for judging of the dialectical varieties exists in the Norwegian charters, carefully and accurately edited by the Norwegian scholars C. Lange (d. 1861), C. R. Unger (d. 1897) and H. J. Huitfeldt-Kaas.' III. SWEDISH.-The Pre-Reformation language is called Old Swedish.

Old Swedish, during its earliest pre-literary period (800-1225), retains quite as original a character as contemporary Form Old Icelandic and Old Norwegian. The first part of the of the language. inscription of the Rökstone running thusAFT UAMUD STANTA RUNAR ÞAR. IN UARIN FAÞI FABIR AFT FAIKIAN SUNU,

and probably pronounced

1. Old Swedish. The territory of the Old Swedish comprehended(1) Sweden, except the most northerly part, where Lappish (and Finnish?) was spoken, the most southerly (Skåne, Halland Old and Blekinge) and certain parts of western Sweden; (2) Swedish. extensive maritime tracts of Finland, Esthonia and Livonia, with their surrounding islands; and (3) certain places in Russia, where Swedish was spoken for a considerable time. The oldest but also the most meagre sources of our knowledge of Old Swedish are those words, almost exclusively personal names (nearly one hundred), which were introduced into the Russian language at the foundation of the Russian realm by Swedes (in 862), and which are for the most part somewhat influenced by Russian phonetic laws, preserved in two Russian documents of the years 911 and as Igor. (O. Sw. Ingvar), Rurik (Hrørikr), Oleg (Hialge, secondary form of Helge), Olga (Hialga, Helga). Of about the same date, but of an infinitely greater importance, are the runic inscriptions, amounting in number to about two thousand, which have been found cut on stones (rarely wood, metal or other materials) almost all over Sweden, though they occur most frequently (about half of the total number) in the province of Uppland, next to which come Södermanland, with nearly three hundred inscriptions, then Östergötland, and Gotland, with more than two hundred each. For the most part they occur on tombstones or monuments in memory of deceased relatives; rarely they are public notices. Their form is often metrical, in part at least. Most of them are anonymous, in so far that we do not know the name of the engraver, though, as a rule, the name of the man who ordered them is recorded. Of the engravers named, about seventy in number, the three most productive are Ubir, Bali and Asmundr Karasun, all three principally working in Upland; the first-mentioned name is signed on nearly eighty, the others on about thirty and forty stones respectively. These inscriptions vary very much in age, belonging to all centuries of Old Swedish, but by far the greatest number of them date from the 11th and 12th centuries. From heathen times-as well as from the last two centuries of the middle ages-we have comparatively few. The oldest are perhaps the Ingelstad inscription in Östergötland, the Sparlosa inscription in Västergötland, and the Gursten one found in the north of Småland, all probably from the end of the 9th century. The rune-stone from Rok in Östergötland probably dates from about A.D. 900. Its inscription surpasses all the others both in length (more than 750 runes) and in the importance of its contents, which are equally interesting as regards philology and the history of culture; it is a fragment (partly in metrical form) of an Old Swedish heroic tale. From about the year 1040 we possess the inscriptions of Asmundr Karasun, and the so-called Ingvar monuments (more than twenty in number), erected most of them in Södermanland, in honour of the men who fell in a great war in eastern Europe under the command of a certain Ingvar; the stones cut by Bali belong to the time c. 1060. Somewhat later are the inscriptions cut by Ubir, and from the beginning of the 12th century is the remarkable inscription on the door-ring of the church of Forsa in Helsingland, containing the oldest Scandinavian statute now preserved, as well as other inscriptions from the same province, written in a particular variety of the common runic alphabet, the so-called staflosa (staffless, without the perpendicular staff) runes, as the long genealogical inscription on the Malstad-stone. The inscriptions of the following centuries are of far less philological interest, because after the 13th century there exists another and more fruitful source for Old Swedish, viz. a literature in the proper sense of the word. Of runic literature nothing has been preserved to our days. The literature in the Latin letters is both in quality and extent incomparably inferior to Old Icelandic, though it, at least in quantity, considerably surpasses Old Norwegian. In age, however, it is inferior to both of them, beginning only in the 13th century. The oldest of the extant manuscripts is a fragment of the Older Västgötalaw, written about the year 1250. A complete codex (Cod. Holm. B 59) of the same law dates from about 1285, and is philologically of the greatest importance. Of other works of value from a philological point of view we only mention a codex of the Sodermannalaw (Cod. Holm. B 53) of about 1325, a codex of the Upplandslaw (Cod. Ups. 12), the two manuscripts containing a collection of legends generally named Cod. Bureanus (written a little after 1350) and Cod. Bildstenianus (between 1420 and 1450), and the great Oxenstiernian manuscript, which consists chiefly of a collection of legends written for the most part in 1385. very numerous Old Swedish charters, from 1343 downwards, are also of great importance.2

