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A B C D E F
G H I J K L
M N O P Q R
S T U V W X
Y Z
Swedish Language
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WEDISH CULTURE
P U B L I S H E D B Y T H E S W E D I S H I N S T I T U T E J U N E 2 0 0 4 F S 1 1 8 a
T
he national language of Sweden is Swedish. It is the native tongue of some 90
per cent of the country s 9 million inhabitants. Swedish is also spoken by about
300,000 Finno-Swedes25,000 of them living in the wholly Swedish-speaking land
Islands. For historical reasons , since Finland formed part of Sweden until 1809,
Swedish is one of the two official national languages in Finland (the other being
Finnish). There have been Swedish-speaking groups of people in Estonia since the
Middle Ages, but only a remnant remained after the Second World War.
From the mid-19th century until recently more than one million people emigrated
from Sweden, mainly to North America, and it is estimated that several hundred
thousand people now speak Swedish in various parts of the world.
Despite the completely dominant position of Swedish, Sweden is by no means a
country with a single language. The Sami in the north of Sweden have always formed
a national minority , and the country has had a Finnish-speaking population since
the Middle Ages. The law currently recognizes Sami, Finnish and Menkieli (the
Finnish of the Torne Valley), Romani and Yiddish as national minority languages,
along with the sign language of deaf people to a certain degree.
The immigration of recent decades and the flow of refugees to Sweden has led to
some 200 different languages now being spoken in the country.
SWEDISH AND ITS FAMILY TREE
Swedish is a Nordic language, belonging to the Germanic branch of the Indo-
European family of languages. Its sister languages are Danish and Norwegian,
while the other Nordic languages Icelandic and Faroese might perhaps best
be described as half-sisters retaining more of their original historical character.
In this perspective, English and German may be regarded as cousins.
But the fact that Swedish is related to other Indo-European languages, too,
becomes particularly clear when we come across the everyday words we have
inherited from our common originwords like fader (father), moder (moth-
er), hus (house), mus (mouse), hund (hound), ko (cow), ga (eye), ra (ear),
nsa (nose), blod (blood), dag (day), natt (night), sten (stone), ben (bone), jord
(earth), vatten (water), ung (young), ljuv (lovely), ta (eat), dricka (drink),
leva (live), and d (die).
WHAT DOES SWEDISH SOUND LIKE?
The most striking feature of Swedish to foreign ears is its melodic character,
with rising and falling tones and a variable word accent: /katten/, /proble:m/,
/ra:dhu:s/, /:terstlla/, /problema:tisk/, /fotografi:/.
A string of letters like buren may be pronounced in two different ways. The
noun buren, meaning the cage, has what is known as accent 1 with full stress
on the syllable bur-: /buren/. The past participle buren, meaning carried,
from the verb bra, on the other hand, has accent 2 with secondary stress on
the second syllable: /bu:ren/.
Swedish is also remarkable for its many distinct vowel sounds, a, o, u, , e, i,
y, , , which occur in both long and short forms.
Meaning is often distinguished by the length of a vowel in Swedish, as in
such pairs of words as: mat food (with a long a-sound), matt dull (short a),
ful ugly (long u) and full full, drunk (short u).
The Swedish alphabet has 28 letters and ends
with , , (A with an O over it, A with two
dots over it, O with two dots over it). V and
w are pronounced the same , as are s and z.
SWEDISH CULTURE
Foreigners also react to the characteristic Swedish u-sound. U is not
pronounced as in the German word Blume, but as a sound intermediate
between the vowels in the German words Blume and grn. U may be short,
as in hund (dog/hound), or long, as in hus (house).
The three very visible letters , and strike the eye rather than the ear of
people new to Swedish. represents the same vowel as in the English words
more and hot, corresponds to the vowels in care and best, and represents
the same sound as in the French words bleu and buf.
Swedish also has multiple combinations of consonants that can prove to be
a tongue-twisting challenge to many foreigners: vrak, sprngts, stgtskt.
The letter combinations sj, skj and stj are pronounced /S/, a sound distantly
resembling the sh in English she. They occur in words like sj (sea), sjuk
(sick), skjorta (shirt), stjrna (star).
