Word type: noun
Gender: feminine
Meaning: swan hunt
Sunday, March 22, 2020
svanhamn
Word type: noun
Gender: masculine
Contemporary Swedish: hamn i form av en svan; dels om fjäderdräkt av svanskinn, använd för att imitera en svanhamn
Meaning: the shape or form of a swan; partly about swanskin plumage
Gender: masculine
Contemporary Swedish: hamn i form av en svan; dels om fjäderdräkt av svanskinn, använd för att imitera en svanhamn
Meaning: the shape or form of a swan; partly about swanskin plumage
svanhals
Word type: noun; idiom
Gender: masculine
Contemporary Swedish: om svans långa, smala hals, äv. i bildl. anv., om lång o. smal hals hos person (särsk. kvinna)
Meaning: a swan's long neck, often used idiomatically of people, especially women; also used figuratively in other contexts
Example:
Rorpin med en Swanhals. (Adelig öfning, Åke Rålamb, Stockholm, 1691)
Gender: masculine
Contemporary Swedish: om svans långa, smala hals, äv. i bildl. anv., om lång o. smal hals hos person (särsk. kvinna)
Meaning: a swan's long neck, often used idiomatically of people, especially women; also used figuratively in other contexts
Example:
Rorpin med en Swanhals. (Adelig öfning, Åke Rålamb, Stockholm, 1691)
svanfjäder
Word type: noun
Gender: masculine
Contemporary Swedish: fjäder på eller från svan
Meaning: swan feather
Gender: masculine
Contemporary Swedish: fjäder på eller från svan
Meaning: swan feather
svandunörngott
Word type: noun
Gender: neuter
Contemporary Swedish: örngott stoppat med svandun
Meaning: pillow stuffed with swan down
Gender: neuter
Contemporary Swedish: örngott stoppat med svandun
Meaning: pillow stuffed with swan down
svandunfäll
Word type: noun
Gender: masculine
Contemporary Swedish: om fäll av svanskinn med kvarsittande dun
Meaning: pelt made with a swan's down feathers
Example:
Sängkläder .. 1. Rödh Swaneduns fäll. (Bouppteckningar från Stockholm, 1668)
Gender: masculine
Contemporary Swedish: om fäll av svanskinn med kvarsittande dun
Meaning: pelt made with a swan's down feathers
Example:
Sängkläder .. 1. Rödh Swaneduns fäll. (Bouppteckningar från Stockholm, 1668)
svandunblöt
Word type: adjective
Contemporary Swedish: mjuk som svandun
Meaning: soft like a swan's down feathers
Contemporary Swedish: mjuk som svandun
Meaning: soft like a swan's down feathers
Sunday, January 26, 2020
svandun
Word type: noun
Gender: neuter
Contemporary Swedish definition: dun på eller från svan; om sådant dun använt i stoppning i sängkläder (madrasser) eller (kvarsittande på svanskinn) prydnad på klädesplagg
Etymology: Old Swedish svanadun, from German Schwanendaunen
Meaning: swan's down feathers (especially when used in mattresses or as decoration for clothing)
Example:
Jagh ähr wan ath såwa på swana dun, / iagh ähr itt konunge barn. (1500- och 1600-talens visböcker, Stockholm and Uppsala, 1884 to 1925, original poem written in 1621)
Gender: neuter
Contemporary Swedish definition: dun på eller från svan; om sådant dun använt i stoppning i sängkläder (madrasser) eller (kvarsittande på svanskinn) prydnad på klädesplagg
Etymology: Old Swedish svanadun, from German Schwanendaunen
Meaning: swan's down feathers (especially when used in mattresses or as decoration for clothing)
Example:
Jagh ähr wan ath såwa på swana dun, / iagh ähr itt konunge barn. (1500- och 1600-talens visböcker, Stockholm and Uppsala, 1884 to 1925, original poem written in 1621)
svanbröst
Word type: noun
Gender: neuter
Contemporary Swedish: av svanskinn (med kvarsittande dun) framställd bröstvärmare
Meaning: a chestwarmer made of swan down