"

The

Diplomalarium Norvegicum (1847, sqq.), 16 vols. have appeared. The Old Swedish monuments are for the most part published in the following collections:-Svenska fornskriftsällskapets samlingar, 132 parts (1844-1907); C. J. Schlyter, Samling af Sveriges gamla lagur, vols. i-vii. and x.-xii. (1827-1869); Svenskt Diplo malarium (6 vols., 1829-1878, new series, 4 vols., 1875-1904).

EN HAN FAR BANE AF

fellr klukka niðr í höfuð manni, bæti sókn morkum þrim, ef hann fær bana af. These few words exhibit instances of the following innovations in Swedish:-d is inserted between II (nn) and a following (as b between m and I, r, and p between m and 1, n-as hambrar, Icel. hamrar, hammers, sampt, Icel. samt, together with); an auxiliary vowel is inserted between final and a preceding consonant; a in terminations is often changed into @; au in the final syllable causes no change of a preceding a; the present tense takes the vowel of the infinitive (and the preterite subjunctive that of preterite indicative plural). Other important changes, appearing at the same time, but probably, partly at least, of a somewhat older date, are the following:-all diphthongs are contracted (as gha, Icel. auga, eye; drama, Icel. dreyma, to dream; sten, Icel. steinn, stone-traces of which we find as early as the 12th century); é has passed into a (as knæ, Icel. kné, knee); ia into ia, as in Eastern Norwegian (as hiarta, Icel. hiarta, heart); iu into y after r, and a consonant +/ (as flygha, Icel. fliúga, to fly); the forms of the three persons singular of verbs have assimilated (except in the so-called strong preterite); the 2nd person plural ends in -in for -i, -ud. The transition to the 14th century is marked by important changes: short y, e.g., passed into o in many positions (as dør for dyr, door, &c.); there appeared a so-called law of vowel balance, according to which the vowels i and u are always found in terminations after a short root syllable, and at least when no consonant follows-e and o after a long one (as Gupi, to God, til salu, for sale, but i garbe, in the court, for visso, assuredly), and the forms of the dative and the accusative of pronouns gradually became the same. The number of borrowed words is as yet very limited, and is chiefly confined to ecclesiastical words of Latin and Greek origin, introduced along with Christianity (as kors, cross, bref, epistle, skole, school, præster, priest, almōsa, alms). At the middle of the 14th century the literary language undergoes a remarkable reform, developing at the same time to a riksspråk," a uniform language, common to a certain degree to the whole country. The chief characteristics of this later Old Swedish (13751526) are the following:-the long a has passed into & (that is, an open o), and io (except before g, k, rdh, rt) into ip (as siø, sea, lake), gand k (sk) before palatal vowels are softened into dj and tj (stj); k and in unaccented syllables often pass into gh, dh (as Swerighe for Swērike, Sweden, litedh for litit, a little); the articles than (or hin), the, and (a little later) en, a, come into use; the dual pronouns vanish; the relative ar, that, is changed with sum; the present participle takes a secondary form in -s (as gangandis, beside gangande, going). A little later the following changes appear:-a short vowel is lengthened before a single consonant, first when the consonant belongs to the same syllable (as hat, hate), afterwards also when it belongs to the following one (as hata, to hate); an auxiliary vowel is inserted between / or and a preceding consonant (as gavel, gable, øken, desert); short i often passes into e (as leva, to live); th passes into ; a new conjugation is formed which has no infinitive termination, but doubles the sign of the preterite (as bỏ, bodde, bött, to dwell, dwelt, dwelt). Owing to the political and commercial state of the country the language at this period is deluged with borrowed words of Low German origin, mostly social and industrial terms, such as the great number of verbs in -era (e.g. hantera, to In memory of Wámód these runes stand; and Warinn, his father, wrote them in memory of his son (by destiny) condemned to death.