This is also the sound of sk before the front vowels e, i, y, and : skepp
(ship), skinn (skin), skygg (shy), skmmas (be ashamed), skld (shield).
The standard Swedish r-sound is a tapped sound made with the tip of the
tongue, like a rapid and weakly articulated Italian or Spanish r. In southern
parts of Sweden, however, a uvular r-sound is produced at the back of the
mouth as in French and German.
SOME CHARACTERISTIC GRAMMATICAL FEATURES
The most difficult thing for foreigners learning Swedish is the inverted word
order in sentences that dont begin with the subject. The verb is always the
part of the sentence in second position. So Swedes say: Anna kommer i dag
(Anna is coming today), but if the adverbial comes first they say: I dag
kommer Anna (Today Anna is coming) and not I dag Anna kommer .
A distinctive characteristic of the Scandinavian languages is the definite
article attached to and following the noun, as in: manmannen, (manthe
man), hushuset (housethe house), hundarhundarna (dogsthe dogs).
Swedish also has a double definite marker, as in: det lilla huset (the little
house).
Swedish distinguishes between the verbal supine, as in jag har skrivit
brevet (I have written the letter), and the adjectival past participle, as in
brevet r illa skrivet (the letter is badly written).
The Scandinavian languages have a special passive form with the ending -s:
brevet skrevsbrevet har skrivits (the letter was writtenthe letter has been
written).
The Futhark is the name of the runic alphabet,
taken from the six letters of the first group. This is
the 16-character Viking Futhark in its commonest
form, known as Swedish-Danish or normal runes.
The Swedish word for letter: bokstav, means
beech-stavea line carved in beechwood. Wood
was the commonest writing material, but stone
inscriptions have lasted better .
The Indo-European heritage:
Swedish syster, Danish sster, Icelandic systir,
English sister, German Schwester , Dutch
zuster, Russian sestra, French sur, Latin soror,
Sanskrit svasr.

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The rune stone at Gripsholm P alace in Sderman-
land tells of a celebrated but tragic expedition led by
the Viking chief Ingvar in the 11th century . It ended
in disaster, with everyone dying in Srkland, the
land of the Saracens or Muslims , whose capital was
Baghdad.
After the opening words: Tola had this stone raised,
the mother of Harald, Ingvars brother(-in-arms),
there is a stanza of Old Norse poetry with its
characteristic alliteration and assonance . Here is the
verse and a translation:
Thair furu trikila They fared fearlessly
fiari at kuli far after gold
auk austarla and eke easterly
arni kafu feasted the eagle
tuu sunarla died southerly
a sirklanti in Srkland
Feast the eagle means give the eagle food (i.e.
slaughtered warriors).
SWEDISH CULTURE
The system of three grammatical genders; han, hon, det (hemasculine,
shefeminine, itneuter), has been reduced to two in standard Swedish; den
and det (itcommon, itneuter). Swedes say: Bten? Den r bl. (The boat?
Its blue.) but Huset? Det r rtt. (The house? Its red.) If sex is a decisive
characteristic, however, masculine and feminine pronouns are used: mannen
han, kvinnanhon, hingstenhan, stoethon (the manhe; the womanshe; the
stallionhe; the mareshe). The older language persists in time questions: Hur
mycket r klockan? Hon r halv tv . (Whats the time? Shes half past one.)
In modern Swedish, verbs have the same form in both singular and plural:
jag r, vi r (I am, we are), jag tar, vi tar (I take, we take). Special plural forms
are hardly ever met today, but occur in psalms and drinking songs.
The various plural forms of nouns are still very much alive, however:
kyrkakyrkor (churchchurches), hundhundar (dogdogs), gstgster
(guest-guests), skoskor (shoeshoes), pplepplen (appleapples), hushus
(househouses), manmn (manmen), musmss (mousemice).
WHEN SWEDISH BECAME SWEDISH
From the beginning of our era until the 9th century the languages of the
Scandinavian countries were on the whole identical, and are jointly referred
to as Proto-Norse. There are linguistic monuments from this period consist-
ing of a small number of runic inscriptions.