Gender: neuter
Contemporary Swedish: av svanskinn (med kvarsittande dun) framställd bröstvärmare
Meaning: a chestwarmer made of swan down
Friday, January 24, 2020
svan
Word type: noun
Gender: masculine
Contemporary Swedish: svan
Etymology: Old Norse svanr, Old Swedish svan
Meaning: swan
Examples (in chronological order):
Skiuter någon Swaan, han skal til lijfwet straffat warda. (Kongl. stadgar, förordningar bref och resolutioner, Johan Schmedeman, Stockholm, 1706, original source from 1621)
The hemtamma Swaner blifwa fast fetare, än the wilda. (Colerus, J, Oeconomia, Isaacus Erici, Stockholm, 1683 to 1685, original from 1645)
Swaanen behöfwer så wäl sina fiädrar, som Sparfwen sina. (Penu proverbiale, Olof Grubb, Linköping, 1665)
Men (en from hustru) finner Tu, när Phoenix syns, swart Swaan, och hwijter en Korper. (Cupidinus och Veneris kiärleeks-krijgh och frijheeter, Uppsala, 1669)
Gender: masculine
Contemporary Swedish: svan
Etymology: Old Norse svanr, Old Swedish svan
Meaning: swan
Examples (in chronological order):
Skiuter någon Swaan, han skal til lijfwet straffat warda. (Kongl. stadgar, förordningar bref och resolutioner, Johan Schmedeman, Stockholm, 1706, original source from 1621)
The hemtamma Swaner blifwa fast fetare, än the wilda. (Colerus, J, Oeconomia, Isaacus Erici, Stockholm, 1683 to 1685, original from 1645)
Swaanen behöfwer så wäl sina fiädrar, som Sparfwen sina. (Penu proverbiale, Olof Grubb, Linköping, 1665)
Men (en from hustru) finner Tu, när Phoenix syns, swart Swaan, och hwijter en Korper. (Cupidinus och Veneris kiärleeks-krijgh och frijheeter, Uppsala, 1669)
Thursday, January 23, 2020
Early Modern Swedish: The Language of an Empire
Hello, and välkommen to this blog! Here I will explore the Swedish language as it was over 400 years ago during the Great Power Era (Stormaktstiden). The form of Swedish used at this time is known as Early Modern Swedish (Äldre nysvenska); I will specifically focus mostly on the 17th century. I believe that in order to understand the language (no pun intended), one also has to understand the historical background.
What was the Great Power Era?
The Great Power Era lasted from the 17th century to the early 18th century and is generally accepted as beginning in 1611 with the accession of King Gustav II Adolf and ending in 1721 with the Treaty of Nystad and the loss of Sweden's territories to Russia in the Great Northern War. During these 110 years, Sweden was officially the Swedish Empire, a European great power that exercised territorial control over much of the Baltic region. The form of government was absolute monarchy, and the royal dynasty was first the Vasa family, which had been ruling Sweden since 1523; the last Vasa on the throne was Kristina, who abdicated in 1654 and died happily unmarried and childless in 1689; the new dynasty then was the Pfalz or Palatine dynasty, beginning with Kristina's cousin Karl Gustav. The legislature was the Council of the Realm (Riksrådet), the state religion was Lutheranism, the currency was the Riksdaler, and the population in the 17th century was 2,500,000 people.
Sweden's territories, both at home and overseas, and gained over the years, were Finland, Estonia, Karelia and Ingria (these latter two are now parts of Russia), Livonia (a region in what is now Latvia), Wismar, Bremen-Verden and Pomerania in what is now northern Germany and Poland, the Swedish Gold Coast in what is now Ghana, and the mostly forgotten American colony of New Sweden in what is now the Delaware Valley.
