cinnamon buns, waffles, semlor and more: there is a special day dedicated to each in Sweden
Soon it is time to eat semlor pastries in Sweden! Swedes have a few days dedicated to eating a specific thing. Whether it started to honour a king or just find an excuse to bake, time to mark some days on your calendar and join them in celebrating Swedish confectionery!
Semlor: February/March – Fettisdagen
On Shrove Tuesday (fettisdagen, fet tisdag = fat Tuesday), 21 February in 2023, tons of of semlor are purchased in Sweden. A semla is a cardamom-spiced bun with almond paste and whipped cream. A perfect pastry you’d want to devour before the fastening time preceding Easter starts! Semlor are eaten in Swedish Finland too, but called fastlagsbulle there, and Fettisdagen is called fastlagstisdagen. Slightly different versions of semlor exist in the other Nordic countries too, and they are usually eaten on Shrove Monday instead: Bollur in Iceland, Fastelavnboller in Denmark/Norway. Unlike the Swedish semlor, they often have chocolate on top…
Waffles: 25 March – Våffeldagen
The christian feast of the Annunciation, in Swedish Vårfrudagen, lit. “Our Lady’s Day”, ended up becoming for most Swedes the similar-sounding våffeldagen (“waffle day”). This turned a religious day into a chance to eat heart-shaped waffles! It is also ”observed” In Norway and Denmark!
Cinnamon buns: 4 October – Kanelbullensdagen
Cinnamon bun day has been celebrated since 1999, and it was actually invented for commercial reasons: the person who made it up, Kaeth Gardestedt, was at the time working for an association of baking products producers. After almost 25 years people still bake cinnamon bunson 4th October!
Gustav Adolf pastry: 6 November – Gustav Adolfsdagen
6th November is the date of the Swedish king Gustav II Adolf’s death in 1632. The king was very generous with universities as the one of Gothenburg, where a pastry was invented in his remembrance: Gustav Adolfsbakelse. It has been popular since the late 1800s. You can see it in a lot of variations, but what makes it a Gustav Adolf pastry is the chocolate bust of the king on top!
Gingerbread biscuits: 9 December – Pepparkakansdag
Gingerbread cookies, known as pepparkakor in Sweden, probably originated in Nuremberg, Germany, in the middle ages. Mentioned in Swedish in 1444 for the first time, the word pepper was used to mean spices in it, as pepper was the most common spice at the time. Baking them became a typical Christmas thing in Sweden and other countries, remember the episode of Pippi were she cuts them in the shape of her horse and monkey? Pepparkakansdag was, similarly to Kannelbullensdag, invented in 1996 by gingerbread maker Annas Pepparkakor.
Apparently there is also a Polkagrisensdag (candy cane day) on 20th April, but it mostly promoted in Gränna, near the Vättern lake. There Amalia Eriksson invented the polkagrisstång in 1859, the red-white peppermint candy cane, and many local shops celebrate this day.
Estonian is a Finnic language, sharing many similarities with its ‘bigger’ sister Finnish, while being unrelated to all their bigger language neighbours
Cream buns are enjoyed in Nordic and Baltic countries during shrovetide, between January and February. Sweden’s classic semla has almond paste, while other countries variations include jam, vanilla cream, and chocolate icing top.
Sámi people, indigenous people of North Scandinavia, have a distinct culture, symbolised by its unique flag and traditional clothing, and part of it are Duodji handicrafts and unique musical expression through yoik.
What I’ve learned through my language learning journey trying to master many Germanic languages, from German to Faroese through Dutch and Swedish among others.
This article is derived from my Instagram post on my language learning profile inspired by @haluska.langs with her slavic version. I had also made a post about learning multiple similar languages in the past!
I speak to different degrees most of the main Germanic languages, including being familiar with a few lesser known ones as West-Frisian and Faroese.
I gradually added more and more of them through the years, starting from English and then German at school, then self studying more since I was about to finish high school.
As English was heavily influenced by French and uses many words with latin roots, besides the fact that it just feels like a given-for-granted language everybody speaks, it sometimes feels weird to include it in the Germanic languages family, but it indeed helped understanding for example to instantly recognize är in Swedish as the verb are, and the fact that verbs have att – in the infinitive form makes sense as English has to –.
However, When i started Swedish and Dutch simultaneosly in the now distant April 2017, it was German that made a lot of things easier than it would have perhaps been without it.