If the bell fall down on anybody's head, the parish pays a fine of three marks should he die from it.

handle), the substantives in -eri (røverì, robbery), -inna (førstinna, princess), -het (fromhet, piety), be- (betala, to pay), and a great many others (klen, weak, smaka, to taste, grover, big, pung, purse, tuki, discipline, brūka, to use, twist, quarrel, støvel, boot, arbeta, to work, frokoster, lunch, &c.). Owing to the political circumstances, we find towards the end of the period a very powerful Danish influence, which extends also to phonetics and etymology, so that, for example, nearly all the terminal vowels are supplanted by the uniform Danish e, the hard consonants p, t, k by b, d, g as in Danish, the second person plural of the imperative ends in -er, besides -en (as lagher, for taghen, older takin). Dialectical differences incontestably occur in the runic inscriptions as well as in the literature; in the former, however, most of them are hidden from our eyes by the character of the writing, Dialects. which is, from a phonetic point of view, highly unsatis factory, indicating the most different sounds by the same sign (for example, o, u, y and ō are denoted by one and the same rune); in the literature again they are reduced to a minimum by the awakening desire to form a uniform literary language for the whole country, and by the literary productivity and consequent predominant influence of certain provinces (as Östergötland). Only one distinct dialect has been handed down to us, that of the island of Forngut. Gotland, which differs so essentially from the Old Swedish niska. of the mainland that it has with good reason been characterized, under the name Forngutniska, as in a certain sense a separate language. Materials for its study are very abundant: on one hand we possess more than two hundred runic inscriptions, among them a very remarkable one from the beginning of the 13th century, counting upwards of four hundred runes, cut on a font (now in Aakirkeby on the island of Bornholm), and representing the life of Christ in a series of pictures and words; on the other hand a literature has been preserved consisting of a runic calendar from 1328, the law of the island (the oldest manuscript is from about 1350), a piece of traditional history and a gild statue. The language is distinguished from the Old Swedish of the mainland especially by the following characteristics:-the old diphthongs are preserved (e.g. auga, eye, droyma, to dream, stain, stone), and a triphthong has arisen by the change of iu into iau (as fliauga, to fly); the long vowels and have passed into è and (as mēla, to speak, dyma, to deem); short o rarely occurs except before r, being in other positions changed into u; w is dropped before r (as raipi, wrath); the genitive singular of feminines in a ends in ur for -u (as kirkiur, of the church). Owing to the entire absence of documentary evidence it is impossible to determine how far the dialects east of the Baltic, which no doubt had a separate individuality, differed from the mother-tongue.

The first to pay attention to the study of Old Swedish was the Swedish savant J. Buracus (d. 1652), who by several works (from 1599 onwards) called attention to and excited a lively The study interest in the runic monuments, and, by his edition of Old (1634) of the excellent Old Swedish work Um Styrilse Swedish. Kununga ok Høfpinga, in Old Swedish literature also. His no longer extant Specimen Primariae Linguae Scantzianae (1636) gave but a very short review of Old Swedish inflections, but is remarkable as the first essay of its kind, and is perhaps the oldest attempt in modern times at a grammatical treatment of any old Germanic language. The study of runes was very popular in the 17th century; M. Celsius (d. 1679) deciphered the staffless runes and J. Hadorph (d. 1693), who also did good work in editing Old Swedish texts, copied more than a thousand runic inscriptions, published by J. Goransson as Bantil (1750). During the 18th century, again, Old Swedish was almost completely neglected; but in the 19th century the study of runes was well represented by the collection (Runurkunder, 1833) of the Swede Liljegren (d. 1837) and by the Norwegian S. Bugge's ingenious interpretation and grammati cal treatment of some of the most remarkable inscriptions, especially that of Rok. Old Swedish literature has also been made the object of grammatical researches. A first outline of a history of the Swedish language is to be found in the work of N. M. Petersen (1830), and a scheme of an Old Swedish grammar in P. A. Munch's essay, Fornswenskans och Fornmorskans språkbyggnad (1849); but Old Swedish grammar was never treated as an independent branch of science until the appearance of J. E. Rydqvist's (d. 1877) monumental work Svenska språkets lagar (in 6 vols., 1850-1883), which was followed in Sweden by a whole literature on the same subject. Thus phonetics, which were comparatively neglected by Rydqvist, have been investigated with great success, especially by L. F. Läffler and A. Kock; while the other parts of grammar have been treated of above all by K. F Söderwall. His principal work, Ordbok ofver Svenska medeltidsspråket (1884 sq.), gives the list of words in the later Old Swedish language, and-taken along with the Ordbok till samlingen af Sveriges gamla lagar (1877), by C. J. Schlyter, the wellknown editor of Old Swedish texts, which contains the vocabulary of the oldest literature-it worthily meets the demand for an Old Swedish dictionary. An Old Swedish grammar, answering the requirements of modern philology, is edited by A. Noreen.

