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197-431: Swedes ( Swedish : svenskar ), or Swedish people , are an ethnic group native to Sweden , who share a common ancestry, culture , history and language . They mostly inhabit Sweden and the other Nordic countries , in particular Finland where they are an officially recognized minority, with Swedish being one of the official languages of the country, and with a substantial diaspora in other countries, especially
394-876: A Gothic population had crossed the Baltic Sea before the second century AD. They reaching Scythia on the coast of the Black Sea in modern Ukraine, where Goths left their archaeological traces in the Chernyakhov culture . In the fifth and sixth centuries, they became divided as the Visigoths and the Ostrogoths , and established powerful successor-states of the Roman Empire in the Iberian Peninsula and Italy respectively. Crimean Gothic communities appear to have survived intact in
591-445: A common gender with the definite suffix -en and the definite article den , in contrast with the neuter gender equivalents -et and det . The verb system was also more complex: it included subjunctive and imperative moods and verbs were conjugated according to person as well as number . By the 16th century, the case and gender systems of the colloquial spoken language and the profane literature had been largely reduced to
788-470: A guttural or "French R" pronunciation in the South Swedish dialects ; consequently, these dialects lack retroflex consonants . Swedish is a stress-timed language, where the time intervals between stressed syllables are equal. However, when casually spoken, it tends to be syllable-timed . Any stressed syllable carries one of two tones , which gives Swedish much of its characteristic sound. Prosody
985-648: A millennium ago. These people include the Swedish-speakers in mainland Finland – speaking a Swedish dialect commonly referred to as Finland Swedish (finlandssvenska which is part of the East-Swedish dialect group) and the almost exclusively Swedish-speaking population of Åland speaking in a manner closer to the adjacent dialects in Sweden than to adjacent dialects of Finland Swedish. Estonia also had an important Swedish minority which persisted for about 650 years on
1182-524: A prow in both ends ( longships ). Which kings ( kuningaz ) ruled these Suiones is unknown, but Norse mythology presents a long line of legendary and semi-legendary kings going back to the last centuries BC. As for literacy in Sweden itself, the runic script was in use among the south Scandinavian elite by at least the second century AD, but all that has survived from the Roman Period is curt inscriptions on artefacts, mainly of male names, demonstrating that
1379-522: A battle on the east bank of the River Idle . According to Bede, Rædwald had almost accepted a bribe from Æthelfrith to turn Edwin over, before Rædwald's wife persuaded him to value friendship and honour over treasure. After the ensuing battle, during which Bede says Rædwald's son Rægenhere was slain, Rædwald's power was probably significant enough to merit his inclusion in a list of seven kings said by Bede to have established rule over all of England south of
1576-428: A billeted ribbon, and terminates in a shape resembling a foot. A fourth ribbon, forming the animal's neck, starts from the head and travels downwards, under and over a ribbon forming a limb, and terminating in a pellet-filled twist, at the bottom right corner, representing the front hip. Two limbs leave from the hip. One immediately terminates in the border; the second travels upwards as a billeted ribbon, under and over
1773-522: A change from tauþr into tuþr . Moreover, the øy diphthong changed into a long, close ø , as in the Old Norse word for "island". By the end of the period, these innovations had affected most of the Runic Swedish-speaking area as well, with the exception of the dialects spoken north and east of Mälardalen where the diphthongs still exist in remote areas. Old Swedish (Swedish: fornsvenska )
1970-518: A conversation. Due to the close relation between the Scandinavian languages, a considerable proportion of speakers of Danish and especially Norwegian are able to understand Swedish. There is considerable migration between the Nordic countries , but owing to the similarity between the cultures and languages (with the exception of Finnish ), expatriates generally assimilate quickly and do not stand out as
2167-418: A dragon's head to become a soaring dragon with outstretched wings. It was excavated as hundreds of rusted fragments; first displayed following an initial reconstruction in 1945–46, it took its present form after a second reconstruction in 1970–71. The helmet and the other artefacts from the site were determined to be the property of Edith Pretty , owner of the land on which they were found. She donated them to
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#17328376901782364-504: A few northern German territories: Swedish Pomerania , Bremen-Verden and Wismar . The Swedish armies may have destroyed up to 2,000 castles, 18,000 villages and 1,500 towns in Germany , one-third of all German towns. In the middle of the 17th century Sweden was the third largest country in Europe by land area, only surpassed by Russia and Spain. Sweden reached its largest territorial extent under
2561-487: A fifth pattern, known only from seven small fragments and incapable of restoration, is known to occur only once on an otherwise symmetrical helmet and may have been used to replace a damaged panel. The existence of these five designs has been generally understood since the first reconstruction, published in 1947. The succeeding three decades gave rise to an increased understanding of the designs and their parallels in contemporary imagery, allowing possible reconstructions of
2758-448: A fiscal crisis in the early 1990s. Sweden's GDP declined by around 5%. In 1992, there was a run on the currency, with the central bank briefly increasing interest to 500%. The response of the government was to cut spending and institute a multitude of reforms to improve Sweden's competitiveness, among them reducing the welfare state and privatising public services and goods. Much of the political establishment promoted EU membership, and
2955-727: A group. According to the 2000 United States Census , some 67,000 people over the age of five were reported as Swedish speakers, though without any information on the degree of language proficiency. Similarly, there were 16,915 reported Swedish speakers in Canada from the 2001 census. Although there are no certain numbers, some 40,000 Swedes are estimated to live in the London area in the United Kingdom. Outside Sweden and Finland, there are about 40,000 active learners enrolled in Swedish language courses. In
3152-404: A king. The helmet displays both wealth and power, with a modification to the sinister eyebrow subtly linking the wearer to the one-eyed Germanic god Odin . Two other items, a " wand " and a whetstone , exhibit no practical purpose, but may have been perceived as instruments of power. The so-called wand or rod, surviving only as a 96 mm (3.8 in) gold and garnet strip with a ring at
3349-478: A known name, and a famous one, outstrips the evidence. The burial is certainly a commemorative display of both wealth and power, but does not necessarily memorialise Rædwald, or a king; theoretically, the ship-burial could have even been a votive offering. The case for Rædwald depends heavily on the dating of the coins, yet the current dating is only precise within two decades, and Merovingian coin chronologies have shifted before. The case for Rædwald depends on
3546-609: A large proportion of the remaining 100,000 in the Scandinavian countries, France, Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, Canada and Australia. Over three million people speak Swedish as a second language, with about 2,410,000 of those in Finland. According to a survey by the European Commission , 44% of respondents from Finland who did not have Swedish as a native language considered themselves to be proficient enough in Swedish to hold
3743-463: A modern parliamentary democracy, achieved by the time of World War I. As the Industrial Revolution progressed during the 20th century, people gradually began moving into cities to work in factories and became involved in socialist unions. A communist revolution was avoided in 1917, following the re-introduction of parliamentarism , and the country saw comprehensive democratic reforms under
3940-425: A more abstract sense, such as that set of fish; while fisken means "the fish". In certain cases, the definite form indicates possession, e. g., jag måste tvätta hår et ("I must wash my hair"). Adjectives are inflected in two declensions – indefinite and definite – and they must match the noun they modify in gender and number. The indefinite neuter and plural forms of an adjective are usually created by adding
4137-595: A non-profit organization, have shown a steady growth of Swedes living outside Sweden. The 2022 survey indicates an approximate 685,000 Swedes living abroad, up from 660,000 in 2015 and 546,000 in 2011. Swedish language Swedish ( endonym : svenska [ˈsvɛ̂nːska] ) is a North Germanic language from the Indo-European language family , spoken predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland . It has at least 10 million native speakers, making it
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#17328376901784334-435: A noun. They can double as demonstrative pronouns or demonstrative determiners when used with adverbs such as här ("here") or där ("there") to form den/det här (can also be "denna/detta") ("this"), de här (can also be "dessa") ("these"), den/det där ("that"), and de där ("those"). For example, den där fisken means "that fish" and refers to a specific fish; den fisken is less definite and means "that fish" in
4531-507: A scrap placed under another piece to fill a gap, for it is "otherwise inexplicable." Occurring on the cheek guards, the neck guard and the skull cap, the larger interlace pattern was capable of a complete reconstruction. Unlike the two identified figural scenes, partial die impressions of design 4 were used in addition to full die impressions. Blank spaces on the skull cap and neck guard, devoid of decorative designs, allowed for impressions of design 4 that are nearly or entirely complete. On
4728-462: A secondary function akin to a crown . The helmet was both a functional piece of armour and a decorative piece of metalwork. An iconic object from an archaeological find hailed as the "British Tutankhamen", it has become a symbol of the Early Middle Ages , "of Archaeology in general", and of England . The visage contains eyebrows, a nose, and moustache, creating the image of a man joined by
