús, “acting house”; AIDS is alnæmi, from al “all/complete” and næmi “sensitive”, which is what the disease really is about.
Finnish also has a good number of neologisms with native words when most European languages use a common Latin/Greek or English form:
Icelandic
Finnish
grammar
málfræði “language science”
kielioppi “language study”
electricity
rafmagn “amber power” calquing the Greek root
sähkö based on sähähtää “to sizzle (briefly)” + säkenöidä “to sparkle”
phone
sími originally “cord”
puhelin “I chatter”
computer
tölva (computer)=tala+völva “number seeress”
tietokone “knowledge/data machine”
film
kvikmynd “alive/moving picture”
elokuva “life picture”
As mentioned before Finnish did anyway adopt many words common in European languages, while Icelandic has words of its own, probably also thanks to its geographical isolation:
Icelandic
Scandinavian
Finnish
idea
hugmynd “mind picture”
idé
idea
comet
halastjarna “tail star”
komet
komeetta
psychology
sálfræði “soul study”
psykologi
psykologia
history
sagnfræði
historia/historie
historia
philosophy
heimspeki
filosofi
filosofia
bus
strætó
buss
bussi
helicopter
þyrla
helikopter
helikopteri
president
forseti
president/præsident
presidentti
normal
eðlilegt
normal
normaali
immune
ónæmur
immun
immuuni
alcohol
áfengi
alkohol
alkoholi
notice how Finnish often adds -i!
Pronunciation
Icelandic: Although not as inconsistent as English, in Icelandic different positions in the words or letter combinations make the same consonants sound differently, with many variations which at least for me took long to grasp and I am often in doubt about the pronounciation of Icelandic words. Here is a list of tricky features from wikibooks
HV is pronounced as KV, (or as Scots WH in some areas)
LL is often pronounced something liketl.MM and NN as pmand tn.
KK, PP, and TT are pronounced with an h sound to their left. Pre-aspirated tt is analogous etymologically and phonetically to German and Dutch cht (Night-Icelandic nótt, German/Dutch Nacht.
If a K is followed by a t, it is pronounced similarly to a Spanish j (e.g. lukt – lantern). Likewise, a P followed by a t changes into an f sound (e.g. Að skipta – to shift). F in the middle of a word is often pronounced as a v (e.g. Að skafa – to shave), FF is pronounced as English F.
Word-final voiced consonants are devoiced pre-pausally, so that dag (‘day (acc.)’) is pronounced as [ˈta:x] and dagur (‘day (nom.)’) is pronounced [ˈta:ɣʏr̥
I and Y share the same pronunciation, as do Í and Ý.
Finnish: Extremely consistent and read just like it is written: Each grapheme (independent letter), represents almost exactly one phoneme (sound).
Double consonants can be challenging for English speakers among others, and failing to pronounce them correctly can result in confusion with other words.
Some vowel combinations can be tricky for your tongue: yö,pyöreä (with y pronounced as ü in German).
With little exposure I was confident in pronouncing Finnish, while Icelandic requires much more effort & time, this might be influenced by the fact that Italian phonology is more similar to Finnish, and double consonants are not problematic to me as an Italian native speaker.
Language variations
Icelandic has very small dialect variations, presumably due to its strong writing culture throughout history. However, some local pronunciation variants exist.
Finnish has dialects divided into two distinct groups, Western and Eastern.Finnish dialects are largely mutually intelligible and operate on the same phonology and grammar, not going too far from standard Finnish. What Finnish is mostly known for is however the distinction between the two registers: the formal, written form Kirjakieli “book language” and Puhekieli “spoken language”. The former is used in written texts and formal situations like political speeches and newscasts, the latter is the main variety of Finnish used in everyday speech, popular TV, radio shows and at workplaces. In Puhekieli words are often shortened: minä olen “I am” becomes mä oon, anteeksi “excuse me” drops the last i and so on.
Conclusions
Both languages can be pretty challenging, with a significant amount of grammar one can hardly just absorb by practicing as in my experience it was with languages as Dutch and Swedish. What I do think is that practicing and paying attention to certain features can be more helpful than only focusing on repeating declensions without context, and I try to mix both. That being said, Icelandic and Finnish are my “slow” languages with Japanese, and at the moment I’m trying to proceed with textbooks once a month, trying to practice with little things as apps and learning/translating things I see here and there on social media.
I personally find Finnish a bit easier per se, since it has no arbitrary gender and different declensions connected to it, a rather easy pronounciation and so on. However, since I speak Germanic languages, I study (& understand!) Icelandic with much more ease and find myself more easily lost in Finnish, for now at least.
Have you tried studying these languages? If both, which one did you think was harder?
p.s. Perse means “ass” in Finnish and Estonian so maybe don’t say per se too often when talking to Finns.
Learning resources
You find many free, online resources for Finnish and Icelandic on my Language Resources page, other than all for mant other languages.
Sources
Sanders, Ruth H. The languages of Scandinavia (2017) The University of Chicago Press, p. 99-100: Finnish sound structure
My work-holiday experience in Djursland in summer 2021
I have wanted to visit Scandinavia for very long. First thought of actually going to Sweden in 2020 for a volounteer work holiday (using sites as these), but Covid19 was in the way, so i postponed that. Summer 2021 could have been my last “free” summer and didn’t want to waste it, despite covid not being over. My initial target was Southern Sweden, but I would have had to land in Copenhagen first, and to avoid issues with borders as a third country citizen I went for Denmark. I picked the Aarhus area because I already knew (online) a couple girls I could meet, two birds with a stone!
I found a workaway host related to a community of artists in Djursland! It also had a quick reply ratio and I signed up to the site (which did cost 40 € but seemed worth it) and contacted the host, in Danish of course. I got really nervous about not getting any answers for a couple days, and after talking to a friend’s advice I contacted a couple other hosts, not available. On a beautiful windy early-summer Saturday I was just enjoying the day and thinking i had to give up. Then, around midnight I got a reply by the host, telling me I could go! I was overjoyed and thrilled.
Danmark jeg kommer! Arrival in Denmark
I had my flight at 10:30, luckily on time, I flew to Billund Airport and I couldn’t believe I was actually in Denmark, just a few months earlier it was a distant fantasy…. I then took the bus to Aarhus (read about the city’s history and attractions) enjoying the view of the Danish countryside.