1 See A. Noreen, "Aperçu de l'histoire de la science linguistique suédoise" (Le Muséon, ii., 1883).

Allschwedische Grammatik (1897-1904).

Modern Swedish.

2. Modern Swedish.-The first complete translation of the Bible, edited in 1541 by the brothers Olaus and Laurentius Petri, and generally called the Bible of Gustavus I., may be regarded as the earliest important monument of this. Owing to religious and political circumstances, and to the learned influence of humanism, theological and historico-political works preponderate in the Swedish literature of the following period, which therefore affords but scanty material for philological research. It is not until the middle of the 17th century that Swedish literature adequately exemplifies the language, for at that period literature first began to be cultivated as a fine art, and its principal representatives, such as Stiernhielm, Columbus and Spegel, were in reality the first to study it as a means of expression and to develop its resources. Amongst the authors of the 18th century we have to mention in the first place Dalin, who was to some extent the creator of the prose style of that epoch; while of the end of the century Kellgren and Bellman are the most noteworthy examples, representing the higher and the more familiar style of poetry respectively. The language of the 19th century, or at any rate of the middle of it, is best represented in the works of Wallin and Tegnér, which, on account of their enormous circulation, have had a greater influence than those of any other authors.

ones.

As to the language itself the earliest Modern Swedish texts, as Gustavus I.'s Bible, differ considerably from the latest Old Swedish We find a decided tendency to exterminate Form Danisms and reintroduce native and partially antiquated of the forms. At the same time there appear several traces of a language. later state of the language; all genitives (singular and plural), e.g., end in -s, which in earlier times was the proper ending of certain declensions only. In spite of the archaistic efforts of many writers, both in forms and in vocabulary, the language nevertheless underwent rapid changes during the 16th and 17th centuries. Thus sj and stj (original as well as derived from sk before a palatal vowel) assimilate into a simple sh- sound; dj (original as well as derived from g before a palatal vowel), at least at the end of the 17th century, dropped its d-sound (compare such spellings as diufwer, giättar, envogé, for jufver, udder, jättar, giants, envoyé, envoy); hj passes into (such spellings are found as jort for hjort, hart, and hjärpe for järpe, hazel grouse); b and p inserted in such words as himblar, heavens, hambrar, hammers, jämpn, even, sampt, together with, are dropped; the first person plural of the verb takes the form of the third person (as vi fara, foro, for vi farom, forom, we go, went); by the side of the pronoun I, you, there arises a secondary form Ni, in full use in the spoken language about 1650; the adjective gradually loses all the case-inflections; in substantives the nominative, dative and accusative take the same form as early as the middle of the 17th century; in the declension with suffixed article the old method of expressing number and case both in the substantive and the article is changed, so that the substantive alone takes the number-inflection and the article alone the case-ending; neuter substantives ending in a vowel, which previously had no plural ending, take the plural ending -, some -er-as bi-n, bees, bageri-er, bakeries. About the year 1700 the Old Swedish inflection may, in general, be considered as almost completely given up, although a work of such importance in the history of the language as Charles XII.'s Bible (so-called) of 1703, by a kind of conscious archaism has preserved a good many of the old forms. To these archaistic tendencies of certain authors at the end of the 17th century we owe the great number of Old Swedish and Icelandic borrowed words then introduced into the languageas fager, fair, härja, to ravage, later, manners, snille, genius, tarna, girl, tima, to happen, &c. In addition to this, owing to humanistic influence, learned expressions were borrowed from Latin during the whole 16th and 17th centuries; and from German, chiefly at the Reformation and during the Thirty Years' War, numberless words were introduced-as tapper, brave, prakt, magnificence, hurtig, brisk, &c.; among these may be noted especially a great number of words beginning in an-, er-, for- and ge-. Owing to the constantly increasing political and literary predominance of France, French words were largely borrowed in the 17th century, and to an equally great extent in the 18th; such are offar, business, respekt, respect, lalang, talent, charmant, charming, &c. In the 19th century, especially about the middle of it, we again meet with conscious and energetic efforts after purism both in the formation of new words and in the adoption of words from the old language (id, diligence, mäla, to speak, fylking, battle-array, &c.), and from the dialects (bliga, to gaze, flis, flake, skrabbig, bad, &c.). Consequently the present vocabulary differs to a very great extent from that of the literature of the 17th century. As for the sounds and grammatical forms, on the other hand, comparatively few important changes have taken place during the last two centuries. In the 18th century, however, the aspirates dh and gh passed into d and g (after I and 7 into j)—as lag for lagh, law, brod for brödh, bread; hw passed into v (in uialects already about the year 1400)—as valp for hwalper, whelp; Ij likewise into j-thus ljuster, leister, occurs written juster. In our time rd, rl, rn, rs and ri are passing into simple sounds ("supradental