4925-421: A segment of the rim of a shield which would be of the same diameter as that held by the rider in design 2." The theory of design 3 as a replacement panel gains some support from damage towards the back of the helmet, but is contradicted by the placement of fragment (c). The crest, complete for 25.5 cm (10.0 in) from front to back, is missing 2 cm (0.79 in) above the rear dragon head. This head
5122-407: A small and possibly divine figure hovers behind the rider, its body taking the form of a victorious swastika while it seemingly guides the spear. An overarching theme of the design may therefore be that of fate. In this understanding the divine figure, possibly Odin, guides the warrior in battle, but does not completely free him from the deadly threats he faces. The gods are themselves subject to
5319-618: A special branch of the Research Institute for the Languages of Finland has official status as the regulatory body for Swedish in Finland. Among its highest priorities is to maintain intelligibility with the language spoken in Sweden. It has published Finlandssvensk ordbok , a dictionary about the differences between Swedish in Finland and Sweden. From the 13th to 20th century, there were Swedish-speaking communities in Estonia , particularly on
5516-442: A suffix ( -t or -a ) to the common form of the adjective, e. g., en grön stol (a green chair), ett grönt hus (a green house), and gröna stolar ("green chairs"). The definite form of an adjective is identical to the indefinite plural form, e. g., den gröna stolen ("the green chair"), det gröna huset ("the green house"), and de gröna stolarna ("the green chairs"). Swedish pronouns are similar to those of English. Besides
5713-413: A village, Gammalsvenskby ("Old Swedish Village"). A few elderly people in the village still speak a Swedish dialect and observe the holidays of the Swedish calendar, although their dialect is most likely facing extinction. From 1918 to 1940, when Estonia was independent, the small Swedish community was well treated. Municipalities with a Swedish majority, mainly found along the coast, used Swedish as
5910-440: Is Swedish ( svenska [ˈsvɛ̂nːska] ) a North Germanic language, spoken by approximately 10 million people, predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland, especially along its coast and on the Åland islands. It is, to a considerable extent, mutually intelligible with Norwegian and to a lesser extent with spoken Danish (see especially " Classification "). Along with the other North Germanic languages, Swedish
6107-726: Is a descendant of Old Norse , the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era . It is the largest of the North Germanic languages by numbers of speakers. Standard Swedish , used by most Swedish people, is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties descended from
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6304-581: Is believed to have been derived from the Proto-Indo-European reflexive pronominal root, *s(w)e , as the Latin suus . The word must have meant "one's own (tribesmen)". The same root and original meaning is found in the ethnonym of the Germanic tribe Suebi , preserved to this day in the name Swabia . Like other Scandinavians , Swedes descend from the presumably Indo-European Battle Axe culture and also
6501-643: Is co- official language . Swedish was long spoken in parts of Estonia , although the current status of the Estonian Swedish speakers is almost extinct. It is also used in the Swedish diaspora , most notably in Oslo , Norway, with more than 50,000 Swedish residents. Swedish is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages . In the established classification, it belongs to
6698-650: Is difficult. When Mul of Kent , the brother of King Cædwalla of Wessex , was killed in 687, the price paid in recompense was equivalent to a king's weregild . If the lives of a king and his brother were equal, their graves might be equally hard to tell apart. Rædwald thus remains a possible but uncertain identification. As the British Museum's former director Sir David M. Wilson wrote, while Rædwald may have been buried at Sutton Hoo, "the little word may should be brought into any identification of Rædwald. After all it may or even might be Sigeberht who died in
6895-477: Is generally seen as adding specific Central Swedish features to the new Bible. Though it might seem as if the Bible translation set a very powerful precedent for orthographic standards, spelling actually became more inconsistent during the remainder of the century. It was not until the 17th century that spelling began to be discussed, around the time when the first grammars were written. Capitalization during this time
7092-410: Is itself mostly missing, and is absent from the 1945–46 reconstruction. These missing portions are offered by Bruce-Mitford as a possible indication that the helmet at one time suffered damage necessitating the restoration of at least one design 2 panel with a new equestrian scene. This theory does not explain why the rear crest and dragon head would not have been themselves repaired, however, and it
7289-580: Is known about King Rædwald of East Anglia, according to the Anglo-Saxon historian Simon Keynes , could fit "on the back of the proverbial postage stamp". Almost all that is recorded comes from the eighth-century Historia ecclesiastica gentis Anglorum by the Benedictine monk Bede , leaving knowledge of Rædwald's life, already poorly recorded, at the mercy of such things as differing interpretations of Ecclesiastical Latin syntax. Bede writes that Rædwald
7486-411: Is known about contemporary kingly graves; if there was any special significance to the items termed regalia, it could have been religious instead of kingly significance, and if anything of kingly graves is known, it is that the graves of even the mere wealthy contained riches that any king would be happy to own. Distinguishing between graves of chieftains, regents, kings, and status-seeking arrivistes
7683-538: Is marked primarily through suffixes (endings), complemented with separate definite and indefinite articles . The prosody features both stress and in most dialects tonal qualities. The language has a comparatively large vowel inventory. Swedish is also notable for the voiceless dorso-palatal velar fricative , a highly variable consonant phoneme . Swedish nouns and adjectives are declined in genders as well as number . Nouns are of common gender ( en form) or neuter gender ( ett form). The gender determines
7880-531: Is missing an eye, which laser scanning revealed to have been removed by a "sharp cut, probably in the original model used for the mould." Odin too lost an eye, thus evidencing the identification of the Torslunda figure as him, and the Sutton Hoo figures as devotees of him. Eight fragments and representations comprise all known instances of the second design, It is thought to have originally appeared twelve times on
8077-409: Is needed for any credible attempt to identify its honoree. Thirty-seven gold Merovingian coins found alongside the other objects offer the most objective means of dating the burial. The coins—in addition to three blanks, and two small ingots—were found in a purse, and are themselves objects of considerable interest. Until 1960, and largely on the basis of numismatic chronologies established during
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8274-442: Is not helped by fragment (c). This fragment is an edge piece placed in the 1970–71 reconstruction on the dexter rear of the helmet at the bottom left of a panel where either design 2 or design 3 is expected, yet is "an isolated element quite out of context with any other surviving fragment and with what appears to be the subject matter of the design 3 panel." Bruce-Mitford suggests that as it is an edge piece it may have originally been
8471-563: Is often one of the most noticeable differences between dialects. The standard word order is, as in most Germanic languages , V2 , which means that the finite verb (V) appears in the second position (2) of a declarative main clause . Swedish morphology is similar to English; that is, words have comparatively few inflections . Swedish has two genders and is generally seen to have two grammatical cases – nominative and genitive (except for pronouns that, as in English, also are inflected in
8668-613: Is one of the official languages of the European Union , and one of the working languages of the Nordic Council . Under the Nordic Language Convention , citizens of the Nordic countries speaking Swedish have the opportunity to use their native language when interacting with official bodies in other Nordic countries without being liable for interpretation or translation costs. The Swedish Language Council ( Språkrådet )
8865-558: Is sometimes considered as the foundation of modern Sweden . Shortly afterwards he rejected Catholicism and led Sweden into the Protestant Reformation . Economically, Gustav Vasa broke the monopoly of the Hanseatic League over Swedish Baltic Sea trade. The Hanseatic League had been officially formed at Lübeck on the sea coast of Northern Germany in 1356. The Hanseatic League sought civil and commercial privileges from
9062-475: Is termed nusvenska (lit., "Now-Swedish") in linguistics, and started in the last decades of the 19th century. It saw a democratization of the language with a less formal written form that approached the spoken one. The growth of a public school system also led to the evolution of so-called boksvenska (literally, "book Swedish"), especially among the working classes, where spelling to some extent influenced pronunciation, particularly in official contexts. With
9259-517: Is the predominant language; in 19 municipalities , 16 of which are located in Åland , Swedish is the sole official language. Åland county is an autonomous region of Finland. According to a rough estimation, as of 2010 there were up to 300,000 Swedish-speakers living outside Sweden and Finland. The largest populations were in the United States (up to 100,000), the UK, Spain and Germany (c. 30,000 each) and
9456-450: Is the regulator of Swedish in Sweden but does not attempt to enforce control of the language, as for instance the Académie française does for French . However, many organizations and agencies require the use of the council's publication Svenska skrivregler in official contexts, with it otherwise being regarded as a de facto orthographic standard. Among the many organizations that make up
9653-407: Is the sole official language of Åland (an autonomous province under the sovereignty of Finland), where the vast majority of the 26,000 inhabitants speak Swedish as a first language. In Finland as a whole, Swedish is one of the two "national" languages, with the same official status as Finnish (spoken by the majority) at the state level and an official language in some municipalities . Swedish
9850-574: Is the term used for the medieval Swedish language. The start date is usually set to 1225 since this is the year that Västgötalagen ("the Västgöta Law") is believed to have been compiled for the first time. It is among the most important documents of the period written in Latin script and the oldest Swedish law codes . Old Swedish is divided into äldre fornsvenska (1225–1375) and yngre fornsvenska (1375–1526), "older" and "younger" Old Swedish. Important outside influences during this time came with