BUS 912X: Billund – (Østerlund – Skanderborg) – Århus
It was such a beautiful day and I managed to meet a friend, who welcomed me so nicely with the flag and took me to Dokk1, a really nice place on the harbour (actually cooler than I thought) and she had Studenterbrød and Tebirkes (so good!) and a drink called Stella (“star” in my language! nice coincidence). We couldn’t obviously do much but honestly it was more than enough and I was so, so happy, and i even spoke Danish the WHOLE TIME, it’s just easy when you feel comfortable with people.
then after a couple hours i took the Letbane (a metro-train?) to Grenaa, actually to the stop right before. I was even risking to have to take 2 buses instead which would have been a pain with a big suitcase, but luckily it wasn’t the case.
So I got down at the stop I was supposed to, a place in the middle of nowhere with no one, it felt amazing to be there nonetheless. I waited some time for my host but honestly I didn’t care because I was still realising I was there. I did wave to someone passing by with the car thinking it was my host since it was the first car passing by in like 10 minutes, guess they thought I was trying to hitchhike? Haha. My host arrived with her dog, an Australian shepherd called Taika, and we went to the supermarket, a Netto! We then got to the house, had dinner and then went for a walk in the village, some 3 km from Grenaa (or Grenå)’s centre.
village church, all Danish countryside churches look like this or something?
I basically only spoke Danish that day and I was thinking I wasn’t that bad for never having interacted with a Dane face to face
The following day we went to the wood where they meet with musicians and other artists, I spent much of the time drawing and sitting by myself, which was quite good because I was feeling hell down because of personal reasons. We ate pølser for dinner and made brownies – twice because the dough fell the first try.
On 1st July, Thursday, I helped mowing the grass and later Sara Came with her daughters, Rosa and Viola, (they are both called like flowers, in Italian they are at least, how cute) and the dogs Nuni and Nunika, mother and daughter! We ate together and I talked in Danish! Then we went outside and the weather was so nice, warm and windy. We ate Koldskål (sour liquid yogurt?) with Kammerjunkere, a kind of cookies that go with it. It was windy and nice weather so I sat outside for a while just enjoying it. The dog almost ate my fliflop, but the girls helped me save it.
Painting at The Garden Studio
In the afternoon of the same day my host took me to the Garden Studio, a artist house with workshop and a huge garden. My host had mentioned to me the artist who did some painting she had on the walls, Ulla Lundsgart, and I was looking forward to go there and maybe manage to paint a little! Anything is fine to me as long as it slightly has to do with colours and creating stuff!
There was a workshop, Værksted, with a lot of plants and paintings. I was introduced to a ceramic artist who was in his workshop, Philip. Then I sat somewhere and doodled for a while.
I hoovered and I saw the beach at last! The weather was terrible but still it was nice to have my feet in the sea. We went to the supermarket and I saw the party section, in Denmark it goes wild with flags, read more about the Danish flag madness.
Grenaa’s beach, on a not-the-best-beach-weather day
Inside the house there were a lot of beautiful books, in the workshop there were mostly art and painters related books, I would have spent ages there! Here are just a couple classics in Danish:
On 3rd July I gave online lessons (I had asked if I was allowed to do that during my stay before deciding to leave). It was a bit hard to adjust everything but I somehow managed to.
not my best piece and I wasn’t really satisfied, but it was fun
Afterwards I was allowed to paint a bit! I didn’t really know what to paint although I was super excited to do it! I never get to paint such big pictures, and with acrylics.
Then in the evening my host and me drove somewhere to have a walk in the forest and towards the sea (going anywhere in Denmark is going towards the sea to be honest).
Here women accused to be witches were drown, and the man who killed them lived here, according to my host! scary!
On 4. JulyI was given a lemonbrus bottle at the Garden Studio, I don’t think it tasted exceptionally good but the label looked so pretty! I had a lemon on my socks as well and with a pepsi top, red shorts and red-blue sneakers I felt like a living lemon pepsi or something. I later went with my host to the wood where i drank it on a swing.
In the afternoon I spent some time painting. Once again, I didn’t really know what to draw although I was excited to do it as always. I started painting a boy but ended up covering it with a big face with the sea in it. There were visitors to the workshop, with children being curious about me painting.
eventually also added some and some tattoo-like elements I am obsessed with: the sun and swallows
5th July started by going to the wood, Sara was there too with her dogs. Later I went to the Garden Studio, where i helped by weeding and such activities. As usual I went to pain once I was done. This time I simply painted myself!
I must say I was almost satisfied
On 6th July I painted my original sea boy character wiht Fish! In my imagination he comes from the North Sea coasts, between Denmark and Holland, so right place to paint him. On the evening Italy played against Spain in the Eurocup, we won!!
On 7th JulyI helped cleaning the house of the Garden Studio, then ate lunch with Ulla, and found this quote in a book case in the house:
Alt, hvad du elsker, vil sindsynligvis gå tabt, men I sidste ende, vil kæligheden vende tilbage på en anden made. (Everything you love is very likely to be lost, but in the end, love will return in a different way.)
Kafka
After lunch i was free to go to paint, and I started an idealistic self portrait braiding my hair in front of the sea, in a dress i unfortunately last-minute decided not to bring with me. (it would have been perfect for a day I’ll talk about in the part 2 of this diary)
I actually only finished the sky a few days later!
Volounteering at the Havmøllen
On 8th July my host drove me to Havmøllen (“sea mill”), where I volounteered at an event with dinner and concerts. I started the day by cutting bread and I didn’t bother speaking Danish since I was already in an environment out of my comfort zone..
I would have liked to listen to the concerts but after having helped with serving and cleaning I answered to the nature’s called and went for a short hike.
Jernhatten path and a map of Grenaa surroundings wood area
I then spent time looking at the sea while eating an apple. It was a bit hard to talk to others since I didn’t know anybody, so i just enjoyed the place by myself!
See you in the next article of my Denmark diary; with more art, pictures of Denmark, trips, fancy drinks and so on!
The languages of the Sámi, indigenous people of Scandinavia
The Sámi people (Sámit/Sápmelaš in sami languages) are Northern Scandinavia’s indigenous people. I have talked about Sámi people and their National Day last year. This year I will focus on their languages.