During the Viking Age (8001050) Scandinavians still spoke what was
fundamentally a common language, often referred to as the Danish tongue,
but at this time certain characteristic features were emerging to distinguish
Swedish, Danish and Norwegian. We possess thousands of rune stones from
the 11th century that bear witness to these linguistic developments. The
inscriptions are often rather monotonous, in the style of Holmfast raised this
stone after Holmbjrn, his brother, a good young man. pir carved. A
number of stones, however, enlighten us with their tales of noteworthy deeds
at home and bold expeditions both east and west. The language of the rune
stones marks the Runic period of Swedish. This was followed by Old Swe-
dish, spoken during Swedish Middle Ages and ending with the Reformation
in the early 16th century.
The language of the oldest records of the provincial laws from the early
13th century shows that Swedish and Danish had by then become separate
languages. And the runes were now replaced by the Latin alphabet.
INFLUENCES FROM OTHER LANGUAGES
Swedish has always embraced loans from other languages, but has survived as
a language of its own. A number of Latin and Greek words, like kyrka
(church), prst (priest), mssa (mass) and paradis (paradise) entered Swedish
along with Christianity.
During the Middle Ages, Continental influences continued unabated, and a
literature arose around the king and his court for their entertainment,
comprising such genres as courtly romances in verse and propaganda texts in
the form of rhymed chronicles. The monasteries began the large-scale
translation of religious literature, with the spiritual centre of Vadstena
producing a great number of texts. Towns grew up around the activities of
merchants and craftsmen. Ready-made words were imported and new words
were created in Swedish for all the new phenomena. The written language
received an indelible impression from the complicated sentence structure
and convoluted phraseology of Latin. But it was the urban culture of the
Hanseatic merchants that made the greatest impression on Swedish society,
and the German spoken and written by the Hanse merchants of Lbeck and
Hamburg moulded the Swedish language more than any other foreign
influence before or since.
The old vindga (window, wind-eye) in the roof was now replaced by
fnster ( Ger. Fenster) in the wall. Eldhus (fire-house) became kk (Ger.
Kche, kitchen), m (maiden) became jungfru, brja (begin) could also be
begynna, ml and tunga (language, tongue) became sprk.
A new town would have a rdhus (town hall), borgerskap (burgherdom),
vktare (watchmen), fngelse (prison), fogde (bailiff) and bdel (executioner).
Kpmn (merchants) dealt with varor (wares), vikter (weights), mynt (coins
struck at a mint) and rkenskap (accounts/reckonings). Among the trades
pursued were skomakare (cobbler), slaktare (butcher) and krgare (inn-
keeper).
German did not just introduce cultural terms into Swedish but had a
deeper effect with such basic structural words as ocks (also), sdan (such a),
men (but), ju (you know, of course) and strax (right away).
German loans poured in throughout the Middle Ages, continued with the
Some old Scandinavian loan words in
English:
Window vindue in Danish and Norwegian,
from Old Norse vindauga, an opening in the
roof.
Starboard , from steer and board, from
Scandinavian styrbord, the side of a ship on
which the steering oar is fastened.
A couple of Swedish words in other langua-
ges:
Ombudsman representative
Smrgsbord (sometimes smorgasbord in
English) large, mixed buffet of hors
duvre
Bjrken (the birch), a tree with Indo-
European roots, has similar names in many
languages: bjrk (Swedish and Icelandic),
birk (Danish), bjerk (Norwegian), birch
(English), Birke (German), berk (Dutch),
bereza (Russian), b erzs (Latvian), berzz
(Lithuanian), bhurja (Sanskrit).
The missionary Ansgar visited the trading
settlement of Birka in Lake Mlaren in the
9th century. The island, Bjrk, still has the
birch in its name.
Rk (smoke) is the only native Swedish word on this
awning.
Swedish has alwa ys been open to loan words , but
has alwa ys been able to adapt them and stamp them
with its own character , as here with the words tobak
and utensilier.

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SWEDISH CULTURE
Reformation in the 16th century, when Sweden adopted the Lutheran
doctrine, and were still shaping the language during the Thirty Years War in
the 17th century.
The language of science and higher education long remained the
internationally entrenched Latin. But during the 17th century, when the
France of Louis XIV was the leading nation of Europe, French became the
language with the highest status, and its influence grew stronger in the 18th
century. The new loan words (phonetically adapted) bear testimony to the
kind of culture that was being imported: modern, journalist, mbel (furniture),
balkong (balcony), salong (drawing-room), garderob (wardrobe), mustasch,
parfym (perfume), ss (sauce), balett, rid (theatre curtain), pjs (play/
drama) and roman (novel).