10047-478: Is usually credited for introducing Christianity in 829, but the new religion did not begin to fully replace paganism until the 12th century. During the 11th century, Christianity became the most prevalent religion, and from 1050 Sweden is counted as a Christian nation. The period between 1100 and 1400 was characterized by internal power struggles and competition among the Nordic kingdoms. Swedish kings also began to expand
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#173283769017810244-457: The Gustav Vasa Bible , a translation deemed so successful and influential that, with revisions incorporated in successive editions, it remained the most common Bible translation until 1917. The main translators were Laurentius Andreæ and the brothers Laurentius and Olaus Petri . The Vasa Bible is often considered to be a reasonable compromise between old and new; while not adhering to
10441-710: The Anglo-Saxon elite had extensive contacts with Swedish elite. In the sixth century Jordanes named two tribes, which he calls the Suehans and the Suetidi , who lived in Scandza . The Suehans, he says, have very fine horses just as the Thyringi tribe ( alia vero gens ibi moratur Suehans, quae velud Thyringi equis utuntur eximiis ). The Icelander Snorri Sturluson (1179–1241) wrote of the sixth-century Swedish king Adils (Eadgils) that he had
10638-640: The Battle of Narva in 1700, one of the first battles of the Great Northern War , the Russian army was so severely decimated that Sweden had an open chance to invade Russia. However, Charles did not pursue the Russian army, instead turning against Poland–Lithuania and defeating the Polish king Augustus II and his Saxon allies at the Battle of Kliszow in 1702. This gave Russia time to rebuild and modernize its army. After
10835-511: The British Museum , where the helmet is on permanent display in Room 41. The helmet was buried among other regalia and instruments of power as part of a furnished ship-burial, probably dating from the early seventh century. The ship had been hauled from the nearby river up the hill and lowered into a prepared trench. Inside this, the helmet was wrapped in cloths and placed to the left of the head of
11032-643: The Byzantine Empire and the Abbasid Caliphate . It was abandoned c. AD 975 , around the same time Sigtuna was founded as a Christian town some 35 km to the northeast. It has been estimated that the population in Viking Age Birka was between 500 and 1000 people. Archaeological finds indicate that Birka was still wealthy in the 9th and 10th centuries. Thousands of graves, coins, jewelry and other luxury items have been found there. St. Ansgar
11229-665: The Crimea until the late-18th century. The Swedish Viking Age lasted roughly between the eighth and 11th centuries. During this period, it is believed that the Swedes expanded from eastern Sweden and incorporated the Geats to the south. It is believed that Swedish Vikings and Gutar mainly travelled east and south, going to Finland, the Baltic countries, Russia, Belarus , Ukraine the Black Sea and further as far as Baghdad . Their routes passed through
11426-599: The East Scandinavian languages , together with Danish , separating it from the West Scandinavian languages , consisting of Faroese , Icelandic , and Norwegian . However, more recent analyses divide the North Germanic languages into two groups: Insular Scandinavian (Faroese and Icelandic), and Continental Scandinavian (Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish), based on mutual intelligibility due to heavy influence of East Scandinavian (particularly Danish) on Norwegian during
11623-463: The French vous (see T-V distinction ). Ni wound up being used as a slightly less familiar form of du , the singular second person pronoun, used to address people of lower social status. With the liberalization and radicalization of Swedish society in the 1950s and 1960s, these class distinctions became less important, and du became the standard, even in formal and official contexts. Though
11820-826: The Greece Runestones and the Varangian Runestones . There was also considerable participation in expeditions westwards, which are commemorated on stones such as the England Runestones . The last major Swedish Viking expedition appears to have been the ill-fated expedition of Ingvar the Far-Travelled to Serkland , the region south-east of the Caspian Sea . Its members are commemorated on the Ingvar Runestones , none of which mentions any survivor. What happened to
12017-595: The Marshall Plan and participated in the Organization of Economic Co-operation and Development ( OECD ). During most of the post-war era, the country was governed by the Swedish Social Democratic Party largely in cooperation with trade unions and industry. The government actively pursued an internationally competitive manufacturing sector of primarily large corporations. Sweden, like countries around
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#173283769017812214-609: The Nordic Bronze Age which was followed by the Pre-Roman Iron Age . Like other North Germanic peoples , Swedes likely emerged as a distinct ethnic group during this time. Swedes enters written proto-history with the Germania of Tacitus in 98 AD. In Germania 44, 45 he mentions the Swedes ( Suiones ) as a powerful tribe ( distinguished not merely for their arms and men, but for their powerful fleets ) with ships that had
12411-563: The Pitted Ware culture . Prior to the first century AD there is no written evidence and historiography is based solely on various forms of archeology . The Proto-Germanic language is thought to have originated in the arrival of the Battle Axe culture in Scandinavia and the Germanic tribal societies of Scandinavia were thereafter surprisingly stable for thousands of years. The merger of the Battle Axe and Pitted Ware cultures eventually gave rise to
12608-511: The United States , particularly during the 19th and early 20th centuries, there was a significant Swedish-speaking immigrant population. This was notably true in states like Minnesota , where many Swedish immigrants settled. By 1940, approximately 6% of Minnesota's population spoke Swedish. Although the use of Swedish has significantly declined, it is not uncommon to find older generations and communities that still retain some use and knowledge of
12805-459: The United States . The English term "Swede" has been attested in English since the late 16th century and is of Middle Dutch or Middle Low German origin. In Swedish , the term is svensk , which is from the name of svear (or Swedes), the people who inhabited Svealand in eastern central Sweden , and were listed as Suiones in Tacitus ' history Germania from the first century AD. The term
13002-412: The fourth most spoken Germanic language , and the first among its type in the Nordic countries overall. Swedish, like the other Nordic languages , is a descendant of Old Norse , the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age . It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish , although the degree of mutual intelligibility is dependent on
13199-581: The nationalist ideas that emerged during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the languages have separate orthographies , dictionaries, grammars, and regulatory bodies. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish are thus from a linguistic perspective more accurately described as a dialect continuum of Scandinavian (North Germanic), and some of the dialects, such as those on the border between Norway and Sweden, especially parts of Bohuslän , Dalsland , western Värmland , western Dalarna , Härjedalen , Jämtland , and Scania , could be described as intermediate dialects of
13396-410: The object form) – although it is debated if the genitive in Swedish should be seen as a genitive case or just the nominative plus the so-called genitive s , then seen as a clitic . Swedish has two grammatical numbers – plural and singular . Adjectives have discrete comparative and superlative forms and are also inflected according to gender, number and definiteness . The definiteness of nouns
13593-433: The pressblech panels that shared edges with the helmet. A final layer of adornments added to the helmet a crest, eyebrows, nose and mouth piece, and three dragon heads. A hollow iron crest ran across the top of the cap and terminated at front and back. It was made of D-sectioned tubing and consisted of two parts, an inverted U-shaped piece into the bottom of which a flat strip was placed. As no traces of solder remain,
13790-450: The "background was punched down" and filled with niello or another metallic inlay, leaving "triangles in relief" that were silvered. A tracer (a "rather blunt chisel . . . used chiefly for outlining" ) was used to provide a grooved border on each side. Running horizontally aside the nasal bridge were three punched circles per side, inlaid with silver and possibly surrounded by niello. Beneath these circles, also running horizontally from
13987-424: The 1809 loss of eastern Sweden to Russia which became the highly autonomous Grand Principality of Finland in Imperial Russia . In interest of reestablishing Swedish dominance in the Baltic Sea, Sweden allied itself against its traditional ally and benefactor, France, in the Napoleonic Wars . Sweden's role in the Battle of Leipzig gave it the authority to force Denmark-Norway, an ally of France, to cede Norway to
14184-399: The 1950s, when their use was removed from all official recommendations. A very significant change in Swedish occurred in the late 1960s, with the so-called du-reformen . Previously, the proper way to address people of the same or higher social status had been by title and surname. The use of herr ("Mr." or "Sir"), fru ("Mrs." or "Ma'am") or fröken ("Miss") was considered
14381-537: The 19th century, the Sutton Hoo coins were generally dated to 650–660 AD. With this range the burial was variously attributed to such monarchs as Æthelhere , Anna , Æthelwald , Sigeberht , and Ecgric , all of whom ruled and died in or around the given period. The proposed range of years, and accordingly the regal attributions, was modified by later studies that took the specific gravity of some 700 Merovingian gold coins, which with some predictability were minted with decreasing purity over time, to estimate
14578-478: The 8th century, the common Germanic language of Scandinavia, Proto-Norse , evolved into Old Norse. This language underwent more changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia, 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). The dialects of Old East Norse spoken in Sweden are called Runic Swedish , while