MY JOURNEY
I started English in primary school, and was always quite excited about learning it, wishing to have more hours for it every year.
My second Germanic language arrived much later, I choose German over Spanish in high school, but it had been fascinating me for many years, trying to learn random words of it here and there, I did learn the first word on cornflake boxes: Zutaten (“ingredients”).
During my last year of high school, after 5 years of English, French and German, I started self-learning Swedish and Dutch simultaneosly, using exclusively Duolingo for months. I theorically dowloaded duolingo for Swedish, but I loved Dutch too so i immediately started the course and used duolingo basically every day for a good year. I had a strong knowledge of German to begin with, it heavily helped me and made a lot of grammar and vocabulary instantly clear/recognizable, but also meant having interferences (see below), for example it ruled the verb order making me place verbs where it made no sense in Swedish nor English nor my mother tongue…
Two years later I wanted to learn some Danish and Norwegian: exposure, writing “adjusting” my Swedish with the help of online translators, but the effort to learn grammar and vocabulary was 70% done. learning Danish and Norwegian together without knowing Swedish would have been bad, you wouldn’t know when you are learning one or the other, but with a good Swedish knowledge and some exposure for both it’s manageable. Needless to say, focusing on one will make you better at it than splitting time/energies for both.
During the first corona lockdown in spring 2020, I started learning Icelandic with textbooks and online resources. I had actually read about pronunciation in a mountain hut in summer 2018, but didn’t understand much or took the time to process it at haha.
In the last few years I’ve been also getting some exposure to Faroese and West Frisian (which i can understand to a given extent thanks to other languages as Dutch and Icelandic) and casually learning them.
MIXING THEM UP
When learning multiple related languages, it is easy to end up mixing them up in one way or another. The more fluent you are in one, the less it is likely that you let yourself get influenced by another, this is way reaching a good level in onee language before learning another one in the same family is important. Moreover, you will be very familiar with much of its grammar and vocabulary, and you might rely way too much on your first language of that family. Using Spanish words when speaking Italian might not be the best, but you’ll be much better off than only knowing more distant related languages locals hardly speak.
There are a lot of false friends and words which would “fit” in the other language used without even realizing it. Some examples are short words existing in multiple languages but with different usage/meaning:
en means “and” in Dutch, “a(n)” in Scandinavian languages, and “but” in Icelandic!
ommeans “about” something in Scandinavian languages, while it’s usually “(in order) to” in Dutch
A false friend example is Icelandic að kenna meaning teach; while kennen/känna/kjenne/kende all mean “know (usually someone)”!
a funny fact about interferences is that I once used mensen talking in Swedish, “people” in Dutch, but “the menstruation” in Swedish!
Verb order is very vulnerable to interferences when learning multiple Germanic languages, at least at first: with subordinate clauses in German you have “..that I something done have“, in Dutch “..that I something have done“, in North Germanic languages ” ..that I have done something” as it is in English.
At first I would instantly use the German verb order with Swedish (for no apparent reason since the order in Swedish is supposed to be the most natural for me..), that doesn’t happen anymore, however, I still mess up it with Dutch and German since they only have the very last part switched! I hate it, but that’s what you pay for speaking both I guess…
To avoid interferences one of the most useful things is getting corrected or being aware of them, detecting the mistake is the first step to stop making it.
BONUS POINTS
Easy to learn vocabulary
Knowing languages related to each other can cause interferences but can also come very handy at times! Besides all words sharing a common root, You will understand and easily remember cognates and words which are everyday vocabulary in one language and seldom used ones in another one.
In Danish jeg spiser is “I eat”, you might easily remember this word as Speisekarte means “menu” in German. In the closely related Swedish you say “jag äter”, which however resembles eat, eten etc.
Despite my Swedish being more advanced, Danish and Norwegian helped me with understanding right away obsolete words in Swedish while reading an old book: Danish pige and Norwegian jente are the word for “girl”, while piga/jänta are “maid” in Swedish, not a word you’d learn in an everyday context.