In the 19th century English started to flood into Swedish with words from
the spheres of industrialization, travel and sport: jobb (job), strejk (strike),
bojkott, rls (rail), lokomotiv, turist, sport, rekord.
When, in the same century, the Scandinavian countries had fought their
last wars, a powerful sense of intellectual identity arose, giving birth to
Scandinavianism and later to the literary movement known as the modern
breakthrough. Authors and artists mixed freely across national frontiers and
borrowed words from each other. This period gave Swedish the Danish and
Norwegian loan words hnsyn (consideration), spydig (scornful), underfundig
(ingenious), frlskelse (infatuation), and rabalder (commotion).
Without question, the 20th century was dominated by English, which was
virtually the sole provider of loan words, and on a massive scale. Swedens
many immigrant groups have given few words to Swedish, even though
kebab, pizza, pita, and ciabatta are now part and parcel of everyday life.
STANDARD SWEDISH, DIALECTS AND FINLANDSWEDISH
The normalized national language developed on the basis of the language
spoken in the Lake Mlaren region of Central Sweden and around Stock-
holm, the capital of Sweden. The national administration was located there,
and there was a vigorous ruling class language. Stabilization was greatly
promoted by the first complete bible translation (Gustav Vasas Bible, 1541)
and by another consequence of the Reformation, a comparatively high level
of public literacyfrom the end of the 17th century onwards, the clergy
were obliged to ensure that their parishioners were acquainted with
important passages from the Bible and knew the Lutheran catechism.
In the 18th century an educated middle class arose, and with it the
beginnings of the fairly straightforward and conversational Swedish used in
the press today. At the same time Swedish was being developed into a
scientific language by such renowned figures as Carl von Linn and Anders
Celsius and their popularizers.
Saint Birgitta is depicted here writing one of her
revelations. This remarkable woman was a copious
writer, an active politician and a great traveller .
Before dying in Rome in 1373, she founded
Vadstena Convent, whose diligent scribes produced
texts and translations that were of great
importance for the emerging Swedish written
language.
Old colloquial words brought in by
immigrants are tjej (girl) and jycke (dog)
from Romany, and kola (die) and kul
(fun) from Finnish.
In the Swedish spoken in immigrant areas
you will often hear the words guz (girl)
from Turkestan and jalla! (hurry up!) from
Arabic.
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SWEDISH CULTURE
The development of a national language continued apace with
urbanization, the growth of the press, universal schooling (the compulsory
elementary school system was introduced in 1842 with Swedish as a separate
subject), a vigorous national literature for the educated public (August
Strindberg and Selma Lagerlf), and the mass educational and cultural
movements of the folk high schools and the popular grass-roots movements
(temperance, trade unions, sport, self-improvement via study circles, etc) and
the Labour Movement where generations of politicians learned to speak in
public and write for a broad audience, followed more recently by
broadcasting and the Internet. Norms for the written language were
standardized by the Swedish Academy.
The national standard language and the regional standard languages are
almost identical when it comes to vocabulary and inflection.The differences
are found in pronunciation and intonation. The two most distinct regional
variants of standard Swedish are southern Swedish and Finland-Swedish
(which also has some distinctive vocabulary differences), but it is also easy to
identify people from Gothenburg, Stockholm, Gotland and Norrland, and it
is often possible to hear where an individual hails from.
Fewer and fewer people speak pure dialect. Those who use authentic
local dialects on an everyday basis usually switch to a more or less
standardized version when speaking to people from other places. If they
dont, outsiders often find what they are saying incomprehensible!
A special kind of Swedish is created in the immigrant-dominated suburbs
of the big cities. This proto-Creoleoften known as Rinkeby Swedish after
a Stockholm suburbis in the main a mutable youth language comprising
elements from a number of different immigrant languages, translated phrases,
and its own intonation and constructions.
Socially determined linguistic differences do exist in Swedish, but they are
minimal compared with those in many other countries.
