Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1941, Blaðsíða 227

THE SCANDINAVIAN COMMUNITY OF
LANGUAGE
By Elias Wessén,
Professor of Scandinavian philology in the University of Stockholm.
Afactor of fundamental importance for the widespread
cultural and economic co-operation which takes place
among the Scandinavian countries in our time is the com-
munity of language which exists among them. 'Wherever Swedes,
Norwegians, and Danes come together, at the council board or
on convivial occasions, each of them can use his own language
and yet be understood by the others. Where in our disunited world
does one find anything corresponding to this relationship between
three politically independent nations? In this community of
language we possess an invaluable asset, a tangible proof that the
Northern nations belong together and are branches of one com-
mon trunk, a reminder that we of the North have a common
homeland greater than our separate countries.
In the following pages we shall glance briefly at the historical
origins of the Scandinavian community of language, at its present
implications, and at the problems which we must tackle if we
want to preserve this linguistic heritage for future generations.
Originally, the Scandinavian North was one common cultural
area, speaking one language. This language, which we call
Primitive Scandinavian, and which is the parent-tongue from
which all the present Scandinavian dialects are descended, we
know principally from a number of runic inscriptions dating from
the period about 250—700 A. D. These inscriptions have been
found in widely separated parts of Scandinavia, from Gotland in
the east to the west coast of Norway, and from Slesvig to Upp-
land and the Trondheim area. In this period there appears to
have been no dialect differences to speak of, and the whole of
the North must have spoken substantially the same language.
But at the time of the Great Migrations and in the Viking
Age the Northern languages underwent a profound change, and
this in its turn resulted in the rise of linguistic differences within
the Scandinavian area. For long these differences were, however,
insignificant, and the Scandinavians continued to regard their
language, which they called “the Danish tongue,” as the same
Le Nord, 1941, 4 ^