Sámi languages speakers are approximately 30,000-40,000, out of around 100,000 people identifying as Sámi.
Sámi languages belong to the Uralic language family and are most closely related to the Baltic-Finnic languages (as Estonian, Finnish, and Karelian).
There are 10 distinct variations (of which 6 have standard written forms). They are not mutually intelligible to each other, although there is intelligibility among neighbor variants, which makes the Sámi languages a dialect continuum. According to the Store Norske Leksikon South and North Sami are as far as Norwegian and Icelandic.
Sámi language areas, picture from Store norske leksikon.
They can be divided into Eastern and Western language groups:
Western Sámi languages
North-Davvisámegiella: 15,000 speakers in Norway, Sweden, Finland, about 75% of all Sámi native speakers
Lule–Julevsámegiella: 2000 speakers in Norway and Sweden
South-Åarjelsaemien gïele: 500 speakers in Norway and Sweden
Pite–Bidumsámegiella: 20 speakers in Sweden
Ume–Ubmejensámien giella: 20 speakers in Sweden
Eastern Sámi languages
Inari-Anarâškielâ: 400 speakers in Finland
Skolt-Sää’mǩiõll/nuõrttsää’m: 400 speakers in Finland and Russia
Kildin–кӣллт са̄мь кӣлл: about 787 speakers in the Kola peninsula of Russia
Ter-Saa’mekiill: fewer than 10 speakers in Russia
Akkala-Ákkil sámegiella: considered extinct. Not standardized, but translations of the New Testament into it in 1755 and the bible in 1811 were major influences in the written language.
Sámi language features
Note: what follows refers mainly to North Sámi
like Finnish Sámi languages are agglutinative and highly inflected, nouns and adjectives change form according to their grammatical roles. Northern Sámi has 7 noun cases.
Sámi verbs have dual forms: other than three singular and plural persons the verb conjugations can indicate an action by two people (plural is more than two).
Sámi originally had no words beginning with two or more consonants (unlike in English: green, strong, bridge..): Spasibo (спасибо) became pass’bo in Kildin Sámi. Word-initial clusters were however taken into Sámi through Scandinavian lownwoards: Kraevies (gray) from protonorse *grawaR, grár in Protonorse, modern Scandinavian grå.
Sámi languages have a kind of vowel harmony, which for example makes the given name Knut become Knavhta, adding a third vowel.
Scandinavian varieties of Sámi languages use the Latin alphabets, with additional characters: The unique letter “Ŧ/ŧ”, similar to English th in “thin” and Thorn þ still used in Icelandic. “Đ/đ” is equivalent to Icelandic ð. Other letters occurring in Sámi languages are Áá Čč Ŋŋ Šš Žž.
Language Comparison
Similar words North Sámi – Finnish – Estonian
Nature: luondu – luonto – loodus
Forest: meahcci – metsä – mets
Shaman/witch: noaidi – noita – nõid
Brother: viellja – veli – vend
Day: beivi – päivä – päev
life: eallin – elämä – elu
love: ráhkisvuohta – rakkaus – armastus
mother: eadni – äiti – ema
Reindeer:boazu – poro – põhjapõdrad
As you might notice, historically related words in Finnish with p, t, k have b, d, g in Sámi.
N =North; L=Lule; S=South; U=Ume; P=Pite; I=Inari; SK=Skolt
All the Sámi languages are considered endangered, this is due in part to historic laws prohibiting the use of Sámi languages in schools and at home in Sweden and Norway. Sámi languages were illegal in Norway from 1773 until 1958. Special residential schools that would assimilate the Sámi into the dominant culture were established, and access to Sámi instruction as part of schooling was not available until 1988.
Samer.se underlines that in the 60s and 70s many Sámi parents did not speak Sámi to their children. This was a reaction to the negative experiences and the discrimination faced in Swedish schools, which however resulted in depriving children of their mother tongue, and many suffered from that as adults.
In the last decades of the past century this attitude started to change, granting the rights to have education in Sámi languages and esthablishing funds for the promotion of Sámi culture and languages.
In Norway Sámi languages have official status in 9 municipalities in the counties of Finnmark and Troms.
Since 2002 Sámi languages have been recognised as minority languages in Sweden and have official status in 4 municipalities. In these areas they can be used in government agencies, courts, pre-schools and nursing homes.
North Sami, Skolt Sami and Inari Saami are offically recognised in Finland and have official status in 4 municipalities, Sámi people have the right to use Sámi languages for all government services.
In Russia Sámi people are recognised as an indigenous people but their languages have no official status.
Municipalities where Saami is an official language, picture from Nordiskamuseet.se
Art and media in Sámi languages
The first two recorded Sámi poems are by Sámi priest and poet Olaus Sirma (1655-1719), included by Johannes Schefferus of Uppsala in his book Lapponia in 1673.
A boy’s will is the wind’s will, the thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts.
refrain ofMoarsi favrrot/The Beloved One, translated in “a Lapland song” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882) and included in the long poem “My Lost Youth”
The oldest Sámi language newspaper is Nuorttanaste (Eastern Star), a religious paper began in 1898 and still published in Norway. The Sámi-Swedish bilingual Newspaper Samefolket began in 1918, and Sapmelas, founded in 1934 and renamed in in 1993 Odda Sapmelas (The New Sámi) is published in Finland.
The 1970s saw a blossoming of Sámi language literature that has continued to the present, with Sámi artists focusing their work on Sámi language and Sámi traditional themes. Prominent figures include Nils-Aslak Velkeapää (writer, singer, multimedia artist); Paulus Utsi (poet); Vuokko Arvonen (feminist writer); Nils Gaup (filmmaker); Mari Boine and Sofia Jannok (singers). In Norway, the yearly Riddu Riđđu festival in Olmmáivaggi/Manndalen features music, art, theater from Sápmi, including Sámi rap music, yoik rock and dramas from Beaivváš Sámi Našunálateáhter, the Sámi national theatre.
Swedish and Dutch languages compared: speakers, grammar, vocabulary, history
Both Swedish and Dutch belong to the Germanic language family: Dutch is a West Germanic language, as German and English; while Swedish is North Germanic, learn to tell it apart from all the other Nordic languages. They are therefore closely related, but of course not as close as Scandinavian languages to each other.