14775-611: The American military in Iraq. Sweden also has a long history of participating in international military operations, including most recently, Afghanistan , where Swedish troops are under NATO command, and in EU sponsored peacekeeping operations in Kosovo , Bosnia and Herzegovina , and Cyprus . Sweden held the chair of the European Union from 1 July to 31 December 2009. The native language of nearly all Swedes
14972-460: The Apostle . Even if not baptismal spoons, invoking the conversion of Paul —a theory which has been linked to Rædwald's conversion at Kent —they are unmistakably associated with Christianity. Rædwald may be the easiest name to attach to the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, but for all the attempts to do so, these arguments have been made with more vigour than persuasiveness. The desire to link a burial with
15169-497: The Centre Party). Between 1870 and 1914, Sweden began developing the industrialized economy that exists today. Strong grassroots movements sprung up in Sweden during the latter half of the 19th century ( trade unions , temperance groups, and independent religious groups), creating a strong foundation of democratic principles. In 1889 The Swedish Social Democratic Party was founded. These movements precipitated Sweden's migration into
15366-469: The Dnieper down south to Constantinople , on which they did numerous raids. The Byzantine Emperor Theophilos noticed their great skills in war and invited them to serve as his personal bodyguard, known as the varangian guard . The Swedish Vikings, called " Rus " are also believed to be the founding fathers of Kievan Rus . The Arabic traveller Ibn Fadlan described these Vikings as following: I have seen
15563-535: The Holy Roman states. Gustav Adolphus planned to become the new Holy Roman Emperor , ruling over a united Scandinavia and the Holy Roman states, but he died at the Battle of Lützen in 1632. After the Battle of Nördlingen , Sweden's only significant military defeat of the war, pro-Swedish sentiment among the German states faded. These German provinces excluded themselves from Swedish power one by one, leaving Sweden with only
15760-592: The King of Sweden on 14 January 1814 in exchange for northern German provinces, at the Treaty of Kiel . The Norwegian attempts to keep their status as a sovereign state were rejected by the Swedish king, Charles XIII . He launched a military campaign against Norway on 27 July 1814, ending in the Convention of Moss , which forced Norway into a personal union with Sweden under the Swedish crown, which lasted until 1905. The 1814 campaign
15957-555: The Kingdom of Sweden had a much larger territory, especially during "The Era of Great Power" ( Swedish Empire ) in 1611–1718. Finland was a part of Sweden until 1809. Since there was no separate Finnish nationality at those times, it is not unusual that sources predating 1809 refer both to Swedes and Finns as "Swedes". This is particularly the case with New Sweden , where some of the Swedish settlers were of Finnish origin. Questionnaire surveys of Swedish embassies conducted by Swedes Worldwide,
16154-464: The Modern Swedish period were the gradual assimilation of several different consonant clusters into the fricative [ʃ] and later into [ɧ] . There was also the gradual softening of [ɡ] and [k] into [j] and the fricative [ɕ] before front vowels . The velar fricative [ɣ] was also transformed into the corresponding plosive [ɡ] . The period that includes Swedish as it is spoken today
16351-541: The River Humber , termed an imperium ; the ninth-century Anglo-Saxon Chronicle expanded Bede's list to eight and applied the term bretwalda or brytenwalda, literally "ruler of Britain" or "ruler of the Britains". Bede records Rædwald converting to Christianity while on a trip to Kent , only to be dissuaded by his wife upon his return; afterwards he kept a temple with two altars, one pagan and one Christian. In
16548-450: The Roman examples show riders in moments of unqualified victory, in Germanic representations the scene is ambiguous. The symbolism is unclear, and elements of victory are combined with elements of defeat: the rider directs his spear straight forward at an invisible enemy, not down at the visible enemy on the ground; though the enemy is trampled, the rider's horse is dealt a fatal wound; and
16745-608: The Rus as they came on their merchant journeys and encamped by the Itil . I have never seen more perfect physical specimens, tall as date palms, blond and ruddy; they wear neither tunics nor caftans, but the men wear a garment which covers one side of the body and leaves a hand free. Each man has an axe, a sword, and a knife, and keeps each by him at all times. The swords are broad and grooved, of Frankish sort. The adventures of these Swedish Vikings are commemorated on many runestones in Sweden, such as
16942-475: The Sutton Hoo helmet and contribute to the understanding of the depicted sword dance. The same design—identical but for a different type of spears held in hand, a different pattern of dress, and a lack of crossed spears behind the two men —is found on the Valsgärde 7 helmet, while a small fragment of stamped foil from the eastern mound at Gamla Uppsala is "so close in every respect to the corresponding warrior on
17139-433: The Sutton Hoo helmet as to appear at first glance to be from the same die," and may even have been "cut by the same man." The third similar design is one of the four Torslunda plates , discovered in Öland , Sweden, in 1870. This plate, which is complete and depicts a figure with the same attributes as on design 1, suggests the association of the men in the Sutton Hoo example with "the cult of Odin." The Torslunda figure
17336-600: The Swedish Empire, Sweden was a very poor and scarcely populated country on the fringe of European civilization, with no significant power or reputation. Sweden rose to prominence on a continental scale during the tenure of king Gustavus Adolphus , seizing territories from Russia and Poland–Lithuania in multiple conflicts, including the Thirty Years' War . During the Thirty Years' War, Sweden conquered approximately half of
17533-584: The Swedish Language Council, the Swedish Academy (established 1786) is arguably the most influential. Its primary instruments are the spelling dictionary Svenska Akademiens ordlista ( SAOL , currently in its 14th edition) and the dictionary Svenska Akademiens Ordbok , in addition to various books on grammar, spelling and manuals of style. Although the dictionaries have a prescriptive element, they mainly describe current usage. In Finland,
17730-413: The Swedish economy had deteriorated. It became the lifetime task of Charles' son, Charles XI , to rebuild the economy and refit the army. His legacy to his son, the coming ruler of Sweden Charles XII , was one of the finest arsenals in the world, a large standing army and a great fleet. Sweden's largest threat at this time, Russia, had a larger army but was far behind in both equipment and training. After
17927-561: The Swedish involvement in rescue missions at the internment camps and partly because Sweden served as a haven for refugees, primarily from the Nordic countries and the Baltic states . Nevertheless, internal and external critics have argued that Sweden could have done more to resist the Nazi war effort, even if risking occupation although doing so would likely have resulted in even greater number of casualties and prevented many humanitarian efforts. Sweden
18124-501: The Swedish referendum passed with 52% in favour of joining the EU on 13 November 1994. Sweden joined the European Union on 1 January 1995. After over 200 years of neutrality, Sweden joined NATO on 7 March 2024, in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine . Sweden has had extensive cooperation with other European countries in the area of defence technology and defence industry. Among others, Swedish companies export weapons that are used by
18321-513: The Swedish-controlled territory in Finland, creating conflicts with the Rus who no longer had any connection with Sweden. Except for the province of Skåne , on the southernmost tip of Sweden which was under Danish control during this time, feudalism never developed in Sweden as it did in the rest of Europe. Therefore, the peasantry remained largely a class of free farmers throughout most of Swedish history. Slavery (also called thralldom )
18518-637: The United States. In the early 20th century, more Swedes lived in Chicago than in Gothenburg (Sweden's second largest city). Most Swedish immigrants moved to the Midwestern United States , with a large population in Minnesota , with a few others moving to other parts of the United States and Canada. Despite the slow rate of industrialization into the 19th century, many important changes were taking place in
18715-514: The Valsgärde 7 and 8 helmets, the Vendel 1 helmet, and on the Pliezhausen bracteate . The latter piece, in particular, is both complete and nearly identical to the Sutton Hoo design. Although a mirror image, and lacking in certain details depicted in design 2 such as the sword carried by the rider and the scabbard worn by the fallen warrior, it suggests other details such as the small shield held by
18912-498: The administrative language and Swedish-Estonian culture saw an upswing. However, most Swedish-speaking people fled to Sweden before the end of World War II , that is, before the invasion of Estonia by the Soviet army in 1944. Only a handful of speakers remain. Swedish dialects have either 17 or 18 vowel phonemes , 9 long and 9 short. As in the other Germanic languages, including English, most long vowels are phonetically paired with one of
19109-503: The agrarian economy because of innovations and the large population growth. These innovations included government-sponsored programs of enclosure , aggressive exploitation of agricultural lands, and the introduction of new crops such as the potato. Because the Swedish peasantry had never been enserfed as elsewhere in Europe, the Swedish farming culture began to take on a critical role in the Swedish political process, which has continued through modern times with modern Agrarian party (now called
19306-442: The assumption that modern conceptions of Middle Age wealth and power are accurate. The wealth of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial is astonishing because there are no contemporaneous parallels, but the lack of parallels could be a quirk of survival just as much as it could be an indicator of Rædwald's wealth. Many other Anglo-Saxon barrows have been ploughed over or looted, and so just as little is known about contemporary kingliness, little
19503-507: The beginning of the end for the Swedish Empire. Charles XII attempted to invade Norway 1716; however, he was shot dead at Fredriksten fortress in 1718. The Swedes were not militarily defeated at Fredriksten, but the whole structure and organization of the Norwegian campaign fell apart with the king's death, and the army withdrew. Forced to cede large areas of land in the Treaty of Nystad in 1721, Sweden also lost its place as an empire and as