Easy to guess the gender
Germanic languages, except for English, have different genders, whether masculine, feminine, neuter as German, Icelandic, and partially Norwegian, or general + neutral as Swedish, Danish and Dutch*. Being from the same family in many cases genders are usually the same for words with the same root:
House is neutral: das Haus/het huis/ett hus/husið;
Earth is feminine, sky is masculine: die Erde, der Himmel (German) /jörðin, himinn (Icelandic) /jorda, himmelen (Norwegian)
The closer the language the safest the bet: Dutch and German are more likely to have words with the same gender than them and North Germanic languages: book is neutral in West Germanic languages but feminine/general in North Germanic – het boek, das Buch (n) / boka, bókin (f).
*Neutral exists in all but English, while In Dutch, Swedish and Danish masculine & feminine merged. However, they are sometimes still visible, for example in pronouns for objects: hij/zij as he/she in Dutch (knowing German can give you great advantage compared to natives!); to tell the time in Swedish you say “hon är..” (she is..) because klocka (clock) was feminine! Norwegian does have feminine, even though in some Norwegian dialects feminine (book: ei bok, boka) and masculine are not distinct and general en is used (having en bok, boken which would be masculine).
Easy to learn Irregular verbs
All Germanic languages have irregular verbs, which mean learning lists of paradigms present-past perfect-past participle. Once you have learned them for one, it’s all downhill to learn the others, as not only you already know how the verb system works but many are very similar across different languages (and the set of verbs being irregular is more or less the same), or follow similar patterns:
Don’t learn more than 2 similar languages at once, if very similar and from scratch keep that at one. You might be dying for the other for a while, but the path will be downhill and you’ll be less confused.
I learned Norwegian and Danish more or less simultaneously but it wad 95% just exposure, as I already spoke Swedish. That means I knew well what I was dealing with and most importantly I didn’t have to learn a grammar system from zero, but mostly only how to adapt it to Danish and Norwegian, same for how spelling behaves in both. The proficiency you acquire then depends on how much time you spend on each. My Danish is better and I don’t have to check words as much as in Norwegian because I happened to use Danish more because of friends and such, but I used to write letters in Danish/Norwegian and basically check every other word on google, while the grammar structure was as good as done with some exposure on top of speaking Swedish.
Getting a little exposure is always fine, you will just get to know the other languages a bit more, preparing yourself for a more serious approach when you are ready. With some effort you’ll then split from the “rely on X language” phase and speak it independently.
Dutch and German are maybe almost as similar as Scandinavian languages to each other, but not as much, and if you learned Dutch first you’ll have to deal with cases and an additional gender, not quite the same as just adapting it and only learning from immersion.
Nevertheless, give love to all your target languages through frequent immersion, scheduling study sessions for those which require help.
A little fact in conclusion: in Germanic languages “moon” is masculine and “sun” is feminine, while in romance languages it is the opposite! I can see why if you look at the weather and daytime in North vs South Europe 🙂
Discover Greenland, home to the Inuit Kalaallit, and its most iconic aspects as its flag, language and folk costumes. The biggest island of the world has a rich history of indigenous culture intertwined with Norse colonization and later Danish rule.
10th July was a big day for the artist community around the Garden Studio: exhibition with a cafe, concerts and such. I started the day by taking away weeds at the entrance, it was raining and my feet got soaked wet! I got so tired and after a short lunch I went home, and then went back where the real thing was waiting for me: the café. It was scary because of my weird relationship with Danish (wanting and knowing how to speak it but not understanding well enough to function well? Which is like, a nightmare), but luckily two girls, daughters of Marie, were there to help, and after an awkward begin where I wasn’t sure what to do I happily went to wash up things and prepare coffee in the “backstage”. Later other two guys, Nils and Knud, came to help, and after a while the amount of work was reduced and I could rest. I was eventually happy of how it went and really thankful for the help! And I got to rest drinking a Sodavand, not my fav drink ever but much cooler than a coke right?
When the event was as good as over I went to sit with Ulla and other women, who were pretty surprised when they heard I could speak Danish! I am just too shy to speak it to begin with with unknown people, because of what i said above. One of them wanted to see my paintings! I also got a free tshirt 🙂
On the 11th I was given a free day, I decided to go to the Garden Studio, and after having helped a little in the morning I went to paint, and I added the sky to the beach painting. After that I went to the house to eat (made myself the usual rygbrød+butter and anything I found, including Brunost (Norwegian brown cheese, delicious!), and I spent the rest of the day reading books, a really chill day!