The Swedish spoken in Finland is not a language of its own, but it does
have many features that are distinct from the standard Swedish spoken in
Sweden. It also has a number of different dialects. Swedish is spoken in the
land Islands, in coastal districts of southern Finland, and farther north along
the coast of the Gulf of Bothnia around towns like Vaasa in sterbotten.
For the most part Finland-Swedish pronunciation is closer to the spelling
and it has been influenced by the sound patterns of the Finnish language.
Some words which are more or less obsolete in Sweden are still in daily
use in Finland-Swedish, such as pulpet vs skolbnk (school-desk).
Finland-Swedish is under heavy pressure from Finnish both in terms of
vocabulary and syntax, and this is a problem, since if the Swedish used in
Finland is to be regarded as a fully legitimate language then it must be viable
in Sweden, too.
A wild man and a wild
woman bear the emblem of
the Vasa clan on the
frontispiece of the Gustav
Vasa Bible , the Bible of the
Swedish Reformation, which
was completed in 1541. For a
long time to come , the church
was closely tied to the
monarchy.
For centuries this
translation of the Bible was
the common property of the
Swedish people . It was of
incalculable significance for
the normalization of the
language and for the
development of Swedish
literature, and echoes from it
are still heard in Swedish
writers toda y.
Place names in Finland
Finnish Swedish
Tampere Tammerfors
Tammisaari Ekens
Porvoo Borg
Oulu Uleborg
Pori Bjrneborg
Savonlinna Nyslott
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SWEDISH CULTURE
SWEDISH IN THE 20TH CENTURY
In the past century both spoken and written Swedish have come to be
marked by a process of levelling. The increasing prevalence of reading led
to the written language having a powerful impact on the spoken language
and a tendency for many genuine spoken forms to be replaced by literal
forms taken from writing: te > till (to), > av (of), tappa > tappade
(dropped), huse > huset (the house), krrgrn > kyrkogrden (the church-
yard). The use of careful speech in broadcasting also reinforces this
tendency.
At the same time the spoken language has influenced the written language,
which has become less and less formal, with shorter sentences, simpler
constructions and less elevated vocabulary preferences. This development has
been spearheaded by both literature and the media. Many words which were
considered vulgar half a century ago are now quite acceptable in non-formal
prose. Words like tjej (girl/lass) and kille (boy/lad/guy) are now the normal
designations for pojke (boy) and flicka (girl) whereas some older people still
often regard the words as pure slang or at least strongly informal.
There is no longer any attempt to maintain a solemn style of Swedish with
archaic words and forms and complicated syntax. The distinctive but archaic
biblical style disappeared with the new Bible translation that was published
in 2000, allowing the character of the original texts to emerge instead.
A good deal of effort has been put into taking the gobbledegook out of the
language of public administration to make it more accessible to ordinary
citizens. The tangled, Byzantine language promoted by the EU is perceived as
a threat to the democratic values of modern public Swedish, and the
language usage advisers for Swedish with the EU Commission in Brussels
have a hard struggle to get translations put into good, comprehensible
Swedish that is not indelibly stained by the source language (usually French
or English).
In Sweden as in many other parts of the world English is the main provider
of loan words enjoying a high level of prestige in the fields of business,
computer technology and youth culture. Vocabulary is often borrowed
undigested: management, outsourcing, interface, e-mail, techno, and wannabe .
There is, however, fairly widespread resistance to an excess of untreated
English. Good usage guidelines follow two approaches in this respect, by
either replacing the loan-words with Swedish equivalents, as in joint venture
> samfretag, airbag >krockkudde, e-mail >e-post, or adapting them, as in ett
chips, (computer chip), mejlmejla (e-mail), hackare (hacker), mobba
mobbning (mob, mobbing, ie group bullying/harassment).
Most newly-created words, although many Swedes do not believe that this
is the case, are formed from native word elements. Swedish also has a natural
tendency to form compounds. In this way many new words have arisen on a
purely Swedish foundation: frldravandring (parents patrol), kretslopps-
samhlle (natural cycle community), avknoppning (spin-off), btluffa (go
island-hopping), svartbygge (unauthorized building), mysig (cosy, nice).
Others are created using native elements although the concept itself is
borrowed (producing a loan translation): krnkraft (nuclear power), spopera
(soap opera), skogsdd (Ger. Waldsterben, dieback).