The printed characters are also considerably changed by the introduction of the new letters d (with the translation of the New Testament of 1526), and ä, ö (both already in the first print in Swedish of 1495) for ae, æ, S.

d,, n, s and f), while the singular of the verbs is gradually supplanting the plural. A vigorous reform, slowly but firmly carried on almost uniformly during all periods of the Swedish language, is the throwing back of the principal accent to the beginning of the word in cases where previously it stood nearer the end, a tendency that is characteristic of all the Scandinavian languages, but no doubt especially of Swedish. In the primitive Scandinavian age the accent was removed in most simple words; the originally accented syllable, however, preserved a musically high pitch and stress. Thus there arose two essentially different accentuations-the one, with unaccentuated final syllable, as in Içel. stígr (Gr. σreixeis), thou goest, the comparative betre (cf. Gr. @aos from raxis), better, the other, with secondary stress and high pitch on the final, as in Icel. pret. plur. budo (Sans._bubudhús), we bade, part. pret. bitenn (Sans. bhinnas), bitten. The same change afterwards took place in those compound words that had the principal accent on the second member, so that such contrasts as German úrteil and erteilen were gradually brought into conformity with the former accentuation. At the present day it is quite exceptionally (and chiefly in borrowed words of later date) that the principal accent in Swedish is on any other syllable than the first, as in lekámen, body, välsigna, to bless. The scientific study of Modern Swedish dates from Sweden's glorious epoch, the last half of the 17th century. The first regular The study Swedish grammar was written in 1684 (not edited till of Modern 1884) in Latin by E. Aurivillius; the first in Swedish is by N. Tiällman (1696). But little, however, of value was Swedish. produced before the great work of Rydqvist mentioned above, which, although chiefly dealing with the old language, throws a flood of light on the modern also. Among the works of late years we must call special attention to the researches into the history of the language by K. F. Sóderwall, F. A. Tamm, A. Kock and E. Hellquist. The grammar of the modern language is, as regards certain parts, treated in a praiseworthy manner by, among others, J. A. Aurén, J. A. Lyttkens and F. A. Wulff (in several common works), E. Tegnér, G. Cederschiold and F. A. Tamm (d. 1905). A good though short account of phonology and inflections is given in H. Sweet's essay on " Sounds and Forms of Spoken Swedish "(Trans. Phil. Soc., 1877-1879). A comprehensive and detailed grammar (Vårt språk) has been edited (since 1903) by A. Noreen. Attempts to construct a dictionary were made in the 16th century, the earliest being the anonymous Variarum rerum vocabula cum Sueca interprelatione, in 1538, and the Synonymorum libellus by Elaus Petri Helsingius, in 1587, both of which, however, followed German originals. The first regular dictionary is by H. Spegel, 1712; and in 1769 J. Ihre (d. 1789), probably the greatest philological genius of Sweden, published his Glossarium Suiogolicum, which still remains one of the most copious Swedish dictionaries in existence. In the 19th century the diligent lexicographer A. F. Dalin published a useful work. The Swedish Academy has been editing (since 1893) a gigantic dictionary on about the same plan as Dr Murray's New English Dictionary. Another such large work is Sverges Ortnamn (the local names of Sweden) edited since 1906 by the Royal Committee for investigation of the Swedish place-names.