That was the Eurocup finals’ night, Italy vs England!! England had beaten Denmark n the semifinlans, and whole Europe was rooting for Italy, pretty cool honestly. I am always anxious about these things so I was only relying to DR app updates (Danish national broadcasting company, I have had the app before I even knew I’d go to Denmark though) and my friends!! It was a pain till the end but I was really happy we won!! We revenged Denmark!
12th July was a super nice day and I was invited to go to the beach! (Grenaa is actually a pretty popular Danish beach destination i think?) Before leaving I read some other books I found in the library:
about birds, and i found my favourites: Blue Tit, Blåmejse; and puffin, Lunde or Søpapegøje (lit. sea parrot, love it)
I spent time at the beach, not as long as i wanted to and the weather was exceptionally good? I was told the weather would be food for that day but I had low hopes haha. First got food at Kvikly: peaches, strawberries and a fat-ass burger to eat on the beach, I obviously couldn’t finish it at once so I got my dinner and lunch at once that day! I had to come back from the beach earlier than expected, but at least I got offered ice cream! Champagne Brus was a brilliant choice!
After watching videos and reading books the day ended with a roadtrip in the surroundings, and I saw the witch place (see part 1) again!! I’d say it was one of the best days in Denmark, I even got 2 tote bags for free, which i ended up using a lot!
On the14th it was pretty hot upstairs in the workshop, so I ended up doodling on a whiteboard downstairs, invading someone else’s space. Once i made sure I was allowed to draw there i went wild as you can see.
copied The Birth of Venus, italian pride worldwide 🙂 (everything mine but the graffiti-style thing)
I wrote one of my favourite quotes:
Livet må forstås baglæns men må leves forlæns (Life has to be understood backards but has to be lived forwards)
Søren Kierkegaard
I even added something more, copied Water Serpents by Klimt and more I can’t remember, but the board got cleared before i could take another picture…
15th July was a big day, I would go to Aarhus to meet my friend, a second time after the first day! I took the Letbane and once i got to Aarhus I walked up to my friend’s house and damn it was hot! I literally picked the hottest, stickiest day of the year! My friend said that heat wasn’t normal in Denmark. Well, wish I could say the same for the Italian summer. We went to a park and had a pic-nic, I got my skirt dirty with something and it was so hot we ended up going to her house, so I could get it washed. It was quite cozy and nicer than outside due to the weather.
I was eventually going to take the Letbane home, and while I was thinking I might miss it I decided I could just walk around in the city instead! The weather was not as hot anymore and I walked around quite a while for a couple hours, to Dokk1, then to (and inside) the station. I saw the iconic viking traffic lights!
At a point I heard a man saying hej and I thought he would try to sell me something but no, he went like Jeg har set dig (somewhere), du er dejlig har en dejlig stil, helt kreativ, something like “you have a very nice style, very creative”; more or less that concept repeated more times. Basically he had probably seen me when I was walking in around Dokk1 and when he saw me the second time he took courage to tell me that, I still don’t know how to feel about a Dane doing that hahaha. Ironically enough I understood everything he said perfectly, wonder what he would have said if I answered I was not Danish.. And of course I have a hard time understanding things when I would need to! How annoying! I just replied with Ahh okay, okay, tak like twice.
After that unexpected encounter I kept on walking without a destination, till I randomly saw AROS, the museum with a rainbow circle on top of it, standing in front of me. At that point i thought it was really time to go home, I would have walked for another couple hours if only I could but my ticket would expire..
16th July had a bit of a stressing start, sometimes it’s hard to figure out what you should do exactly… But it went well eventually. Karina told me a Danish saying:
Det stille vand har den dybe grund (Calm water is deep)
meaning someone who doesn’t talk much is actually very profound deep inside
I remember someone saying I was so quite yet it seemed like I had a lot say, in 2017… I guess I do really give those vibes sometimes.
She also saw my doodles on the board and said I could go do graffiti at a place, but it was a bit late for that considering the 2 days I had left in Denmark… I still hate that.
On the 17thmy fellow workawayer Mado from Iran made a (apprently Irani?) dish: rice with potatoes! I did enjoy it and happened to try that myself a year later!
Also got to drink Søbogaardfruity drinks, Hyldeblomst and Æble-Solbær flavours, these were really good!
We went to the wood to eat dinner, and it was pretty cozy, around the fire! Bent, Sara and her daughters were there. While others were walking around in the wood, I spent quite a while sitting by myself around the fire trying not to freeze (should have had a sweater with me..) and drawing a little.