After Gustav Adolf's death at the Battle of Lützen in 1632, the empire was controlled at times by the high nobility, specifically the Oxenstierna family, acting as regents for child monarchs until their eighteenth birthdays, such as Kristina from 1632 to 1644 and Karl XI from 1660 to 1672. The high nobility's interests clashed with the uniformity policy. In territories acquired during the periods of de facto noble rule, serfdom was not abolished, and they also wanted to set up respective estates in Sweden proper. The Great Reduction of 1680 put an end to these efforts and required them to return their Crown estates to the king. Even after this, serfdom remained the order of the day in Estonia and parts of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Swedish Empire reached its zenith in the years after the victories of the Thirty Years' War, when its sworn enemy, Denmark, was neutralised by the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658. But as the Second Northern War continued, and then the Scanian War, the survival of the empire was sustained only by France, Sweden's best and closest ally; and it was consolidated by the aforementioned Karl XI. But a sharp decline began with the rule of his son, Karl XII, who secured the empire for a while with the Treaty of Travendal in 1700 and the Treaty of Altranstädt in 1706; and then the disaster came: the war in Russia. The victory of the Russians in the Battle of Poltava put a definite end to Sweden's eastward expansion, and by the time Karl XII died in 1718, the empire was a shell of what it had once been. Sweden lost more and more territories as time went on, with the last of them, Finland, being taken by Russia in 1809.
Sweden is the only Scandinavian country to have ever reached the status of a great military power.
What was Early Modern Swedish?
Early Modern Swedish is the first stage of Modern Swedish, which was the form of Swedish spoken and written until the development of a common national language at the end of the 19th century. Specifically, Early Modern Swedish began with the publication of the Gustav Vasa Bible in 1526 and ended with the publication of The Swedish Argus in 1732. Early Modern Swedish was descended from Old Swedish, which was spoken from the 12th century until the 1520s, and which itself was descended from Old East Norse, a dialect of the language spoken by the Vikings.
The 1526 Bible translation followed the spoken style rather closely, although not completely adhering to the spoken language of the time. The spelling was very inconsistent, especially with vowels, but the orthography was something new: it used the letters ö and ä in place of ø and æ, the infinitive suffix of -a instead of -e, and the diphthong of ck instead of kk, possibly in an attempt to distance itself from Denmark; it also introduced the letter å to be used in place of o, and this letter only came into Danish and Norwegian centuries later. The translation seen in the Gustav Vasa Bible was the official Swedish Bible translation until 1917, when a whole new translation was made with more modern language. Most of the Swedish literature in the 16th and 17th centuries were religious works, hymns and poetry, the latter field being dominated by Georg Stiernhelm, who is considered the father of Swedish literature.
During the preceding Old Swedish period, the language gained many loanwords from Middle Low German that displaced some native words of Old Norse origin. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Early Modern Swedish gained many loanwords from French (which was gaining great prominence as the language of culture), Latin and some from Greek and even used some words and expressions in Latin itself in legal and political settings and contexts; it also had some now obsolete words from Icelandic, and some of the nautical and seafaring vocabulary was borrowed from Dutch. There was also the occasional word borrowed from Finnish, such as pojke, the main word for "boy", which had been acquired during the Old Swedish era. Nouns had the genders of masculine, feminine, utrum (common) and neuter; whereas today the only genders are utrum and neuter. The case system for nouns and adjectives, although it was already mostly falling out of use, had four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. Verbs were conjugated by number; this gradually faded from the spoken language but remained strong in the written language.
The language was spoken with a pitch accent and likely a melodic sound, just as it still is today. During the 17th century, the Swedish sj-sound entered the language, and the language gained a verb-object word order. As for spellings, u was often alternatively spelled as v or w; v itself was often spelled as w and f on certain words; f was sometimes spelled as ff; "I" was the plural and formal "you" pronoun that later evolved into "ni"; the þ (thorn) of Old Swedish was being spelled as dh and th; the v in words like hava, giva and bliva (in today's language these words are shortened to ha, ge and bli) was often spelled as w, fw, fv, fu and variants of these; kv was spelled as qv, qw or qu; ss was spelled as ß; tt was spelled as dt; t was sometimes spelled as th; ä was alternatively spelled as e; å was alternatively spelled as o; v at the beginning of the Swedish who, where, which and what words was spelled as hv, hw or hu; s in the middle of or as the genitive ending was often spelled as z; j was often spelled alternatively as i; and the long vowel forms of a, e, i, o, u, å, ä and ö were spelled as aa, ah, ee, eh, ij, oo, oh, uu, uh, åå, åh, ää, äh, öö and öh, although these long vowel spellings, as well as the spellings ch, dh, gh, th and z and the spoken sounds of dh and gh, were no longer in use as of the 1700s and survive in today's Swedish only in some surnames and some place names.