They are not well known languages worldwide and for this reason i decided to use them in a infographic comparison assignment! You can see it better here.
Countries and number of speakers
Dutch is mainly spoken in the Netherlands, with 17 millions of speakers.
In Belgium, it is spoken by 54% of the population, in Flanders. That makes up for 6,5 millions of speakers.
You might be surprised to see South America on the map, that’s because Dutch is also an official language in Suriname, a former colony, and on small Caribbean islands: Curaçao, Aruba, Sint Maarten, which are constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Netherlands.
It used to be spoken or is on the verge of extinction in the area around Duinkerk, northern France; and Indonesia.
Afrikaans is considered a daughter language of Dutch and is spoken by 17 million people in South Africa in Namibia, of which 7 millions speak it as their mother tongue.
Swedish is spoken in Sweden (9 million speakers) and by Swedish minorities in Finland, mostly concentrated in the south and west coastal regions and the autonomous Swedish-speaking archipelago Åland. Swedish Finns are around 290,000. 3 municipalities in mainland Finland have Swedish as the sole official language.
There used to be a Swedish-speaking minority in Estonia From the 13th to 20th century, particularly on the islands; but almost all Swedish Estonians fled to Sweden during World War II. Only around 300 of them remain.
In the early 18th century Estonia was ceded to the Russian Empire and around 1,000 Swedish Estonians were forced to move to Ukraine, to a village now called Gammalsvenskby, (“Old Swedish Village”). A few elderly people in the village still speak a Swedish dialect, most likely facing extinction.
Finding precise and correct data about the learners of these languages was quite hard, not considering people who self-study the language (I would fall under this category).
I tried to find data about students enrolled in language courses, finding numbers of those who study Dutch as a school subject: In Belgium, not surprising considering it is a national language, it is studied in Wallonia (French-speaking area) by about 300,000 people. Dutch can be found in German schools in areas sharing a border with the Netherlands: Niedersachsen, Nordrhein-Westfalen. A small portion of France in the very north of the country, Pas-de-Calais used to be Dutch-speaking, the language is still taught to some 20,000 pupils.
Unfortunately I couldn’t find data about Universities offering Dutch courses and the number of students over the world, but i thought it was relevant to add that in Indonesia around 30,000 students take Dutch courses in college. Because of its colonial past as part of the Dutch Indies, Dutch still plays a role in Indonesian history and its law, making it important for the students to have some knowledge of the language and its vocabulary in some fields.
Swedish is not really a school subject anywhere but in Finland, where it is a compulsory subject for everybody. This is because of the significant Swedish influence on Finland and the fact that Finland used to be part of the Swedish Empire. According to the sources I found, people reported to be able to speak Swedish are around 2 millions in Finland. I found that there are about 40,000 people being enrolled in Swedish language courses worldwide.
What are the languages like?
Swedish has three extra letters: Å, Ä, Ö, placed at the end of its alphabet, longer than the Dutch alphabet which includes 26 letters and not any more than in the English one. Despite this, Dutch does consider IJ as a single letter producing a single sound and you can find it written as Y in old texts and it still is in Afrikaans, Dutch daughter language. (Try writing I and J in italic and you’ll see they look like Y together!). I and J are written in capital letters when IJ is at the beginning of a word: IJsland is Iceland.
Both Dutch and Swedish alphabets include letters that are only used in foreign words: Q can be found in some Swedish surnames as -quist, written in a fancy way when latinising names was fashionable. W and Z appear only in foreign words in Swedish, but it is a very common letter in Dutch. X is not present in Dutch, and not much more in Swedish, but it is still found in a few words as exempel.
Since they both belong to the Germanic language family, Swedish and Dutch have many similarities in vocabulary, often shared with English as well. You can notice them in the table I made.
Both Swedish and Dutch have two genders: old masculine and feminine ended up being merged in a single, general gender; which exists with a neutrum gender:
in Dutch de is the generalarticle het “the” is the neutrum article, both take een “a(n)” in the indefinite form though. En kvinna, ett hus become kvinnan, huset if you want to say “the woman, the house”.
In swedish en and ett are respectively the general and the neutrum indefinite articles. In the Scandinavian definite forms the article goes to the end of the word:
This unfortunately does not mean that all living things take the general article and objects the neutrum article: there are some rules for endings and categories of words but you cannot guess the gender in a nature-logical way. Child is neutrum in both languages: het kind, ett barn; and girl is paradoxically netrum in Dutch: het meisje (as weird as it might sound, there are reasons for this I will explain if anyone wishes me to).
Swedish verbs always take the same conjugation in allpersons: -(a/e)r for present tense. Dutch verb declension is slightly more complicated, but not as much as other languages. You might say it is a simplified version of German (which is honestly what the Dutch language is as a whole..).
Dutch plurals are either -en or -s, while Swedish tends to often take -r but with different vowels preceding it: words ending in -a take -or, in -e take -ar and if it doesn’t have a vowel ending in the singular form it can take -er but not necessarily. There are also words that change their root vowel and/or add up -er: as man/men in English we have en man/män in Swedish, or en bok/böcker (books). While many neutrum words usually stay the same in the plural form, there are cases as ett land/länder (countries).
Loanwords to and from Dutch and Swedish
loanwords from other languages in Swedish and Dutch
Swedish has a visibly large amount of words with their origin in German, due to the time of the rise of the Hanseatic League in the 13th and 14th century, providing Swedish Commerce and administration with a large number of Low German-speaking immigrants. Many loanwords are about trade and town life, such as stad (from Stadt, city), köpman (from Kaufmann, businessman), borgmästare (from Borgermester, mayor) och betala (from betalen , to pay).
Latin and Greek have a significant number of loanwords in Swedish and Dutch just like in most European languages. This goes for many science-related terms, although some terms were substituted with pure-Dutch terms in some fields: Physics and Mathematics are called Natuurkunde and Wiskunde (“nature-science”, “knowledge-science”, verb and vowel are werkwoord and klinker (“work-word”, “sounder”). Swedish has adopted fysik, matematik, verb, vokal; similarly to German, Italian and many others.
More loanwords came from French: paraplu, bureau and so on. Swedish adapted most french loanwords to its spelling: paraply, byrå; while Dutch often maintained the original French spelling: bureau, paraplu, crèche, other times also adapting it as in kostuum (from costume). A large amount of the most recent loanwords comes as you might think from English.
