The arrival of Christianity and Latin in Sweden, medieval language contact with (Low) German, the Gustav Vasa Bible translation into Swedish (1526-41), and French culture profoundly affected the development of the Swedish language. The dialects of the Stockholm and Lake Mälaren region formed the base for the development of contemporary standard Swedish, but considerable regional and social variations, especially in oral speech, continued for centuries after the publication of the Swedish Bible. During the Romantic era, a movement for standardization and spelling reform gathered speed, drawing on debates dating back to the 17th century and not formally resolved until the beginning of the 20th.
As a great power, Sweden had been multi-lingual; this multi-lingualism peeled off as Sweden lost its Baltic and Karelian territories (1721), Finland (1809), and its German possessions (1815). The remainder kingdom was a largely monolingual country and reacted to its loss of empire in a typical quest for a national identity. Romantic Nationalism promoted the ideal of an unmixed and free Swedish nation, ethnolinguistically defined, and enjoyed great support in both Conservative and Liberal circles. Conservatives encouraged language reform and standardization to cultivate and lift the national spirit, Liberals supported it for economic reasons, and Socialists argued that language standardization across the Swedish realm would increase social mobility. On this fertile ground, organizations sprung up such as the “Geatish Society” (Götiska förbundet, 1811), and publications such as P.D.A. Atterbom’s (1790–1855) journal Fosforus, which disseminated Romanticized portrayals of the ancient Nordic heritage. Following in the footsteps of Herder and Humboldt, and in tune with Grundtvig’s Nordic nationalism, Atterbom and the Gothic League championed the idea that the Nordic mother-tongue was the common basis for a newly invigorated Scandinavia. If, in Romantic thought, language was the cornerstone of national identity, the Swedish argument vacillated over whether that identity was specifically Swedish or common-Scandinavian. Icelandic sagas and Old Norse enjoyed renewed interest among cultural practitioners, also within the Geatish Society (which included members like Erik Gustaf Geijer, 1783–1847, and Esaias Tegnér, 1782–1846). Tegnér’s Romantic rendition of the 13th-century Icelandic Frithjof’s saga (1825) gained widespread interest.
Flanking this historicist-Nordic trend, linguists also looked at the current situation of the language, of which the spoken form was considered authentic and unadulterated by foreign influences. Orthographic reforms should place the spoken language at the heart of spelling standards. The phonetic Swedish Dialect Alphabet (Landsmålsalfabetet) developed by Johan August Lundell (1851–1940) has been used extensively for the description of many Swedish varieties spoken in Sweden and Finland.
The periodical Then Swänska Argus (“The Swedish Argus”, 1732-34) is usually seen as the beginning of the Yngre nysvenska (“Late Modern Swedish”) era, with its editorial policy actively resisting loanwords and arguing for the language’s standardization and “Swedification”. These goals were most effectively pursued later on by the folkskola (“people’s school”), which spread across the country following educational reforms in 1842, and the emerging high-circulation media. Linguistic purism also targeted minority languages like Finnish and Saami languages, as well as those local and regional Swedish dialects that deviated strongly from the standard, resulting in a gradual, steady homogenization of the linguistic landscape. Significantly, this process was unaffected by any Scandinavist sentiment.
The Swedish Academy, founded in 1786 on the model of the Académie française to foster the “purity, strength, and sublimity of the Swedish language” (renhet, styrka och höghet), published a standard orthography in 1801: the Afhandling om svenska stafsättet; it was followed by a shorter version for use in schools, Carl Jonas Love Almqvist’s Svensk rättstafnings-lära (1829). In 1842, Sweden made public education compulsory by law. This greatly increased language standardization and literacy among the general population, and simultaneously created a market for systematic school textbooks. A number of dictionaries were published, by Almqvist (1840, 1842), S.C.E. Kindblad (1840, 1867-72), and Anders Fredrik Dalin (1850-53), as well as several grammar books, e.g. by Lars Magnus Enberg (1836).
Frequent calls were made to reform the standard orthography, which was criticized for its traditionalism and its closeness to German and English models. Inspired by the linguistic thought of Rasmus Rask, a “Nordic Orthography Conference” (Nordiska rättstavningsmötet) gathered in Stockholm in 1869 to recommend reforms, with the Swedish section led by Artur Hazelius (1833–1901). The Swedish Academy was unimpressed; its word lists (Svenska Akademiens Ordlista or SAOL, published in five editions between 1874 and 1883), were all based on the 1801 standard.
Academic linguists until then had tended to be conservative in their spelling preferences. Historical and comparative Germanic linguistics, in the style of Rask and Grimm, were pursued by Johan Erik Rydqvist (1800–1877); his historical grammar Svenska språkets lagar (6 vols, 1850-74) upheld the idea that the language’s golden age had been medieval Old Swedish (fornsvenska). Dialects were studied by the first professor of Scandinavian languages at Uppsala University, Carl Säve (1812–1876). Uppsala’s first professor of Swedish, Leonard Fredrik Läffler, studied Swedish dialects phonologically. Ironically, those linguists who studied Swedish dialects to find out more about “authentic language use” frequently spoke out against more phonetic (i.e. more modern) spelling.
This trend was broken by the historical linguist Adolf Noreen (1854–1925), alumnus of Uppsala and with work experience at the Neogrammarian hotspot Leipzig. As professor of Scandinavian languages at Uppsala and respected linguist (his magnum opus being the unfinished Vårt språk, 1903-24), Noreen chaired a “Swedish Orthographic Society” (Svenska rättstavningssällskapet), founded in 1885, and publicized its ideas in the progressive journal Nystavaren (“The new spelling”). The general demand for pronunciation-oriented spelling was in line with Neogrammarian theory and its focus on spoken synchronic language use, but it was also practically rooted in pedagogical realities of the thriving school sector. While the Swedish Academy, inspired by the Grimms’ Deutsches Wörterbuch and the Oxford English Dictionary, began publishing the SAOB historical dictionary (Svenska Akademiens ordbok) in 1898, teachers throughout the nation started petitions for spelling reform and standardization. The most radical spelling reform in the language’s history was implemented in 1906, but transition from the old spelling (gammalstavning) took several decades. Consolidating the radically anticonservative impact of Strindberg’s Röda rummet (”The red room”, 1879), the 1906 reform ushered in the Nusvenska (“Contemporary Swedish”) period.