19700-428: The body. An oval mound was constructed around the ship. Long afterwards, the chamber roof collapsed violently under the weight of the mound, compressing the ship's contents into a seam of earth. It is thought that the helmet was shattered either by the collapse of the burial chamber or by the force of another object falling on it. The fact that the helmet had shattered meant that it was possible to reconstruct it. Had
19897-453: The centre of the nose to its sides were chased "alternate rows of plain flutings and billeted strips which run obliquely between the central strip and a billeted lower edge." This same pattern is repeated in vertical fashion on the moustache. The curve along the bevelled lower lip, in turn, repeats the circled pattern used on the nasal bridge. Excepting the portions covered by the eyebrows and dragon head, or adorned with silver or niello,
20094-482: The cheek guards, by contrast, which are irregularly shaped and fully decorated, the interlace designs appear in partial, and sometimes sideways, fashion. Design 4 depicts a single animal, or quadruped, in ribbon style, and has a billeted border on all sides. The head of the animal is located in the upper centre of the panel. The eye is defined by two circles; the rest of the head, comprising two separate but intertwined ribbons, surrounds it. A third ribbon, representing
20291-403: The climax of the dance. The prevalence of dance scenes with a "similarity of the presentation of the scheme of movement" in contemporary Scandinavian and Northern art suggests that ritual dances "were well-known phenomena." Sword dances in particular were recorded among the Germanic tribes as early as the first century AD, when Tacitus wrote of "[n]aked youths who practice the sport bound in
20488-620: The coast and isles . Smaller groups of historical descendants of 18th–20th-century Swedish emigrants who still retain varying aspects of Swedish identity to this day can be found in the Americas (especially Minnesota and Wisconsin ; see Swedish Americans ) and in Ukraine. Currently, Swedes tend to emigrate mostly to the Nordic neighbour countries (Norway, Denmark, Finland), English speaking countries (United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, New Zealand), Spain, France and Germany. Historically,
20685-498: The colloquial spoken language of its day, it was not overly conservative in its use of archaic forms. It was a major step towards a more consistent Swedish orthography . It established the use of the vowels "å", "ä", and "ö", and the spelling "ck" in place of "kk", distinguishing it clearly from the Danish Bible, perhaps intentionally, given the ongoing rivalry between the countries. All three translators came from central Sweden, which
20882-455: The crest may have been either forged or shrunk on to the cap. From either end of the crest extended an iron tang, to each of which was riveted a gilded dragon head. That on the front was made of cast bronze, while the one on the rear was made of another alloy, and has now mostly degraded into tin oxide. A third dragon head, cast in bronze, faced upwards on the front of the helmet and broke the plane between face mask and cap; its neck rested on
21079-536: The crew is unknown, but it is believed that they died of sickness. It is not known when and how the 'kingdom of Sweden' was born, but the list of Swedish monarchs is drawn from the first kings who ruled both Svealand (Sweden) and Götaland (Gothia) as one province with Erik the Victorious . Sweden and Gothia were two separate nations long before that into antiquity. It is not known how long they existed, but Beowulf described semi-legendary Swedish-Geatish wars in
21276-436: The dance amid swords and lances," a "spectacle" which was "always performed at every gathering." Whatever the meaning conveyed by the Sutton Hoo example, the "ritual dance was evidently no freak of fashion confined to a particular epoch, but was practised for centuries in a more or less unchanged form." While many contemporary designs portray ritual dances, at least three examples show scenes exceptionally similar to that on
21473-560: The date of a coin based on the fineness of its gold. This analysis suggests that the latest coins in the purse were minted between 613 and 635 AD, and most likely closer to the beginning of this range than the end. The range is a tentative terminus post quem for the burial, before which it may not have taken place; sometime later, perhaps after a period of years, the coins were collected and buried. These dates are generally consistent, but not exclusive, with Rædwald. The presence of items identified as regalia has been used to support
21670-456: The death of Rædwald's son Eorpwald , who had by then succeeded his father, in 627, meaning Rædwald would have died before then. If relying solely on Bede, all that can be said is that Rædwald died sometime between his circa 616 defeat of Æthelfrith along the River Idle, and 633, when Edwin, who after Rædwald died converted Eorpwald to Christianity, died. A precise date for the Sutton Hoo burial
21867-403: The declension of the adjectives . For example, the word fisk ("fish") is a noun of common gender ( en fisk ) and can have the following forms: The definite singular form of a noun is created by adding a suffix ( -en , -n , -et or -t ), depending on its gender and if the noun ends in a vowel or not. The definite articles den , det , and de are used for variations to the definitiveness of
22064-501: The dialect and accent of the speaker. Standard Swedish , spoken by most Swedes , is the national language that evolved from the Central Swedish dialects in the 19th century, and was well established by the beginning of the 20th century. While distinct regional varieties and rural dialects still exist, the written language is uniform and standardized . Swedish is the most widely spoken second language in Finland where its status
22261-527: The dialects of Denmark are referred to as Runic Danish . The dialects are described as "runic" because the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet . Unlike Proto-Norse, which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet, Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet, which had only 16 letters. Because the number of runes was limited, some runes were used for a range of phonemes , such as
22458-574: The disastrous Battle of Kircholm being one of the highlights. One-third of the Finnish population died in the devastating famine that struck the country in 1696. Famine also hit Sweden, killing roughly 10% of Sweden's population. The Swedes conducted a series of invasions into the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth , known as the Deluge . After more than half a century of almost constant warfare,
22655-571: The dominant state on the Baltic Sea. With Sweden's lost influence, Russia emerged as an empire and became one of Europe's dominant nations. As the war finally ended in 1721, Sweden had lost an estimated 200,000 men, 150,000 of those from the area of present-day Sweden and 50,000 from the Finnish part of Sweden. In the 18th century, Sweden did not have enough resources to maintain its territories outside Scandinavia, and most of them were lost, culminating with
22852-531: The earliest known original area inhabited by their linguistic ancestors, is in the country of Sweden, situated on the eastern side of the Scandinavian Peninsula and the islands adjacent to it, situated west of the Baltic Sea in northern Europe . The Swedish-speaking people living in near-coastal areas on the north-eastern and eastern side of the Baltic Sea also have a long history of continuous settlement, which in some of these areas possibly started about
23049-482: The early 630s, or it might be his illegitimate brother if he had one (and most people did), or any other great man of East Anglia from 610 to 650." Weighing an estimated 2.5 kg (5.5 lb), the Sutton Hoo helmet was made of iron and covered with decorated sheets of tinned bronze. Fluted strips of moulding divided the exterior into panels, each of which was stamped with one of five designs. Two depict figural scenes, another two zoophormic interlaced patterns;
23246-500: The economic life of that city and made the port city of Stockholm into the leading commercial and industrial city of Sweden. Under the Hanseatic trade two-thirds of Stockholm's imports consisted of textiles and one third of salt. Exports from Sweden consisted of iron and copper. However, the Swedes began to resent the monopoly trading position of the Hansa (mostly German citizens) and to resent
23443-528: The encroaching Frankish Christianity. Three groups of items, however, have clear Christian influences: two scabbard bosses, ten silver bowls, and two silver spoons. The bowls and scabbard bosses each display crosses, the former with chasing and the latter with cloisonné . The spoons are even more closely associated with the Catholic Church, inscribed as they are with a cross, and the names ΠΑΥΛΟΣ (Paulos) and ΣΑΥΛΟΣ (Saulos), both names were used by Paul
23640-482: The entire side of the face, and curved inward both vertically and horizontally. Two hinges per side, possibly made of leather, supported these pieces, allowing them to be pulled flush with the face mask and fully enclose the face. A neck guard was attached to the back of the cap and made of two overlapping pieces: a shorter piece set inside the cap, over which attached a wide fan-like segment extending downwards, "straight from top to bottom but curved laterally to follow
23837-502: The exception of the Winter War when it declared itself non-belligerant . It's neutrality during the rest of the war has also been disputed. Sweden was under German influence for much of the war, as ties to the rest of the world were cut off through blockades. The Swedish government felt that it was in no position to openly contest Germany, and therefore made some concessions. Sweden also supplied steel and machined parts to Germany throughout
24034-437: The eyebrows, nose and moustache to create the impression of a dragon in flight. The dragon soars upwards, its garnet-lined wings perhaps meant to convey a fiery contrail, and in the dramatic focal point of the helmet, bares its teeth at the snake-like dragon flying down the crest. To the extent that the helmet is jewelled, such decoration is largely confined to the elements associated with the dragons. Convex garnets sunk into
24231-408: The face mask, while under its eyes it was held to the cap by a large rivet shank. To either side of the neck projected a hollow cast bronze eyebrow, into each of which was inlaid parallel silver wires. Terminal boar heads were gilded, as were the undersides of the eyebrows, where individual bronze cells held square garnets. The eyebrows were riveted on, both to the cap at their outer ends and to