Examples:
"jag" ("I") could be spelled as iagh, jagh, etc.
"giva" (to give) could be spelled as giwa, gifwa, gifva, gifua, etc.
"vara" (to be) could be spelled as wara, wahra, etc.
"tid" ("time") could be spelled as thid, tidh, tijd, tijdh, etc.
"god" ("good") could be spelled as godh, goodh, good, etc.
"vi" ("we") could be spelled as vij, wij, vy, wy, vÿ, wÿ, etc.
"resa" ("journey") could be spelled as resza, reesza, reesa, etc.
This blog will show words in Early Modern Swedish, with the appropriate categories as well as each word's etymology and, if possible, authentic period examples, using the Svenska Akademiens Ordbok as a primary source. I may also occasionally post documents or transcripts of documents from the Great Power Era, not including those about Kristina, which are featured on another of my blogs.
What was the Great Power Era?
The Great Power Era lasted from the 17th century to the early 18th century and is generally accepted as beginning in 1611 with the accession of King Gustav II Adolf and ending in 1721 with the Treaty of Nystad and the loss of Sweden's territories to Russia in the Great Northern War. During these 110 years, Sweden was officially the Swedish Empire, a European great power that exercised territorial control over much of the Baltic region. The form of government was absolute monarchy, and the royal dynasty was first the Vasa family, which had been ruling Sweden since 1523; the last Vasa on the throne was Kristina, who abdicated in 1654 and died happily unmarried and childless in 1689; the new dynasty then was the Pfalz or Palatine dynasty, beginning with Kristina's cousin Karl Gustav. The legislature was the Council of the Realm (Riksrådet), the state religion was Lutheranism, the currency was the Riksdaler, and the population in the 17th century was 2,500,000 people.
Sweden's territories, both at home and overseas, and gained over the years, were Finland, Estonia, Karelia and Ingria (these latter two are now parts of Russia), Livonia (a region in what is now Latvia), Wismar, Bremen-Verden and Pomerania in what is now northern Germany and Poland, the Swedish Gold Coast in what is now Ghana, and the mostly forgotten American colony of New Sweden in what is now the Delaware Valley.
After Gustav Adolf's death at the Battle of Lützen in 1632, the empire was controlled at times by the high nobility, specifically the Oxenstierna family, acting as regents for child monarchs until their eighteenth birthdays, such as Kristina from 1632 to 1644 and Karl XI from 1660 to 1672. The high nobility's interests clashed with the uniformity policy. In territories acquired during the periods of de facto noble rule, serfdom was not abolished, and they also wanted to set up respective estates in Sweden proper. The Great Reduction of 1680 put an end to these efforts and required them to return their Crown estates to the king. Even after this, serfdom remained the order of the day in Estonia and parts of the Holy Roman Empire.
The Swedish Empire reached its zenith in the years after the victories of the Thirty Years' War, when its sworn enemy, Denmark, was neutralised by the Treaty of Roskilde in 1658. But as the Second Northern War continued, and then the Scanian War, the survival of the empire was sustained only by France, Sweden's best and closest ally; and it was consolidated by the aforementioned Karl XI. But a sharp decline began with the rule of his son, Karl XII, who secured the empire for a while with the Treaty of Travendal in 1700 and the Treaty of Altranstädt in 1706; and then the disaster came: the war in Russia. The victory of the Russians in the Battle of Poltava put a definite end to Sweden's eastward expansion, and by the time Karl XII died in 1718, the empire was a shell of what it had once been. Sweden lost more and more territories as time went on, with the last of them, Finland, being taken by Russia in 1809.
Sweden is the only Scandinavian country to have ever reached the status of a great military power.
What was Early Modern Swedish?