Loanwords from Dutch and Swedish
Some Loanwords from Dutch are Waffle from wafel; Cookie from koekje/koekie, Skate from schaats, but it also had a significant influence on naval terms: Yacht from jacht, short for jachtschip, lit. “hunting ship”; Skipper from Middle Dutch scipper (now schipper), lit. “shipper”; Cruise from Dutch kruisen, “to cross, sail to”. Iceberg probably comes from ijsberg “ice mountain”. Landscape, geek, decoy, pickle, frolic among others also came through Dutch.
The presence of the Dutch during the time of colonization in North America in the 1600s had its effects: Santa Claus comes from Middle Dutch Sinterklaas “Saint Nicholas”, bishop of Minor Asia who became a patron saint for children, celebrated on the 5th and 6th December in the Netherlands and Belgium. Yankee probably comes from Jan-Kees, a person name. Some places around what was called New Amsterdam, a.k.a New York City, have names with Dutch origin: Coney Island from Conyne Eylandt lit. “Rabbit Island” (in modern Dutch konijn and eiland); Harlem and Brooklyn were named after the Dutch towns Haarlem and Breukelen;
Without going back to the influence Old Norse had on shaping English, There aren’t that many loanwords from modern Swedish in it. Some are lingonberry; aquavit (the spirit); ombudsman, a person responsible for investigating complaints against the state.
Many are scientific terms and were constructed with Greek or Latin roots by Swedish scientists: Dynamite from dynamit, coined in 1867 by Swedish chemist and inventor of dynamit, Alfred Nobel; Nickel, coined in 1754 by Swedish mineralogist Axel von Cronstedt, a shortening of kopparnickel, meaning ‘copper-colored ore’. Moped, a complicated abbreviation of (trampcykel med) mo(tor och) ped(aler), “(pedal cycle with) mo(tor and) ped(als)”, coined in 1956. You can find more here.
Language History
Both Swedish and Dutch have their origin in Proto-Germanic. Dutch evolved then from Frankish, spoken by Germanic tribes in the continent; and Swedish from Old Norse, the common language of people living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era.
Medieval Swedish and Dutch
Old Norse underwent more changes 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). with the usage of runic alphabet. From 1200 onwards, the dialects in Denmark began to diverge from those of Sweden. In 1225 the Västgöta Law is believed to have been compiled, among the most important documents of the period and oldest Swedish law codes in the latin alphabet.
The early form of Dutch was a set of Franconian dialects: Flemish , Brabantian and Limburgish in the South; Hollandic and Low Saxon in the North of today’s Dutch speaking area.
Modern language &standardization
the advent of the printing press and the European Reformation had great influence in the standardization of languages, The Bible played a significant role, with major translations into Swedish and Dutch between the 16th and 17th century.
The Swedish translation of the Bible ordered by the monarch Gustav Vasa introduced the letters Å Ä Ö (previously spelt as æ/a’, ao, oe) and the spelling “ck” in place of “kk”, distinguishing it clearly from the Danish Bible. All three translators came from central Sweden which is generally seen as adding specific Central Swedish features
Dutch had Brabandic and dialects of Flanders as the most influential varieties in its standardisation, later replaced by Hollandic once Antwerp fell under the Spanish army and Holland became the Dutch-speaking areas’s powerhouse. the Statenvertaling (“state translation”), the first major Bible translation into Dutch, was created so that people from all over the new republic could understand. It used elements from various dialects but was predominantly based on the urban dialects of Holland of post 16th century.
The du-reformen
A very significant change in Swedish occurred in the late 1960s, with the so-called du-reformen, “the you-reform”. Previously, the proper way to address people of the same or higher social status had been by title and surname, with the use of herr (“Mr” or “Sir”), fru (“Mrs” or “Ma’am”) or fröken (“Miss”). With the liberalization and radicalization of Swedish society these class distinctions became less important, and du became the standard in any context.
Main sources: wikipedia and my knowledge
I might write a similar article with infographics differentiating the 3 Scandinavian languages or the other Nordic languages in the future, give me feedback!
The ‘anchor’ language concept allowed me to learn Swedish, Dutch, Danish, Norwegian easily starting from studying properly only one language. This approach helps prevent confusion and builds a solid foundational understanding of language structures.
Julehjerter, a common Christmas ornament In Denmark and Norway.
As i had already mentioned talking about Christmas symbols in Nordic countries, a common homemade Christmas ornament in Scandinavia is pleated hearts, very common in Denmark, known as Julehjerter, and Norway, where they are called Juletrekurv.
Children make them with their family with paper of different colours, although they are mostly red and white. They have been made for around 150 years: the oldest known guide to making pleated Christmas hearts is found in an 1871 edition of the Danish journal Nordisk Husflidstidende. A 1873 pleated heart can be seen at the National museum in Oslo and one from 1866 at H. C. Andersen house in Odense!
Make your own Julehjerter
I made my very own, simple version of them, so they are not really a basket as the Norwegian name says, and I used strings to hang them on the tree.
what I used:
colored paper (the most traditional version is white & red, but do as you please). I used leftover paper we had at home.
Scissors, obviously and something to make holes on paper, as pins
Strings
Process:
cut paper, put two sheets on top of each other when cutting so it is of the same size.
cut the lines to intertwine the two pieces: they can be all of the same size or the two inner parts narrower.
3. Intertwine the pieces: depending on how you cut the lines you will have a slightly different pattern
4. Make a hole and put the string in it
Your Christmas Heart is ready to be hung on your tree or wherever you want!
Please share with me your Julehjerter if you happen to make any 🙂
Astrid Lindgren’s homeland and locations of her movies
Astrid Lindgren’s birthday was on 14th November, to celebrate Scandinavia’s and the world’s favourite children author here’s an article about her homeland.
Astrid Lindgren came from Småland, a region in the south of Sweden full of idyllic villages, wild nature (51% of Småland is forests!) and old farms. There you can visit the places from her childhood that were sources of inspiration for books as Emil in Lönneberga, Bullerby/Noisy Village, PippiLongstockingand so on around the town of Vimmerby.
There were two things that made our childhood what it was – security and freedom.