18th July was another important day for the artists and musicians of the area, with an exhibition in the usual wood. started as a sunny and windy day, my host had her meditation meeting, so I walked the dog around the place of it. It was beautiful and I got very inspired for a painting!
After that I managed to go to the Garden Studio again, painted super fast to finish it in a couple hours! After that i ate lunch and Marie took Ulla and me to the wood for the exhibition. It was getting quite chilly! There were quite a lot of people who came to it and we were walking in the wood in lines basically, seeing wooden works and then listening to the concert in the end. That included some food too! I also helped keeping the dog, and ended up looking at the wood for one last time while I was on the swing.
When the exhibition was over and we took all the stuff away, my host was thinking of getting Thai food, which was not available, so we got food at Kvickly: Kebab Pizza for me, and then a kanelsnegl “cinnamon snail”
I spent the morning of 19th July, my last full day, weeding. We then went to the Garden Studio, so I could get my paintings (which I didn’t think would fit in my suitcase) and say goodbye. On the way home my host got potato chips at the Gas station: GÅRDCHIPS. We then watched Momo alla ricerca del tempo perduto, a movie from my childhood I barely remembered anything of!
We later drove to the beach where I had a last swim, i named it my Viking baptism since it was cold
20th July was the day i left, I would have stayed a bit longer so that maybe I could trY doing graffiti, and it always feels awful to leave! Anyway I made sure to buy a few souvenirs: a hurraflag of course, a couple magnets and 3 postcards (there was a 3-postcard deal, one of them had a picture of Odense where I havn’t been but oh well) the flag was too long to completely fit in my backpack so I walked around flying the Dannebrog.. My flight was a couple hours late, but I came home safe and sound 🙂
There were people i couldn’t meet despite being really geographically close to them, places I didn’t see, things I didn’t do, a lot of mistakes, a lot of Danish I didn’t understand, but I am truly glad I did this and wouldn’t mind being back in Denmark again someday!
Of all Danish words I learned during my stay, I always think of Trillebør (wheelbarrow) first, and I just googled now to find it how to say it in English, but it was part of my daily life when gardening in Denmark!
Some Danish songs I found about during my stay were Valby Bakke – Peter Sommer (my host listened to it a lot!), hurtige hænder – Minds of 99, +artist Alphabeat. Right after my stay I started listening to even more Danish music, among others one of my favourites is Halvnøgen – Ulige Numre, Drømmer Jeg – Johnny Deluxe, and for quite a while the autumn 2021 had rapper Clemens among my most-listened artists…
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.
How graduating from high school is like in Sweden, Denmark, Norway!
Hats and buses
the symbol of High school graduation is a hat resembling a ship’s captain cap, the first time I saw a Swedish graduation celebration picture I was pretty confused about those hats, but it’s actually a tradition inspired by German students, spreading it to Nordic countries in the 19th century.
Another common thing in Scandinavian is that graduates celebrate around town on rented buses or trucks (sometimes saving up years just to rent one), generally playing loud music, drinking and just partying!
Denmark 🇩🇰
Danes have an oral exam as final. you have to decide who from your family is placing the hat, studenterhue, on your head, when you step out from it. It’s the norm to wear the graduation cap for at least 2 weeks, It is courtesy that people they meet on the street congratulate them, even if they don’t know each other.
The ribbon on Danish caps was originally only either blue (Mathematics students) or red (Arts students), it now comes in many different colors depending on the length of your education and which school you went to, see all possible variations on Alt.dk. There are lots of rules involving the studenterhue:
You can’t wear your cap before your last exam (it would bring bad luck)
your gradehas to be written in the center of the hat, and friends and family can leave autographs and short notes in it
friends bite in the shadow for good luck.
the students with the biggest and smallest hat size, and the ones with the highest and lowest grade average have to buy a box of beers for the class
the hat has to be cut in different ways if the student has drunk 24 units within sunrise, if he vomits, and so on to the point a which if the student goes to the hospital because of too much alcohol the whole shade is cut off.
more rules are related to having sex (heart on the sweatband if with the partner, lightning on the rim if not in a relation) , kissing someone (if same gender the cross has to be turned), breaking up (metals going off), taking a swim with only the hat on (wave in the rim)
If the student has been awake for 24 hours then the hat must be turned around (shadow in the back).