HAS SWEDISH GOT A SOUL?
Does the Swedish language have a spirit of its own? A clear contrast between
Swedish tradition and the great Continental languages makes for problems in
the task of translating the regulatory system of the EU. French and German
officialese excels in long sentences and complex syntactical patterns with
long chains of subordinate clauses, insertions and participial phrases. This
periodic style is alien to Swedish, which prefers short sentences with few
subordinate clauses. It is of course possible to express an idea in extremely
complicated Swedish, too, but the Latin influence on Swedish legal writing
has always been counterbalanced by the ancient Scandinavian legacy of the
narrative provincial laws.
The Swedish system of word formation favours compounds, capable of
creating whole new concepts with unique expressive value, such as full
(cheap and nasty beer, lit. ugly beer), skpsupa (indulge in secret drinking, lit.
to cupboard-booze), strulputte (messer-upper, lit. confusiontiddler),
rknenisse (bean-counter, lit. counting-gnome). A good deal of Swedish
poetry relies on the impact of unique compounds. And it is difficult for any
translation to adequately capture the tone of expressions like solvarma
smultron med kylskpskall fil , sun-warmed wild strawberries with chilled fil (a
popular kind of thick curdled milk).
Strejk from the English word strike, is one of the
many English loan words that came to Sweden with
industrialization in the 19th century . Here a striking
bus-driver is doing picket duty to warn off any
strike-breakers.

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Sver egho konung at taka ok sva vrk.
The Swedes have the right to take a king,
and also to break (depose) him.
From the Old Vstgta Law, c. 1280.
SWEDISH CULTURE
LANGUAGE GUIDANCE IN SWEDEN
Language usage guidance has a long tradition in Sweden, from the first Bible
translators to the creators of present-day computer terms.
The task of language usage guidance is and always has been to give
language stability, to counteract contorted forms of expression and to replace
or adapt loan words so that they feel natural in Swedish.
The enlightened despot, Gustav III founded the Swedish Academy in 1786.
It has since had the responsibility of preparing a monumental Dictionary of
the Swedish Language and publishes a continuously updated normative word
list. In 1999 it published a Grammar of the Swedish Language which
described together with the Dictionary makes Swedish one of the most
exhaustively described languages in the world.
Language usage guidance is the concern of the Swedish Language Council
(a government agency). The Language council publishes punctuation and
usage rules, dictionaries and guide books, and provides a comprehensive, free,
public advisory service.
Technical terminology is the responsibility of the TNC (the Swedish Centre
for Terminology), which also maintains large databases of words and terms
used in the EU. Other bodies working with terminology are the Swedish
Computer Terminology Group and the Language Usage Committee of the
Swedish Medical Association.
A permanent struggle against bureaucratic gobbledegook is conducted by
the language usage advisers employed in the Government Offices . In this respect
Sweden is a pioneer. The Swedish approach to language usage guidance has
spread to a number of other countries and even to the administration of the
EU with campaigns such as Fight the Fog.
The Swedish Broadcasting Corporation and a number of large daily
newspapers employ their own language usage advisers to draw up and
monitor the observance of language usage guidelines.
All of these groups of language guidance advisers collaborate in a spirit of
near-complete unanimity, both with regard to the general goals of their work
and in relation to specific points of language usage.
DOES SWEDISH HAVE A FUTURE?
Language usage advisers are currently very concerned with what is being
referred to as domain lossceding territory to another language.
The other language today is of course English, and the domains that are
under threat are science and some other specialized fields of language usage.
Several companies with subsidiaries in other countries nowadays use
English as the language of preference within the group. A large proportion of
PhD dissertations on scientific subjects are now written directly in English.
Even some courses at universities are being given in English as a result of
globalization.
It is a matter of serious concern, however, when those in leading positions
in society are unable to participate in public debate in their own native
language because they lack Swedish words for the topic under discussion.
This a threat to the Swedish language, as it thereby becomes incapable of
covering every facet of existence, and this in turn represents a danger to
democracy.