From the book Mitt Småland (“My Småland”) by Astrid Lindgren and Margareta Strömstedt
Vimmerby and surroundings
Where Astrid Lindgren grew up
Astrid Lindgren’s family house in Näs
Astrid Lindgren spent her happy childhood on the Näs farm. The hollow elm which was Pippi’s “lemonade tree” (Sockerdricksträdet) is still in the garden.Astrid and her siblings had named it Owl Tree (Uggleträdet).
The farm is still owned by the family and is part of the cultural center, which was opened in 2007 for Astrid Lindgren’s 100th birthday. You can find out more about Astrid Lindgren, her life and work in exhibitions there.
Vimmerby’s Town Hall
Vimmerby is the town were Astrid Lindgren grew up and went to school. The young Astrid played with her siblings and friends in the alleyways of this small town and in the surrounding woods. Her childhood provided the raw material for her stories. Here are some contained in Pippi Långstrump, her major success:
The game “Don’t touch the ground”, that Pippi plays one day with Tommy and Annika was also played Astrid Lindgren.
The message in a bottle in Pippi Longstocking Goes Aboard comes from a game Astrid played with her brother Gunnar and her two cousins.
Her brother Gunnar also invented the “things-finder” (sakletare)game.
Pippi’s freckles and red hair came from a friend of Lindgren’s daughter Karin.
in Furusund, where the summer house of the Ericsson family was, there was a girl who had a horse tied to the porch similar to Pippi’s Lilla Gubben.
She was also good at school to the point where she was called “Vimmerby’s Selma Lagerlöf” after her first essay was published in the local newspaper Vimmerby Tidning. She worked two years as a volounteer for it until she got pregnant at 18 and left the town.
Emil’s village and Bullerby
Around Mariannelund, just 20 km south of Vimmerby, is where the Emil of Lönneberga films were made from 1971 to 1874, in the Film village Filmbyn Småland. In this interactive museumyou will be able to have a look behind the scenes and see classic film clips, sing along to tracks and check out original props. Emil´s home, Katthult, is actually called Gibberyd, located between Lönneberga and Mariannelund.
Astrid Lindgren found the inspiration for Emil from the stories her father told about his childhood, but the character of Emil came to life when she was taking care of her three-year-old grandson, who was screaming with all his might. Astrid Lindgren asked the boy if he knew what Emil had done one day. Since the boy wanted to know that, he started being quiet to listen. From that moment, she went on telling her grandson about Emil and later wrote the stories down.
Sevedstorp and the surrounding area
The village of Sevedstorp became Bullerby (Noisy Village) in the films. This hamlet was the childhood home of Astrid Lindgren’s father, and the three farms in Pelarne, 10 km from Vimmerby, were in fact also the model for the Bullerby. Astrid Lindgren‘s father Samuel August Ericsson grew up there with his four brothers and two sisters. Astrid Lindgren’s grandfather was also the model for Bullerby’s grandfather. The farms are however private property now.
I am sorry for all who do not live in Bullerby
Anna in Bara roligt i Bullerbyn
Astrid Lindgren’sAmusement Park: Astrid Lindgrens värld
And if you want to see everything at once, you can visit astrid lindgren’s world. The author’s theatre park, few minutes walking away from Näs, is where the characters and settings from Astrid’s most famous books are brought to life. It lets you truly immerse yourself in the stories of Astrid Lindgren. leap across the Hell’s Gap chasm with Ronja the Robber’s Daughter, meet Katla the dragon with the Brothers Lionheart or watch That Emil hoist little Ida up the flagpole.
Outside Småland
Here you can read (in Swedish) about the locations of the movies. However, not all films inspired by Astrid Lindgren books are located in Småland, in some occasions even outside Sweden!
Pippi Longstocking was filmed in the town of Visbyin Gotland, the largest island in the Baltic Sea. The shops were located in the St Hansgatan street in the centre. Villa Villekulla is a few kilometres outside Visby, later moved to the south of the town.
Brothers Lionheart: Tomelilla and in the hills Brösarps Backar in Österlen, south-eastSkåne. The town of Törnosdalen in the movie is in Den Gamle By, an open-air museum in the Danish city ofin Aarhus, in Jutland. Much was also in Iceland.
Madicken: Söderköping
Ronja: most scenes are near the mountainSörknatten i Dalsland. most scenes by the lake in Jämtland (lake Blåsjön). Other scenes are in the cave Tykarpsgrottan in Ignaberga, Skåne; and in the ruins of the Haga castle in Solna, near Stockholm.
Vi på Saltkråkan/ Seacrow island: islands in the Stockholm northern archipelago: most in Norröra, some Söderöra. A lot of scenes were also in Eckerö, in the archipelago of Åland (Finland).
Learn quickly how to distinguish and identify all Nordic languages!
As a language lover I tend to take for granted that certain languages are clearly different from others or recognizable from certain features. Some time ago my sister asked what was the language I was reading in, and I was expecting her to know that with ð’s it has to be Icelandic. But if language learning is not your hobby, Dutch and Swedish might as well be the same thing, purely because you never get to see them. I still remember reading about differences between Danish and Norwegian and finding it really useful, so I decided to make a summary of features and differences that can come in handy as a guide for those who would enjoy being able to distinguish all Nordic languages without actually studying or knowing much.
Please note that I’m mostly writing about the written form, as nuances of the spoken language can be much harder to describe. For what concerns the oral form, you just have to listen to them a lot, and as a Swedish friend once told me:
Swedish is up ‘n downs, Norwegians is all ups, Danish is all downs.
And well, it makes sense.
How similar are Nordic languages to each other?
Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, Icelandic and Faroese belong to the North Germanic language family. Their cousins are German, Dutch and English. If you speak two of these three a big amount of vocabulary and grammar will be familiar to you.
Swedish, Svenska; Norwegian, Norsk; and Danish, Dansk, are the languages of Scandinavia, (yes, the Scandinavian paeninsula is made up of only these three countries) could be considered siblings (or twins?) because they are mutually intelligible, a Swede and a Norwegian will likely converse in their own language without recurring to English, the same goes with a Dane although Danish can be more problematic…But you can read about that later. Theirunique letter is Å, which is roughly pronounced as O. So yeah, remember that when you talk about songs by Måneskin…
Icelandic,Íslenska, is essentially old Norse – the ancestor of all North Germanic languagages – that got crystallized in the middle of the North Atlantic. Because of this Icelanders find it pretty easy to read old viking sagas than the Scandinavians, who don’t really understand Icelandic. Faroese, Føroyskt, spoken in the Faroe islands – between Iceland, Norway and Scotland – is similar to Icelandic in the written form, but the spoken language is quite different. They are classified as Insular languages of the North Germanic family, its distinguishing letter is ð (called eð in Icelandic and edd in Faroese, capitalÐ), pronounced as th in this. Both have æ, á í ó úin their alphabets.
