“ In the 16th century, again, charters written in Norwegian occur only as rare exceptions, and from the Reformation onward, when the Bible and the old laws were translated into Danish, not into Norwegian, Danish was not only the undisputed literary language of Norway, but also the colloquial language of dwellers in towns and of those who had learned to read. ”

“ But when Iceland was colonized (c. 900) , chiefly from western Norway, a separate (western) Norwegian dialect gradually sprang up, at first of course only differing slightly from the mother-tongue. It was not until the definitive introduction of Christianity (about A.D. 1000) that the language was so far differentiated as to enable us to distinguish, in runic inscriptions and in the literature which was then arising, four different dialects, which have ever since existed as the four literary languages—Icelandic, Norwegian, Swedish and Danish. ”

“ Towards the end of the middle ages the Danish influence shows an immense increase, which marks the gradual decline of Norwegian literature, until at last Norwegian as a literary language is completely supplanted by Danish. During the 15th century Norway has hardly any literature except charters, and as early as the end of that century by far the greatest number of these are written in almost pure Danish. ”

“ In the 19th century, especially about the middle of it, we again meet with conscious and energetic efforts after purism both in the formation of new words and in the adoption of words from the old language (id, diligence, mäla, to speak, fylking, battle-array, &c.) , and from the dialects (bliga, to gaze, flis, flake, skrabbig, bad, &c.) . Consequently the present vocabulary differs to a very great extent from that of the literature of the 17th century. ”

“ The inscriptions of the following centuries are of far less philological interest, because after the 13th century there exists another and more fruitful source for Old Swedish, viz. a literature in the proper sense of the word. Of runic literature nothing has been preserved to our days. The literature in the Latin letters is both in quality and extent incomparably inferior to Old Icelandic, though it, at least in quantity, considerably surpasses Old Norwegian. In age, however, it is inferior to both of them, beginning only in the 13th century. ”

“ Although, on account of the exceedingly conservative tendency of Icelandic orthography, the language of Modern Icelandic literature still seems to be almost identical with the language of the 17th century, it has in reality undergone a constant and active development, and, phonetically regarded, has changed considerably. Indeed, energetic efforts to bring about an orthography more in accordance with phonetics were made during the years 1835-1847 by the magazine entitled Fjölnir, where we find such authors as Jónas Hallgrímsson and Konr. ”

“ A thoroughly satisfactory Modern Danish grammar does not exist; the most detailed is that by K. Mikkelsen (1894) . The vocabulary of the 16th and 17th centuries is collected in Kalkar's Ordbog, mentioned above; that of the 18th and 19th centuries in the voluminous dictionary of Videnskabernes Selskab (1793-1905) , and in C. Molbech's Dansk Ordbog (2nd ed., 1859) ; that of our days in B. T. Dahl's and H. Hammer's Dansk Ordbog for folket (1903 seq.) .
As already mentioned, Danish at the Reformation became the language of the literary and educated classes of Norway and Dano-Norwegian. ”

“ The whole literature preserved is written in the Latin alphabet. The earliest manuscripts are not much later than the oldest Old Icelandic ones, and of the greatest interest. On the whole, however, the earliest Norwegian literature is in quality as well as in quantity incomparably inferior to the Icelandic. ”

“ The oldest sources of our knowledge of this tongue are the words which were borrowed during the first centuries of the Christian era by the Lapps from the inhabitants of central Sweden and Norway, and by the Finns from their neighbours in Finland and Esthonia (partly, it is true, also from their Gothic neighbours in Russia and the Baltic provinces) , and which have been preserved in Finnish and Lappish down to our own days. ”

“ Norway, except certain regions, especially in the northern part of the country, peopled by Finns and Lapps (mainly in the diocese of Tromsö) ; Denmark, with the Faeroes, Iceland and Greenland, where, however, Danish is only spoken by a very small part of the population; the northern half of Schleswig; and, finally, several Scandinavian colonies in the United States of North America (especially in Minnesota and Illinois) . ”

“ Both in vocabulary and syntax we find early, e.g. in the lawbook Jónsbók, printed in 1578 (-1580) , Danish exercising an important influence, as might be expected from political circumstances. In the 18th century, however, we meet with purist tendencies. As one of the leading men of this century may be mentioned the poet Eggert Ólafsson (d. 1768) , whose poems were not printed till 1832. Worthy of mention in the history of Modern Icelandic language are the learned societies which appeared in the same century, of which the first, under the name of “Hið ósýnilega,” was established in 1760. ”

“ IV. Danish, like Swedish, is divided into the two great Pre- and Post-Reformation epochs of Old and Modern Danish.
I. Old Danish.—The territory of Old Danish included not only the present Denmark, but also the southern Swedish provinces of Old Danish. Halland, Skåne and Blekinge, the whole of Schleswig, and, as stated above, for a short period also a great part of England, and parts of Normandy. The oldest monuments of the language are runic inscriptions, altogether about 225 in number. ”