The government commissioned the Swedish Language Council to examine
the state of Swedish, and the Council concluded that the Swedish language
needs to be safeguarded by means of legislation making clear that Swedish is
the principal language of Sweden and also its official language in internatio-
nal affairs. PhD dissertations are expected to include a summary in Swedish.
But whether you fear or welcome the replacement of Swedish by English,
it is fairly certain that it won't happen tomorrow. Most Swedes, after all,
despite the great strides made by internationalization, still have their roots in
a society that the vocabulary of the EU is unable to cover. They live in a rich
linguistic tradition of stories and songs, jokes and proverbial expressions.
Even if the talk of young people today is full of phrases and expressions in
English, Swedish still constitutes the solid foundation of their speech. What
Swedish will look like a few decades from now, however, is of course an open
question.
TEACHING SWEDISH ABROAD
Swedish instruction is provided at some 200 universities in 43 countries
worldwide, but not in Africa. The greatest concentration of university-level
Swedish instruction is found in Finland, the United States, Germany, Russia,
Poland and the Baltic countries. Swedish is often included in degree
programs in Germanic languages, Scandinavian studies or the equivalent. The
number of students of the Swedish language at university level is estimated
The most closely watched doors in the world
are opened here by the P ermanent Secretary
of the Swedish Academy, Horace Engdahl.
When the venerable clock in the lobby
strikes one he will announce the winner of
this year s Nobel Prize for Literature .

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SWEDISH CULTURE
at 50,000 and the number of teachers at 1,000. Instruction is largely
provided by non-Swedes. During the past few years, Swedish instruction in
the Baltic countries and north-western Russia has undergone particularly
rapid expansion.
TEN AUTHORS WHO HAVE WON A PLACE IN SWEDISH HEARTS
Carl Michael Bellman (17401795). An 18th century poet and troubadour
who is very much alive. Every Swede is able to sing something by him.
August Strindberg (18491912). Linguistic pioneer of the late 19th century,
whose concerns still feel contemporary. My fire burns hottest in Sweden, he
said of himself, and the same may be said of his linguistic energy.
Hjalmar Sderberg (18691941). A writer of the turn of the century with a
clear, spare style and an undertone of melancholy. A stylistic ideal for many
writers, but impossible to imitate.
Selma Lagerlf (18451940). A uniquely spell-binding story-teller.
Evert Taube (18901976). A romantic and a realist in one person. A
troubadour whose songs create summer as Swedes feel it in their hearts.
Harry Martinson (19041978). A wordsmith celebrating stony juniper slopes
and the black depths of space in Aniara.
Sara Lidman (19232004). Made the dialect of Vsterbotten familiar with
her early novels Tjrdalen (The Tar Pile) and Hjortronlandet (The Cloudberry
Patch), and later wrote Jrnbaneeposet (the Iron Road Epic).
Tove Jansson (19142001). Finland-Swedish writer who created Moomin
Valley in words and pictures. Made Swedes fall in love with Finland-Swedish.
Ulf Lundell (1949). Writer and rock poeta spokesman for his generation.
Astrid Lindgren (19072002). Inventive and with a very personal narrative
voice. The sunniest and darkest of writers, with a magical appeal to children.
Catharina Grnbaum is
Language Guidance Adviser at
Dagens Nyheter, Swedens leading
daily newspaper. Her books include
Strvtg i sprket (Excursions in
language), 1996, I sllskap med
sprket (With language as a
companion), 2000 and Sprkbladet
(Language notes), 2001.
The author alone is responsible for
the opinions expressed in this fact
sheet.
Translation: Hugh Rodwell
The Swedish Institute (SI) is a public agency established to disseminate knowledge about Sweden abroad.
It produces a wide range of publications, in several languages, on many aspects of Swedish society.
This text is published by the Swedish Institute and can also be found on www.sweden.se. It may not be
reused without prior consent from the Swedish Institute. To obtain permission to use the text, please
contact: webmaster@sweden.se. Photos or illustrations may not be used in other contexts.
For further information please contact
the Swedish Embassy or Consulate in your country
or The Swedish Institute: Box 7434, SE-103 91 Stockholm, Sweden. Office: Skeppsbron 2, Stockholm.
Tel: + 46-8-453 78 00. Fax: + 46-8-20 72 48. E-mail: si@si.se Internet: www.si.se and www.sweden.se
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