Swedish and Danish would be classified as East-North Germanic, while Norwegian and Icelandic West-North Germanic, the bound between Icelandic and Norwegian is is noticeable in some Norwegian dialects, but the geographical distance made Norwegian become more intelligible with the eastern branch instead.
However, there’s an odd one out of the Nordic languages. Not only Finnish, Suomi, does not belong to the North Germanic family, but it is not even indo-european. That means Hindi is potentially closer than its neighbour Swedish. Finnish belongs to the Finno-ugric family and is completely different grammar-wise, but has quite a lot of loanwords and cultural influence from Swedish. You can recognize it by very frequent double letters with combinations as yy and ää, double consonants after another consonant: tsemppiä, pankki. Finnish does not have B, G, D in its alphabet.
The Sámi, indigenous people of north Scandinavia, have their own languages, which are related to Finnish as they belong to the Uralic language family, this article i wrote focuses on them.
And now let’s go into detail!
Swedish vs Danish & Norwegian
Norwegian and Danish look very much alike in the written form, but if you hear them you will be more likely to think Swedish and Norwegian sound similar while Danish stands out for its “weirdness”, It is said that Danes speak as if they had potatoes in their mouths, if you want to know more look up the stød linguisti phenomenon.
Swedish: Ö, Ä / Norwegian & Danish: Ø, Æ: The first and easiest difference
CK/KK: ck is found in Swedish, usually K or KK in the other two: lycka/lykke (luck); tack/takk, tak (thanks).
-A/-E: Swedish tends to have a lot of -a endings, while you have E’s in Norwegian and Danish. See the example above of lycka/lykke, also in plural adjectives: mina/mine (my) goda/gode (good).
HV/V is not found in Swedish, which got rid of the H: vad, vem/hvad, hvem; (what, who)
X an Q sometimes occur in Swedish, only in foreign names in the other two: exempel/eksempel (example).
Modern written Norwegian was based off Danish so it can be extremely similar and if you have a very short text it might even be all spelt the same way, but a few features will signal which of the two you are reading:
ØJ/ØY: øj in Danish while øy in Norwegian: tøj/tøy (clothes)
MIG/MEG: Norwegian Bokmål uses E in deg/meg/seg, while Danish has mig as in Swedish
K/KJ: kj an b found frequently in Norwegian while Danish has directly a vowel after K: kære/kjære (dear); at kende/ å kjenne (to know)
TION/SJON: Norwegian’s spelling in words of foreign origin is more “tamed” to the language, for instance words ending in-tion, where Danish keeps the -tion ending and Norwegian has -sjon: international/internasjonal; chokolade/sjokolade (chocolate).
Tendencies:
D, G, B/ T, K, P: Danish tends to have much more D, G, and B’s (it could be compared to Spanish vs Italian I think?). bog/bok (book); nouns in -hed/het; at vide/å vite (to know); peberkager/pepperkaker (gingerbread). Swedish and Norwegian are usually more similar for what concerns this.
Norwegian got rid of many “unnecessary” letters (often D’s, G’s) to its pronounciation: at sige/å si (to say); vidste/visste (knew), sagde/sa, -ld, -nd endings trold/troll (troll); end/enn (than)
Æ frequence: Danish tends to have a lot more Æ, where Norwegian has a ‘simple’ E: næsten/nesten (almost); at tænke/å tenke (think). at hjælpe/ å hjelpe (help). Swedish usually has an Ä here: att hjälpa, nästan, att tänka.
Norwegian could be further divided into Bokmål and Nynorsk, which are just two different ways to spell it. Bokmål “book language”, is fundamentally Danish with adjustments to the Norwegian language and the most widespread one, while Nynorsk “New Norwegian” was an attempt to create a more Norwegian-Norwegian, and it is more frequent in the west part of the country, used by about 12% of Norwegians. I won’t go into detail with Nynorsk, but ein, eit indicates Nynorsk, while en, et are Bokmål.
Icelandic vs Faroese
Faroese and Icelandic pronounciations contrast with their similar spelling, that is because Faroese was given an ethymological ortography to resemble its ancestor Old Norse. On top of that, Faroese adopted some words of Danish origin because of its history.
Þ/T: Only Icelandic has Þþ (þorn in Icelandic) which corresponds to English th in mouth, Icelandic words with Þ have T in Faroese: þú/tú (you); það/tað (it).
Ö/Ø: Icelandic uses ö while Faroese adopted ø.
Icelandic has accented E’s, É, not present in the Faroese alphabet: ég/eg (I).
Finnish: the outsider
As previously mentioned, Finnish is completely unrelated to the North Germanic family, it belongs to the Ugro-Finnic family and its closest language is Estonian.
TO HELP: att hjälpa-at hjælpe-å hjelpe ; að hjálpa ; autaa
SOMEONE: någon-nogen-noen ; einhver-onkur ; joku
TO SAY: att säga-at sige-å si ; að segja-at siga ; sanoa
APPLE: äpple-æble-eple ; epli; omena
WHAT: vad-hvad-hva ; hvað-hvat; mikä
Article 1 from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights :
Swedish: Alla människor är födda fria och lika i värde och rättigheter.
Danish: Alle mennesker er født frie og lige i værdighed og rettigheder.
Norwegian bokmål: Alle mennesker er født frie og med samme menneskeverd og menneskerettigheter; Nynorsk: Alle menneske er fødde til fridom og med same menneskeverd og menneskerettar.
Faroese: Øll menniskju eru fødd fræls og jøvn til virðingar og mannarættindi.
Icelandic: Hver maður er borinn frjáls og jafn öðrum að virðingu og réttindum.
Finnish: Kaikki ihmiset syntyvät vapaina ja tasavertaisina arvoltaan ja oikeuksiltaan.