24428-413: The fact that the peasantry had traditionally been free meant that more of the economic benefits flowed back to them rather than going to a feudal landowning class. This was not the case in other countries of Europe like Poland where the peasantry was still bound by serfdom and a strong feudalistic land owning system. During the 17th century Sweden emerged as a European great power . Before the emergence of
24625-492: The few sources of fresh air for the wearer. Atop the foundational layer of iron were placed decorative sheets of tinned bronze. These sheets, divided into five figural or zoomorphic designs, were manufactured by the pressblech process. Preformed dies similar to the Torslunda plates were covered with thin metal which, through applied force, took up the design underneath; identical designs could thus be mass-produced from
24822-598: The finest horses of his days. The Suehans supplied black fox-skins for the Roman market. Then Jordanes names the Suetidi which is considered to be the Latin form of Svitjod . He writes that the Suetidi are the tallest of men—together with the Dani , who were of the same stock. Later he mentions other Scandinavian tribes as being of the same height. Originating in semi-legendary Scandza (believed to be somewhere in modern Götaland , Sweden),
25019-540: The firm establishment of the Christian church and various monastic orders, introducing many Greek and Latin loanwords. With the rise of Hanseatic power in the late 13th and early 14th century, Middle Low German became very influential. The Hanseatic league provided Swedish commerce and administration with a large number of Low German -speaking immigrants. Many became quite influential members of Swedish medieval society, and brought terms from their native languages into
25216-492: The full panels to be advanced, and through the second reconstruction their locations on the surface of the helmet to be redetermined. As referred to below, the designs are numbered according to Rupert Bruce-Mitford 's 1978 work. The core of the helmet was made of iron and consisted of a cap from which hung a face mask and cheek and neck guards. The cap was beaten into shape from a single piece of metal. On either side of it were hung iron cheek guards, deep enough to protect
25413-437: The globe, entered a period of economic decline and upheaval, following the oil embargoes of 1973–74 and 1978–79. In the 1980s pillars of Swedish industry were massively restructured. Shipbuilding was discontinued, wood pulp was integrated into modernized paper production, the steel industry was concentrated and specialized, and mechanical engineering was robotized. Between 1970 and 1990 the overall tax burden rose by over 10%, and
25610-433: The gold foil backing employed on the dexter, may suggest an allusion to the one-eyed god Odin ; seen in low light, with the garnets of only one eye reflecting light, the helmet may have itself seemed to have only one eye. More gold covers the eyebrows, nose and mouth piece, and dragon heads, as it does the two fluted strips that flank the crest. The crest and eyebrows are further inlaid with silver wires. Combined with
25807-524: The growth was low compared to other countries in Western Europe. The marginal income tax for workers reached over 80%. Eventually government spent over half of the country's gross domestic product . Sweden GDP per capita ranking declined during this time. A bursting real estate bubble caused by inadequate controls on lending combined with an international recession and a policy switch from anti-unemployment policies to anti-inflationary policies resulted in
26004-402: The heads give the dragons red eyes. The eyebrows are likewise inlaid with square garnets on their under edges, continuing outwards on each side to where they terminate in gilded boars' heads; in addition to their secondary decorative function as wings, the eyebrows may therefore take on a tertiary form as boars' bodies. The subtle differences between the eyebrows, the sinister of which lacks
26201-447: The helmet been crushed before the iron had fully oxidised, leaving it still pliant, the helmet would have been squashed, leaving it in a distorted shape similar to the Vendel and Valsgärde helmets. Attempts to identify the person buried in the ship-burial have persisted since virtually the moment the grave was unearthed. The preferred candidate, with some exceptions when the burial
26398-426: The helmet, although this assumes that the unidentified third design, which occupies one of the twelve panels, was a replacement for a damaged panel. Assuming so, the pattern occupied eight spaces on the lowest row of the skull cap (i.e., all but the two showing design 1), and two panels, one atop the other rising towards the crest, in the centre of each side. All panels showing design 2 appear to have been struck from
26595-407: The idea that the burial commemorates a king. Some jewellery likely had significance beyond its richness. The shoulder-clasps suggest a ceremonial outfit. The weight of the great gold buckle is comparable to the price paid in recompense for the death of a nobleman; its wearer thus wore the price of a nobleman's life on his belt, a display of impunity that could be associated with few others besides
26792-425: The income they felt they lost to the Hansa. Consequently, when Gustav Vasa or Gustav I broke the monopoly power of the Hanseatic League he was regarded as a hero to the Swedish people. History now views Gustav I as the father of the modern Swedish nation. The foundations laid by Gustav would take time to develop. Furthermore, when Sweden did develop and freed itself from the Hanseatic League and entered its golden era,
26989-424: The individual bronze cells into which the garnets are set, both on the dexter brow and on three of the four remaining dragon eyes, are underlain by small pieces of "hatched gold foil," those on the sinister side, and the sinister eye of the upper dragon head, have no such backing. The gold backing served to reflect light back through the garnets, increasing their lustre and deepening their colour. Where this backing
27186-430: The industrialization and urbanization of Sweden well under way by the last decades of the 19th century, a new breed of authors made their mark on Swedish literature . Many scholars, politicians and other public figures had a great influence on the emerging national language, among them prolific authors like the poet Gustaf Fröding , Nobel laureate Selma Lagerlöf and radical writer and playwright August Strindberg . It
27383-426: The iron would be shipped abroad. A large number of children inherited the Swedish crown over the course of the kingdom's existence. King Christian II of Denmark ordered a massacre in 1520 of Swedish nobles at Stockholm. This came to be known as the " Stockholm blood bath " and stirred the Swedish nobility to new resistance and, on 6 June (now Sweden's national holiday) in 1523, they made Gustav Vasa their king. This
27580-555: The islands (e. g., Hiiumaa , Vormsi , Ruhnu ; in Swedish, known as Dagö , Ormsö , Runö , respectively) along the coast of the Baltic , communities that today have all disappeared. The Swedish-speaking minority was represented in parliament , and entitled to use their native language in parliamentary debates. After the loss of Estonia to the Russian Empire in the early 18th century, around 1,000 Estonian Swedish speakers were forced to march to southern Ukraine , where they founded
27777-433: The jaws and mouth, is beneath the head. On the left it begins as a small billeted ribbon that descends into a pellet-filled twist, passes under itself, and emerges as a larger billeted ribbon. Circling counterclockwise, it passes over and then under a separate ribbon that represents the body, under it again, then over and under one of the ribbons representing the head. It emerges as a second pellet-filled twist, again forms
27974-525: The joint Liberal-Social Democrat cabinet of Nils Edén and Hjalmar Branting , with universal and equal suffrage to both houses of parliament enacted for men in 1918 and for women in 1919. The reforms were widely accepted by King Gustaf V , who had previously ousted Karl Staaff 's elected Liberal government in the Courtyard Crisis because of differences in defence policy. Sweden remained officially neutral during World War I and most of World War II, with
28171-454: The kneeling figure. Design 2 shows a mounted warrior, spear held overhead, trampling an enemy on the ground. The latter leans upwards and, grasping the reins in his left hand, uses his right hand to thrust a sword into the chest of the horse. Atop the horse's rump kneels a "diminutive human, or at least anthropomorphic figure." The figure is stylistically similar to the horseman. Its arms and legs are positioned identically, and, together with
28368-484: The language, particularly in rural communities like Lindström and Scandia . Swedish is the official main language of Sweden. Swedish is also one of two official languages of Finland. In Sweden, it has long been used in local and state government, and most of the educational system, but remained only a de facto primary language with no official status in law until 2009. A bill was proposed in 2005 that would have made Swedish an official language, but failed to pass by
28565-480: The last millennium and divergence from both Faroese and Icelandic. By many general criteria of mutual intelligibility, the Continental Scandinavian languages could very well be considered dialects of a common Scandinavian language. However, because of several hundred years of sometimes quite intense rivalry between Denmark and Sweden, including a long series of wars from the 16th to 18th centuries, and
28762-449: The likely event that this was during Æthelberht 's rule of Kent , it would have been sometime before Æthelberht's death around 618. Rædwald's own death can be conservatively dated between 616 and 633 if using Bede, whose own dates are not unquestioned. Anything more specific relies on questionable post- Conquest sources. Roger of Wendover claims without attribution that Rædwald died in 624. The twelfth-century Liber Eliensis places
28959-446: The line of the neck." The inset portion afforded the neck guard extra movement, and like the cheek guards was attached to the cap by leather hinges. Finally, the face mask was riveted to the cap on both sides and above the nose. Two cutouts served as eye openings, while a third opened into the hollow of the overlaid nose, thereby facilitating access to the two nostril-like holes underneath; though small, these holes would have been among
29156-560: The narrowest possible margin (145–147) due to a pairing-off failure. A proposal for a broader language law, designating Swedish as the main language of the country and bolstering the status of the minority languages, was submitted by an expert committee to the Swedish Ministry of Culture in March 2008. It was subsequently enacted by the Riksdag , and entered into effect on 1 July 2009. Swedish