Early Modern Swedish is the first stage of Modern Swedish, which was the form of Swedish spoken and written until the development of a common national language at the end of the 19th century. Specifically, Early Modern Swedish began with the publication of the Gustav Vasa Bible in 1526 and ended with the publication of The Swedish Argus in 1732. Early Modern Swedish was descended from Old Swedish, which was spoken from the 12th century until the 1520s, and which itself was descended from Old East Norse, a dialect of the language spoken by the Vikings.
The 1526 Bible translation followed the spoken style rather closely, although not completely adhering to the spoken language of the time. The spelling was very inconsistent, especially with vowels, but the orthography was something new: it used the letters ö and ä in place of ø and æ, the infinitive suffix of -a instead of -e, and the diphthong of ck instead of kk, possibly in an attempt to distance itself from Denmark; it also introduced the letter å to be used in place of o, and this letter only came into Danish and Norwegian centuries later. The translation seen in the Gustav Vasa Bible was the official Swedish Bible translation until 1917, when a whole new translation was made with more modern language. Most of the Swedish literature in the 16th and 17th centuries were religious works, hymns and poetry, the latter field being dominated by Georg Stiernhelm, who is considered the father of Swedish literature.
During the preceding Old Swedish period, the language gained many loanwords from Middle Low German that displaced some native words of Old Norse origin. In the 16th and 17th centuries, Early Modern Swedish gained many loanwords from French (which was gaining great prominence as the language of culture), Latin and some from Greek and even used some words and expressions in Latin itself in legal and political settings and contexts; it also had some now obsolete words from Icelandic, and some of the nautical and seafaring vocabulary was borrowed from Dutch. There was also the occasional word borrowed from Finnish, such as pojke, the main word for "boy", which had been acquired during the Old Swedish era. Nouns had the genders of masculine, feminine, utrum (common) and neuter; whereas today the only genders are utrum and neuter. The case system for nouns and adjectives, although it was already mostly falling out of use, had four cases: nominative, accusative, dative and genitive. Verbs were conjugated by number; this gradually faded from the spoken language but remained strong in the written language.
The language was spoken with a pitch accent and likely a melodic sound, just as it still is today. During the 17th century, the Swedish sj-sound entered the language, and the language gained a verb-object word order. As for spellings, u was often alternatively spelled as v or w; v itself was often spelled as w and f on certain words; f was sometimes spelled as ff; "I" was the plural and formal "you" pronoun that later evolved into "ni"; the þ (thorn) of Old Swedish was being spelled as dh and th; the v in words like hava, giva and bliva (in today's language these words are shortened to ha, ge and bli) was often spelled as w, fw, fv, fu and variants of these; kv was spelled as qv, qw or qu; ss was spelled as ß; tt was spelled as dt; t was sometimes spelled as th; ä was alternatively spelled as e; å was alternatively spelled as o; v at the beginning of the Swedish who, where, which and what words was spelled as hv, hw or hu; s in the middle of or as the genitive ending was often spelled as z; j was often spelled alternatively as i; and the long vowel forms of a, e, i, o, u, å, ä and ö were spelled as aa, ah, ee, eh, ij, oo, oh, uu, uh, åå, åh, ää, äh, öö and öh, although these long vowel spellings, as well as the spellings ch, dh, gh, th and z and the spoken sounds of dh and gh, were no longer in use as of the 1700s and survive in today's Swedish only in some surnames and some place names.
Examples:
"jag" ("I") could be spelled as iagh, jagh, etc.
"giva" (to give) could be spelled as giwa, gifwa, gifva, gifua, etc.
"vara" (to be) could be spelled as wara, wahra, etc.
"tid" ("time") could be spelled as thid, tidh, tijd, tijdh, etc.
"god" ("good") could be spelled as godh, goodh, good, etc.
"vi" ("we") could be spelled as vij, wij, vy, wy, vÿ, wÿ, etc.
"resa" ("journey") could be spelled as resza, reesza, reesa, etc.
This blog will show words in Early Modern Swedish, with the appropriate categories as well as each word's etymology and, if possible, authentic period examples, using the Svenska Akademiens Ordbok as a primary source. I may also occasionally post documents or transcripts of documents from the Great Power Era, not including those about Kristina, which are featured on another of my blogs.
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