If you want to go even more in detail, you can check out this on mylanguagebreak.com, but my advice is to just expose yourself to the languages, and experience all the differences yourself. 🙂 Here you can briefly read about even more languages used in the Nordic countries.
if you want to see an even more succint summary of all this, you can check out my post on instagram.
news about this blog: languages, new articles & a new look
After a long break, I decided to continue using this blog, (at least for now), even after the end of my school project, but with some changes, among which 2 or 3 new categories:
The most important news is that I will start writing about languages, focusing on nordic ones but not only, that also depends on the feedback i might get.
I will also add a new My journey, aka articles like this about what I am doing, maybe my progress with languages? And of course my trips, only one up to now (read below!).
The third possible category would be Fun Facts, that is to say weird/unusual things related to Nordic countries. For example a village in japan that is basically a copy of Sweden, and the shipwreck of a Venetian nobleman in Norway in the 1400s.. I will have to figure out if I can make illustrations for that though..
Changes:
I decided to use only English, the majority of people who might want to read it are not Italian, and if they are they speak English, so two languages just make the readability harder. (se qualcuno tiene a leggere i miei articoli in italiano mi contatti). I am still in the process to take parts in Italian out from older articles.
I changed the blog’s theme, it might still undergo minor changes, but after a few days working on it here and there I think I got a reasonably nice result, and definitely more functional than it used to be for people landing on it. take a look at it and let me know!
old layout
new layout
I will of course continue making informative articles about Nordic culture with illustrations and I’m already planning an article about guess what: my time in Denmark ❤️🇩🇰 I was in the countryside around Grenaa, although I never visited the centre, stupid me, and I quickly, very quickly explored Aarhus (When I wrote this article i had no idea I would se it in reality few month later), and I will just talk about my experience and culture facts.
I am planning an article for Astrid Lindgren‘s birthday as well (14thNovember), so I will see what happens
If you are curious to know what I will talk about in my new articles you can have a sneak peek on my Instagram. My first language article will be about telling apart the 6 languages spoken in the Nordic countries, then idioms, and whatever seems interesting (I am open to suggestions).
17th May is Norway’s national day, in which parades are the central event
Known as Syttende Mai (17th May) is Norway’s Constitution Day, Grunnlovsdagen, the most important day in Norway, characterized by parades, a sea of flags everywhere and people wearing the Norwegian folk costume, the Bunad. It is commonly called Norway’s birthday!
On this day the Constitution was signed at Eidsvoll in 1814, declaring Norway as an independent kingdom after being continuosly handed over from and to Sweden and Denmark. Celebrations began among students despite Norway still being in an union with Sweden. WW2 ended in Norway nine days before that year’s Constitution Day, and this strengthened the meaning of 17. mai!
Parades (17. mai-tog)
Norway’s national day is also called “Barnas dag” (children’s day). Each elementary school district arranges its own parade with marching bands. In 1864 the first children’s parade was launched in Oslo, but only with boys until 1899. The parades are, in order:
senior school children carrying the school’s official banner
others carrying full-size Norwegian flags;
the school’s marching band;
the rest of the children follow with hand-sized flags, and often self-made banners for each class.
The parade often stops at homes of senior citizens and war memorials. Kindergartens and bystanders often join in behind the parade as it passes.
songs about the celebration of the National Dayare sung, and the parade is concluded with the national anthem Ja, vi elsker dette landet, and the royal anthem Kongesangen. At the end, The children shout “Hurra!”. All parades begin or end with speeches. Both grown-ups and older children are invited to speak. After the parades, there are games for the children: sekkeløp (sack race) and potetløp (egg & spoon race) are two classics.
Norway’s birthday is the day on which children are allowed to eat as much ice cream as they please! Popular snacks are pølser (hotdogs), barbecue, waffles. Food with colors of the Norwegian flags is of course a must.
Other parades
Parades for the public, Borgertog, where everybody is welcome to join in. They are led by marching bands and often local boy scouts, local choirs, NGOs, sport associations and firefighters. The borgertog take place in the early morning or in the afternoon, before or after the school’s parade.
The Russ, graduating class of the videregående (high school),celebrate 17 May with their own parades in Norwegian streets later in the day, usually around 4 or 5 pm, on a Russebuss, a party bus, highlight of Norwegian graduation traditions…
Celebrations in Norwegian cities
The longest parade is in Oslo, broadcasted on tv. It includes around 100 schools, marching bands, and passes the royal palace where the royal family greet the people from the main balcony. In the municipality of Asker, near Oslo, the children gather outside the residence of the Crown Prince in the morning.
Bergen has its own traditions for the parade, including comic troupes, various local organisations, a children’s parade, and the buekorps
In Stavanger international schools arrange parades with flags from many countries and an international parties. the British school started it in the 1970s, followed up by the Dutch school and the American school.
Kristiansand, is known for the conclusion of the National Day with running through the city centre (“Tapto”) and spectacular fireworks. A trad jazz band plays until midnight in front of the Christiansholm Fortress.
17 MAI IN THE WORLD
Norwegian seamen churches (sjømannskirken) and Norwegian heritage associations organise 17 mai parades, Norwegian church service, and celebrate the day in parks, with typical Norwegian food and music.
AMERICA
In the United States and Canada, the local lodges of the Sons of Norway often play a central part in organizing the festivities, attended by people with Norwegian ancestry, common in the mid-western USA.
Chicago – holds a three-day 17 mai celebration
New York City – has had a 17 mai parade since 1952.
Petersburg, Alaska a.k.a. “Little Norway”: has a festival the weekend around 17 May, including Vikings and Valkyries.
Since 1969, the city of Westby, western Wisconsin has a four-day festival
Seattle and Salt Lake City, Utah also have 17 mai celebrations with parades, folk dancing and luncheons.
EUROPE
Stockholm has the biggest 17 mai parade outside Norway – ending at Skansen, where you can get waffles, coffee and hot dogs!
17 May in London is celebrated every year in Southwark Park. Games, live music, and a parade from the Norwegian church to the park are in the programme
In Orkney/Shetland (Scotland) 17 May is celebrated as the islands used to be part of the Norwegian kingdom. Orkney holds a parade, and children are invited to bring their Norway and Orkney flags.
a Polyglot illustrating Scandinavia 