29353-421: The national standard languages. Swedish pronunciations also vary greatly from one region to another, a legacy of the vast geographic distances and historical isolation. Even so, the vocabulary is standardized to a level that make dialects within Sweden virtually fully mutually intelligible. East Germanic languages West Germanic languages Icelandic Faroese Norwegian Danish Swedish In
29550-451: The neck, and ends in another hip ("illogically", per Bruce-Mitford). Another short limb, filled with pellets, emerges from this hip and terminates in a foot. The animal's body, meanwhile, is formed by another billeted ribbon that connects the front hip in the lower right, with the rear hip, in the top left. From right to left it travels under, under, and over the jaws and mouth, under a billeted ribbon representing legs, and then connects to
29747-424: The north. An early change that separated Runic Danish from the other dialects of Old East Norse was the change of the diphthong æi to the monophthong é , as in stæinn to sténn "stone". This is reflected in runic inscriptions where the older read stain and the later stin . There was also a change of au as in dauðr into a long open ø as in døðr "dead". This change is shown in runic inscriptions as
29944-442: The nose and mouth piece was heavily gilded, which is suggested by the presence of mercury to have been done with the fire-gilding method. Breaking the symmetry of the helmet are subtle differences in the two eyebrows, and in the methods employed to fashion the cloisonné garnets. The dexter and sinister eyebrows, though at first glance identical, may have been "manufactured in different ways while being intended to look essentially
30141-463: The older rural dialects still exist, the spoken and written language is uniform and standardized. Some dialects differ considerably from the standard language in grammar and vocabulary and are not always mutually intelligible with Standard Swedish. These dialects are confined to rural areas and are spoken primarily by small numbers of people with low social mobility . Though not facing imminent extinction , such dialects have been in decline during
30338-441: The only acceptable way to begin conversation with strangers of unknown occupation, academic title or military rank. The fact that the listener should preferably be referred to in the third person tended to further complicate spoken communication between members of society. In the early 20th century, an unsuccessful attempt was made to replace the insistence on titles with ni —the standard second person plural pronoun)—analogous to
30535-410: The only way to prevent famine and rebellion; over 1% of the population emigrated annually during the 1880s. Nevertheless, Sweden remained poor, retaining a nearly entirely agricultural economy even as Denmark and Western European countries began to industrialize. Many looked towards America for a better life during this time. It is believed that between 1850 and 1910 more than one million Swedes moved to
30732-402: The original Germanic three- gender system. Nouns , adjectives , pronouns and certain numerals were inflected in four cases; besides the extant nominative , there were also the genitive (later possessive ), dative and accusative . The gender system resembled that of modern German , having masculine, feminine and neuter genders. The masculine and feminine genders were later merged into
30929-426: The past century, despite the fact that they are well researched and their use is often encouraged by local authorities. According to recent genetic analysis, both mtDNA and Y chromosome polymorphisms showed a noticeable genetic affinity between Swedes and other Germanic ethnic groups. Paternally , through their Y-DNA haplogroups , the Swedes are quite diverse and show strongly of Haplogroup I1d1 at over 40% of
31126-410: The peasantry and some became laborers in the towns. Still, Sweden remained a poor and economically backward country in which barter was the means of exchange. For instance, the farmers of the province of Dalsland would transport their butter to the mining districts of Sweden and exchange it there for iron, which they would then take down to the coast and trade the iron for fish they needed for food while
31323-658: The people of south Scandinavia spoke Proto-Norse at the time, a language ancestral to Swedish and other North Germanic languages . The migration age in Sweden is marked by the extreme weather events of 535–536 which is believed to have shaken Scandinavian society to its core. As much as 50% of the population of Scandinavia is thought to have died as a result and the emerging Vendel Period shows an increased militarization of society. Several areas with rich burial gifts have been found, including well-preserved boat inhumation graves at Vendel and Valsgärde , and tumuli at Gamla Uppsala . These were used for several generations. Some of
31520-501: The population tested in different studies, followed by R1a1a and R1b1a2a1a1 with over 20% each and haplogroup N1c1 with over 5% at different regional variance. The rest are within haplogroups J and E1b1b1 and other less common ones. Maternally , through their mtDNA haplogroups , the Swedes show very strongly of haplogroup H at 25–30%, followed by haplogroup U at a 10% or more, with haplogroup J and T , K at around 5% each. The largest area inhabited by Swedes, as well as
31717-535: The princes and royalty of the countries and cities along the coasts of the Baltic Sea. In exchange they offered a certain amount of protection. Having their own navy the Hansa were able to sweep the Baltic Sea free of pirates. The privileges obtained by the Hansa included assurances that only Hansa citizens would be allowed to trade from the ports where they were located. They also sought agreement to be free of all customs and taxes. With these concessions, Lübeck merchants flocked to Stockholm, Sweden and soon came to dominate
31914-480: The reform was not an act of any centralized political decree, but rather the result of sweeping change in social attitudes, it was completed in just a few years, from the late 1960s to early 1970s. The use of ni as a polite form of address is sometimes encountered today in both the written and spoken language, particularly among older speakers. Swedish is the sole official national language of Sweden , and one of two in Finland (alongside Finnish ). As of 2006, it
32111-459: The riches were probably acquired through the control of mining districts and the production of iron. The rulers had troops of mounted elite warriors with costly armour. Graves of mounted warriors have been found with stirrups and saddle ornaments of birds of prey in gilded bronze with encrusted garnets. The Sutton Hoo helmet very similar to helmets in Gamla Uppsala, Vendel and Valsgärde shows that
32308-457: The rider, it clutches the spear with its right hand. The iconography underlying design 2 is unknown. It may derive from Roman models, which frequently depicted images of warriors trampling vanquished enemies. The subsequent development of the design, which has been found in England, Sweden, and Germany, suggests that it carried a unique meaning broadly understood in Germanic tradition . Whereas
32505-427: The rule of Charles X after the treaty of Roskilde in 1658. The foundation of Sweden's success during this period is credited to Gustav I 's major changes on the Swedish economy in the 16th century, and his introduction of Protestantism . In the 17th century, Sweden was engaged in many wars, for example with the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth with both sides competing for territories of today's Baltic states , with
32702-463: The rune for the vowel u , which was also used for the vowels o , ø and y , and the rune for i , also used for e . From 1200 onwards, the dialects in Denmark began to diverge from those of Sweden. The innovations spread unevenly from Denmark, creating a series of minor dialectal boundaries, or isoglosses , ranging from Zealand in the south to Norrland , Österbotten and northwestern Finland in
32899-475: The same die, allowing for their repeated use on the helmet and other objects. Fluted strips of white alloyed moulding—possibly of tin and copper, and possibly swaged —divided the designs into framed panels, held to the helmet by bronze rivets. The two strips running from front to back alongside the crest were gilded. The edges of the helmet were further protected by U-shaped brass tubing, fastened by swaged bronze clips and themselves further holding in place
33096-399: The same die. The horse and rider thus move in a clockwise direction around the helmet, facing towards the rear of the helmet on the dexter side, and towards the front on the sinister side. As substantial sections of design 2 are missing, particularly from the "central area," reconstruction relies in part on continental versions of the same scene. In particular, similar scenes are seen on
33293-408: The same." The dexter brow is approximately 5 millimetres shorter than the sinister, and contained 43 rather than 46 inlaid silver wires and one or two fewer garnets. Gilding on the dexter eyebrow was "reddish in colour" against the "yellowish" hue of the sinister, while the latter contains both trace amounts of mercury and a tin corrosion product which are absent from its counterpart. Moreover, while
33490-661: The scene was inferred after the first reconstruction, when Rupert Bruce-Mitford spent six weeks in Sweden and was shown a nearly identical design on the then unpublished Valsgärde 7 helmet. Design 1 pictures two men "in civilian or ceremonial dress" perhaps engaged in a spear or sword dance "associated with the cult of Odin, the war-god." Their outer hands each hold two spears, pointed towards their feet, while their crossed hands grip swords. The depiction suggests "intricate measures," "rhythm," and an "elasticity of . . . dance steps." Their trailing outer legs and curved hips imply movement towards each other, and they may be in
33687-444: The short /e/ (transcribed ⟨ ɛ ⟩ in the chart below). There are 18 consonant phonemes, two of which, / ɧ / and /r/ , vary considerably in pronunciation depending on the dialect and social status of the speaker. In many dialects, sequences of /r/ (pronounced alveolarly) with a dental consonant result in retroflex consonants ; alveolarity of the pronunciation of /r/ is a precondition for this retroflexion. /r/ has
33884-428: The short vowels, and the pairs are such that the two vowels are of similar quality , but with the short vowel being slightly lower and slightly centralized. In contrast to e.g. Danish, which has only tense vowels, the short vowels are slightly more lax, but the tense vs. lax contrast is not nearly as pronounced as in English, German or Dutch. In many dialects, the short vowel sound pronounced [ɛ] or [æ] has merged with
34081-422: The silvery colour of the tinned bronze, the effect was "an object of burnished silvery metal, set in a trelliswork of gold, surmounted by a crest of massive silver, and embellished with gilded ornaments, garnets and niello—in its way a magnificent thing and one of the outstanding masterpieces of barbaric art." The dancing warriors scene is known from six fragments and occurs four times on the helmet. It appears on