You can see more on this site dedicated to studenterhue rules (in Danish)!
The Studenterkørsel – student drive – is an important part of the celebration, renting a truck decorated with beech branches to party, drink and play loud music on (here‘s a site where the trucks & stuff can be arranged). It drives to each student’s home for around 15 minutes, for a short visit where parents give snacks and drinks before the next destination.
This can last one or two days and of course also the studenterkørsel has its own rules, among which running after the truck if you get an A in your last exam, and learning a battle cry to scream at passing student trucks!
Everyone greets and sends their congratulations when they see these trucks. On my very first day in Denmark Student buses were driving around (slowing down the bus I was on though, haha) and following my friend’s example we waved at them, flying my welcoming flag! It felt quite cool!
Sweden 🇸🇪
In Sweden there’s one big day, Studenten, but the celebration starts around the end of April, where students organize games which will give points deciding who will be the first student running out of the school on the gruaduation day; it can be anything from chill to embarrassing things to do, though maybe not as wild as what you’ll read for Norway. In May, there’s one day called Mösspåtaggning, on which students dress up nicely with their hat Studentmössa on, and with classmates they go to school and then to a restaurant or bar, celebrating that one month is left until the studenten time.
The big day of Studenten may vary depending on the school, but it is usually around 30th May to 15th June, with 6th June (Sweden national day) being the pitch.
This day starts with fellow students meeting up very early – between 4 and 7 am for the Champagnefrukost, Champagne breakfast
At 8-9 it’s time to leave for school, with some proving they can keep up with the celebration despite being drunk.
Around 10 everybody listens to the principal giving a speech, some students get diploma for things as All-A-Student etc.
At 11-12: photo shootings of classes!
Once they got their diploma, Students run out of school to their families and friends, who are waiting for them holding a picture of the graduate as a baby or small child, and give them blue-yellow chains with flowers and trinkets as plushies!
The clothing for this day is quite formal, with boys wearing suits, girls usually a white dress. each student has their name and surname embroidered on the hat, which costs around 100 euros
After staying with their families for some time, studentsget on flatbed buses driving through the city as the Danes do, dancing, drinking and partying. In some cases they just walk around instead, something which has been encouraged by authorities after several accidents involving the flatbuses occured.
Norway 🇳🇴
Norwegian graduation celebrations, Russ (short for russefeiring) is a big deal in Norway, with youngsters in overalls roaming cities for almost a month, from the end of April to the Norwegian Constitution Day, (read more about May 17th). On that day, the students are awarded their caps and join the parade in their overalls. The russ period has also become known as “the three-week binge” treukersfylla, continue reading to find out why…
The personalized overalls, russebukse, are usually red, or blue in case of financial and business studies, and personalized with patches. On this website Norwegians can get their russ equipment 😉
On the caps, Russeluer, Students write the Russ names they’ve been given, but the important part is a long cord, which gets knots (knuter) added for given dares completed before graduation: russeknuter. The tradition was introduced in the 40s, with different lists of around 100 dares for every school. Many dares involve sex and alcohol, and a lot are just hilarious. Classics are wearing loaves of bread on your feet for a whole day, not sleeping for 48 hours and bathing outside before 1st May. After criticism that russ was getting too wild, some new dares were invented to encourage teens to make good choices, such as getting tested for STDs or giving food to a homeless person.
Here are a few recurring ones (trinket – dare associated to it):
TAMPON – Put two tampons in your mouth and drink a pint of beer/cider.
TWIGS FROM THE GARDEN – Sleep in a tent in a teacher’s garden.
CANDY BURGER – Eat a cheeseburger in two bites.
“L” – Put an “L” (used for driving practice) on the back of a public transport vehicle.
CONDOM PACKAGE – Buy a pack of condoms using only body language.
BANKNOTE – Place a 5 minute poledance on a pole on a public transport.
RUBBER DUCK – Bathe with someone else in a canopy in front of the school, remember to scrub each other.
TOY FIRE TRUCK – Have safe sex during your period/with someone on theirs.
Here is the whole list of Russeknuter of Oslo for 2022 (in Norwegian). Because of what’s happening, this year there is a special Ukraine-knut, which can be gained if the class contacts a refugee centre and brings some fun activities to socially engage the young refugees there.