“ His no longer extant Specimen Primariae Linguae Scantzianae (1636) gave but a very short review of Old Swedish inflections, but is remarkable as the first essay of its kind, and is perhaps the oldest attempt in modern times at a grammatical treatment of any old Germanic language. The study of runes was very popular in the 17th century; M. Celsius (d. 1679) deciphered the “staffless” runes and J. Hadorph (d. 1693) , who also did good work in editing Old Swedish texts, copied more than a thousand runic inscriptions, published by J. Göransson as Bautil (1750) . ”

“ The most important differences between Icelandic and Norwegian at the epoch of the oldest MSS. (about 1200) have already been noted. The tendency in Norwegian to reduce the use of the so-called u-Umlaut has already been mentioned. On the other hand, there appears in Norwegian in the 13th century another kind of vowel-assimilation, almost unknown to Icelandic, the vowel in terminations being in some degree influenced by the vowel of the preceding syllable. ”

“ If this view be correct, the Scandinavian languages have had an existence of seven thousand years at least. But it is only from the beginning of the Christian era that we can get any information concerning the language of the old Scandinavians, which seems by that time not only to The Primitive Scandinavian language. have spread over Denmark and great parts of southern and middle Sweden and of Norway, but also to have reached Finland (at least Nyland) and Esthonia. ”

“ To what extent the language of Greenland differed from that of Iceland we cannot judge from the few runic monuments which have come down to us from that colony.
Apart from the comparatively inconsiderable attempts at a grammatical treatment of Old Icelandic in the middle ages which we have Grammatical treatment. mentioned above, grammar as a science can only be said to have begun in the 17th century. ”

“ About the beginning of the 15th century initial kv occurs for old hv (not, however, in pronouns, which take kv only in western Norway) , as the local name Ǫviteseið (hvítr, white) . During the 15th century, Norway being united with Denmark, and at intervals also with Sweden, a great many Danisms and a few Suecisms are imported into the language. As Suecisms we may mention the termination -in of the 2nd pers. plur. ”

“ At the present day it is quite exceptionally (and chiefly in borrowed words of later date) that the principal accent in Swedish is on any other syllable than the first, as in lekámen, body, välsígna, to bless.
The scientific study of Modern Swedish [28] dates from Sweden's glorious epoch, the last half of the 17th century. The first regular The study of Modern Swedish. Swedish grammar was written in 1684 (not edited till 1884) in Latin by E. Aurivillius; the first in Swedish is by N. Tiällman (1696) . ”

“ Teutonic tribes. In fact we still possess, preserved down to our own times, primitive northern runic inscriptions, the oldest upon the utensils found at Vi in Schleswig and Thorsbjerg in Denmark, dating back to about A.D. 250-300, which, together with the MS. fragments of Ulfilas' Gothic translation of the Bible, about two hundred years later in date, constitute the oldest genuine monuments of any Teutonic tongue. ”

“ Their form is often metrical, in part at least. Most of them are anonymous, in so far that we do not know the name of the engraver, though, as a rule, the name of the man who ordered them is recorded. ”

“ Although dialectical differences are not altogether wanting, they do not occur to any great extent in the Old Icelandic literary Dialects. language. Thus, in some manuscripts we find ft replaced by fst (oft, ofst, often) ; in manuscripts from the western part of the island there appears in the 13th and 14th centuries a tendency to change lf, rf into lb, rb (tolf, tolb, twelve; þǫrf, þǫrb, want) , &c. ”

“ This group is distinctly divided mto three smaller groups—the dialects of southern Sweden (with the island of Bornholm) , of the Danish islands and of Jutland (and Schleswig) .
The study of the Modern Scandinavian dialects [32] has been very unequally prosecuted. Hardly anything has been done towards the investigation of the Icelandic dialects, while those of the Faeroes have been studied chiefly by V. U. Hammershaimb, J. Jakobsen, and A. C. Evensen. The Norwegian dialects have been thoroughly examined, first by Aasen, whose works give a general account of them ”

“ A little clog-calendar of the year 1644 seems to prove the same regarding the Valders (Southern Norway) dialect. How far the Old Norwegian dialects on the Faeroes, in Ireland and Scotland, on the Scottish islands, and on the Isle of Man differed from the mother-tongue it is impossible to decide, on account of the few remnants of these dialects which exist apart from local names, viz. ”

“ Already before the beginning of the so-called Viking period Transformation. (since about A.D. 800) the primitive Scandinavian language had undergone a considerable transformation, as is proved, for example, by the remarkable runic stone at Istaby in the south of Sweden, with the inscription (about A.D. 650) :—
AFĄTR HARIWULĄFĄ HAþUWULĄFR HAERUWULĄFIR WĄRAIT RUNAR þAIAR; Engl.: In memory of HariwulfR, HaþuwulfR, son of HeruwulfR, wrote these runes. Here, e.g. we find nom. sing. ”

“ On the other hand, in all essential matters it is much earlier in character than the language of contemporary Gothic manuscripts, and no doubt approaches more nearly than any Teutonic idiom the primitive form of the Teutonic tongue For the sake of comparison, we give a Gothic translation of one of the oldest of the primitive Scandinavian inscriptions, that on the golden horn of Gallehus, found on the Danish-German frontier, and dating from about A.D. 300.—
Scand.: EK HLEWAGASTIR. HOLTINGAR. HORNA. TAWIDO; Goth.: ik Hliugasts Hultiggs haurn tawida ”