34278-419: The sinister side of the helmet, and on the forwardmost two panels on the dexter side (in addition to on the highest dexter panel), placement of design 3 "must have occurred towards the rear of the helmet" on the dexter side. That which remains of design 3 may suggest that a "variant rider scene" was employed to fix damage to a design 2 panel, similar to how a unique pressblech design on the Valsgärde 6 helmet
34475-555: The sixth century. During the early stages of the Viking Age, a centre of trade in northern Europe developed at Birka on the island of Björkö , not far from where Stockholm was later constructed, in mid-latitude Sweden. Birka was founded around 750 AD as a trading port by a king or merchants trying to control trade. Birka was the Baltic link in the Dnieper Trade Route through Ladoga ( Aldeigja ) and Novgorod ( Holmsgard ) to
34672-478: The subject in a clause, a trait that is restricted to North Germanic languages: Sutton Hoo helmet The Sutton Hoo helmet is a decorated Anglo-Saxon helmet found during a 1939 excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial . It was buried around the years c. 620–625 AD and is widely associated with an Anglo-Saxon leader, King Rædwald of East Anglia ; its elaborate decoration may have given it
34869-491: The success of invading Poland, Charles decided to make an invasion attempt of Russia which ended in a decisive Russian victory at the Battle of Poltava in 1709. After a long march exposed to cossack raids, Russian Tsar Peter the Great 's scorched-earth techniques and the extremely cold winter of 1709 , the Swedes stood weakened with a shattered morale and enormously outnumbered against the Russian army at Poltava. The defeat meant
35066-427: The tang of a nose and mouth piece which extended upwards underneath the neck of the dragon head. This tang was itself riveted to the cap, one of five attachment points for the cast bronze nose and mouth piece. Both sides of the nose featured "two small round projecting plates," connected by fluted and swaged strips, and concealing rivets. An inlaid strip of wire extended the length of the nasal ridge, next to which
35263-428: The top, associated mountings, and traces of organic matter that may have been wood, ivory, or bone, has no discernible use but as a symbol of office. On the other hand, the whetstone is theoretically functional as a sharpening stone, but exhibits no evidence of such use. Its delicate ornamentation, including a carved head with a modified eye that parallels the possible allusion to Odin on the helmet, suggests that it too
35460-429: The two cases and two genders of modern Swedish. A transitional change of the Latin script in the Nordic countries was to spell the letter combination "ae" as æ – and sometimes as a' – though it varied between persons and regions. The combination "ao" was similarly rendered a , and "oe" became o . These three were later to evolve into the separate letters ä , å and ö . The first time the new letters were used in print
35657-517: The two natural genders han and hon ("he" and "she"), there are also the two grammatical genders den and det , usually termed common and neuter . In recent years, a gender-neutral pronoun hen has been introduced, particularly in literary Swedish. Unlike the nouns, pronouns have an additional object form, derived from the old dative form. Hon , for example, has the following nominative, possessive, and object forms: Swedish also uses third-person possessive reflexive pronouns that refer to
35854-440: The two panels immediately above the eyebrows, accounting for five of the fragments. The sixth fragment is placed in the middle row of the dexter cheek guard, on the panel closest to the face mask; the generally symmetrical nature of the helmet implies the design's position on the opposite side as well. None of the six pieces shows both warriors, although the "key fragment" depicts their crossed wrists. A full reconstruction of
36051-439: The vocabulary. Besides a great number of loanwords for such areas as warfare, trade and administration, general grammatical suffixes and even conjunctions were imported. The League also brought a certain measure of influence from Danish (at the time Swedish and Danish were much more similar than today). Early Old Swedish was markedly different from the modern language in that it had a more complex case structure and also retained
36248-401: The war. However, Sweden supported Norwegian resistance, and in 1943 helped rescue Danish Jews from deportation to Nazi concentration camps . Sweden also supported Finland in the Winter War with volunteers and materiel . Toward the end of the war, Sweden began to play a role in humanitarian efforts and many refugees, among them many Jews from Nazi-occupied Europe, were saved partly because of
36445-430: The whims of fate, and can provide only limited help against the rider's enemies. Seven small fragments suggest a third figural scene somewhere on the Sutton Hoo helmet. They are nevertheless too small and ambiguous to allow for the reconstruction of the scene. Its presence is suggested between one and four times; because other fragments demonstrate the occurrence of design 1 or design 2 on all seven available panels on
36642-514: Was a ceremonial object, and it has been tentatively identified as a sceptre . Further evidence for the burial's association with Rædwald has been adduced from the presence of items with both Christian and pagan significance. The burial is in most respects emphatically pagan; as a ship-burial, it is the manifestation of a pagan practice predating the Gregorian reintroduction of Christianity into Britain , and may have served as an implicit rejection of
36839-484: Was during the 20th century that a common, standardized national language became available to all Swedes. The orthography finally stabilized and became almost completely uniform, with some minor deviations, by the time of the spelling reform of 1906. With the exception of plural forms of verbs and a slightly different syntax, particularly in the written language, the language was the same as the Swedish of today. The plural verb forms appeared decreasingly in formal writing into
37036-636: Was in Aff dyäffwlsens frästilse ("By the Devil's temptation") published by Johan Gerson in 1495. Modern Swedish (Swedish: nysvenska ) begins with the advent of the printing press and the European Reformation . After assuming power, the new monarch Gustav Vasa ordered a Swedish translation of the Bible . The New Testament was published in 1526, followed by a full Bible translation in 1541, usually referred to as
37233-489: Was likely used in repair. Fragment (a) for example shows groups of parallel raised lines running in correspondence "with changes of angle or direction in the modelled surface, which on the analogy of the Sutton Hoo and other rider scenes in Vendel art, strongly suggest the body of a horse." Though smaller, fragment (d) shows similar patterns and suggests a similar interpretation. Fragment (b), meanwhile, shows "two concentric raised lines two millimetres apart," and "appears to be
37430-418: Was missing on the sinister eyebrow and one dragon eye, the luminosity of the garnets may have been dimmed by direct placement against the bronze. Three dragon heads are represented on the helmet. Two bronze-gilt dragon heads feature on either end of the iron crest running from the front to the rear of the skull cap. The third sits at the junction between the two eyebrows, facing upward and given fuller form by
37627-403: Was not common in Sweden, and what slavery there was tended to be driven out of existence by the spread of Christianity, the difficulty in obtaining slaves from the lands east of the Baltic Sea, and by the development of cities before the 16th century Indeed, both slavery and serfdom were abolished altogether by a decree of King Magnus IV Eriksson in 1335. Former slaves tended to be absorbed into
37824-519: Was not standardized. It depended on the authors and their background. Those influenced by German capitalized all nouns, while others capitalized more sparsely. It is also not always apparent which letters are capitalized owing to the Gothic or blackletter typeface that was used to print the Bible. This typeface was in use until the mid-18th century, when it was gradually replaced with a Latin typeface (often Antiqua ). Some important changes in sound during
38021-459: Was officially a neutral country and remained outside NATO or Warsaw pact membership during the Cold War , but privately Sweden's leadership had strong ties with the United States and other western governments. Following the war, Sweden took advantage of an intact industrial base, social stability and its natural resources to expand its industry to supply the rebuilding of Europe. Sweden was part of
38218-513: Was the last war in which Sweden participated as a combatant. There was a significant population increase during the 18th and 19th centuries, which the writer Esaias Tegnér in 1833 attributed to "peace, vaccine , and potatoes ". Between 1750 and 1850, the population in Sweden doubled. Sweden was hit by the last natural caused famine in Europe, the Famine of 1867-69 killed thousands in Sweden. According to some scholars, mass emigration to America became
38415-476: Was the sole native language of 83% of Swedish residents. In 2007, around 5.5% (c. 290,000) of the population of Finland were native speakers of Swedish, partially due to a decline following the Russian annexation of Finland after the Finnish War 1808–1809. The Fenno-Swedish - speaking minority is concentrated in the coastal areas and archipelagos of southern and western Finland. In some of these areas, Swedish
38612-754: Was the son of Tytila and grandson of Wuffa , from whom the East Anglian Wuffingas dynasty derived its name. In their respective works Flores Historiarum and Chronica Majora , the thirteenth-century historians Roger of Wendover and Matthew Paris appear to place Tytila's death, and Rædwald's presumed concurrent succession to the throne, in 599. Yet as reasonable as this date sounds, these historians' demonstrated difficulty with even ninth-century dates leaves ample room for doubt. In any event, Rædwald would have ascended to power by at least 616, around when Bede records him as raising an army on behalf of Edwin of Northumbria and defeating Æthelfrith in
38809-478: Was thought to have taken place later, has been Rædwald ; his kingdom, East Anglia , is believed to have had its seat at Rendlesham , 4 + 1 ⁄ 4 miles (6.8 kilometres) upriver from Sutton Hoo. The case for Rædwald, by no means conclusive, rests on the dating of the burial, the abundance of wealth and items identified as regalia , and, befitting a king who kept two altars, the presence of both Christian and pagan influences. What scant information
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