As the other Scandinavians Norwegians also rent or buy buses – thetradition of buying an old van or bus and painting it started in the 70s – but they do it on the next level, with their Russebuss, large coach buses completely decked out with colors, graphics, retrofitted and customized to become mobile partying units! The average Russbuss is used by 15 to 25 students and costs around $116,000!! Drivers are hired to drive them to Festivals and landstreff (national meetings) to meet Russ from whole Norway and party, party, party.
You may now wonder why students party that wildly in April. That’s because by the early 2000s, the authorities were worried about the impact all this partying and alcohol would have on the students’ grades, so the final exams in public schools were moved to early May. but what ended up happening was simply that the students started the russefeiring earlier.
Bonus: Finland 🇫🇮
The girl I portrayed on the cover picture of this article is a Finn, (@alwaystimeforbujo on ig, she posts about bullet journaling), so here is something about Finland too:
The Finnish cap, Ylioppilaslakki, is similar to the Swedish version, but instead of coloured fabric cockade, it has a metallic, gold-colored cockade depicting the lyre of Apollo, the insignia of the University of Helsinki.
Truck parties are a thing in Finland too, but in February, when students begin preparing for their final exams. A typical thing they do is dressing up in various costumes visiting the town’s school and throwing candy!
You’d expect 50, 60, etc. till 90 to be fem-, seks-something, as it is in Swedish, Norwegian and Icelandic (femtio, sextio; femti, seksti; fimmtíu sextíu…); but Danes use another… method, based on a vigesimal system: a numeral system based on twenty, making them harder to remember for Danish learners. You can’t guess what halvfems is without having learned it first, I suppose.
How I remember Danish numbers
Let’s start by remembering the easier ones, that is to say the ones that are just called “x times 20”
3 x 20 = 60: tres (three times twenty)
4 x 20 = 80: firs (four times twenty)
to remember them, I just think of half of the target number: 60 is 30×2 and 80 is 40×2 so the number will sound like 3(s), 4(s)
50, 70 and 90 are however not perfectly divided by 20, and start with halv. It might help you to think that each halv-is smaller than the similar version without halv by 10:
60 is tres, and 50 is halvtreds is 50
80 is firs, and 70 ishalvfjerds
90 is before 100, which is 50x2, so 90 is halvfems
In addition to all this, remember that from 20 units go before tens, just like in German and Dutch, separated by og (“and”), so 21 is enogtyve
The fractional system used in these numbers names is as follow: first half is ½ [0.5], second half is 1½ [1.5], third half is 2½ [2.5] (halvtreds=50), and so on as follows:
50 is halvtreds, which stands for halvtredje-sinds-tyve, meaning “third half times twenty”, or “two scores plus half of the third score” [2½ * 20].
60 is tres, short for tre-sinds-tyve, which means “three times twenty” [3*20].
70, halvfjerds, is short for halvfjerd-sinds-tyve, meaning “fourth half times twenty”, or “three scores plus half of the fourth score” [3½ * 20].
80 is firs, which long form firsindstyve, or fire-sind-styve, meaning “four times twenty” [4*20].
90, halvfems, short for halvfemsindstyve or halv-fem-sinds-tyve, means “fifth half times twenty”, or “four scores plus half of the fifth score” [4½ * 20].
Don’t ask me how this makes sense because I have no idea, I barely survived maths in school.
Ordinals
The vigesimal form leads to very long expressions of the numbers, which have been shortened phonetically, dropping -sindstyve (“times twenty”). Ordinal numbers may however still include that ending: 52 is usually rendered as tooghalvtreds (from the now obsolete tooghalvtredsindstyve), whereas 52nd is either tooghalvtredsende or tooghalvtredsindstyvende.
Even the Danes don’t know what they are doing
If you feel bad about not getting this whole thing, be aware that few Danish people know what the numbers actually mean, they just deal with those words all the time.
In addition, the decimal style is also commonly used in banking and when relating to other Scandinavian people. The numbers from 20 to 90 are: toti (literally “two tens”), treti, firti, femti, seksti, syvti, otti, niti.
Was this any helpful? Let me know 🙂 Held og Lykke! (good luck)
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.
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.
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 area’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.
I might write a similar article with infographics differentiating the 3 Scandinavian languages or the other Nordic languages in the future, give me feedback!
a Polyglot illustrating Scandinavia 