Old

Danish.

IV. DANISH, like Swedish, is divided into the two great Preand Post-Reformation epochs of Old and Modern Danish. 1. Old Danish.-The territory of Old Danish included not only the present Denmark, but also the southern Swedish provinces of Halland, Skåne and Blekinge, the whole of Schleswig, and, as stated above, for a short period also a great part of England, and parts of Normandy. The oldest monuments of the language are runic inscriptions, altogether about 225 in number. The oldest of them go as far back as to the beginning of the 9th century, the Snoldelev-stone, for instance, on Sealand, and the Flemlose-stone on Fünen. From about the year 900 date the very long inscriptions of Tryggevaelde (Zealand) and Glavendrup (Fünen); from the 10th century we have the stones of Jaellinge (Jutland), in memory of two of the oldest historical kings of Denmark (Gorm and Harald); while from about 1000 we have a stone at Dannevirke (Schleswig), raised by the conqueror of England, Sven Tjuguskaegg Relics of about the same age are the words that were introduced by the Danes into English, the oldest of which date from the end of the 9th century, the time of the first Danish settlement in England; most of these are to be found in the early English work Ormulum. No Danish literature arose before the 13th century. The oldest manuscript that has come down to us dates from the end of that century, written in runes and containing the law of Skåne. From about the year 1300 we possess a manuscript written in Latin characters and containing the so-called Valdemar's and Erik's laws of Zealand, the Flensborg manuscript of the law of Jutland, and a manuscript of the municipal laws of Flensborg. These three manuscripts represent three different dialects-that, namely, of Skåne, 1 See A. Noreen, "Aperçu," &c.; Vårt språk, i. 181 sqq. See L. F. A. Wimmer, De Danske runcmindesmærker (4 vols., 1895-1905).

See E. Brate, "Nordische Lehnwörter im Ormulum (Paul Braune's Beiträge. x., 1884); E. Björkman, Scandinavian Loanwords in Middle English (2 vols., 1900, 1902) in "Studien zur englischen Philologie," vii. and xi. Also ORM.

Form

As to the form of the language, it hardly differs at all during the period between A.D. 800 and 1200 from Old Swedish. It is only in the oldest literature that we can trace any marked differences; these are not very important, and are generally of the attributable to the fact that Danish underwent a little language. earlier the same changes that afterwards took place in Swedish (e.g. h in hw and hj in Danish was mute as carly as the end of the 14th century. The laws referred to above only agree in differing from the Swedish laws in the following points: the nominative already takes the form of the accusative (as kalf, calf, but Old Sw. nom. kalver, acc. kalf); the second person plural ends in @ (as kopa, but Old Sw. köpin, you buy); in the subjunctive no differ ences are expressed between persons and numbers. Among themselves, on the contrary, they show considerable differences; the law of Skåne most nearly corresponds with the Swedish laws, those of Zealand keep the middle place, while the law of Jutland exhibits the most distinctive individuality. The Skåne law, e.g., retains the vowels a, i, u in terminations, which otherwise in Danish have become uniformly a; the same law inserts b and d between certain consonants (like Old Sw.), has preserved the dative, and in the present tense takes the vowel of the infinitive; the law of Jutland, again, does not insert b and d, and has dropped the dative, while the present tense (undergoing an Umlaut) has by no means always accepted the vowel of the infinitive; in all three characteristics the laws of Zealand fluctuate. After 1350 we meet an essentially altered language, in which we must first note the change of k, p, t after a vowel into g, b, d (as tag, roof, lobe, to run, ade, to eat); th passes into (as ting, thing), gh into w (as law for lagh, gild) or into i (as vei for wagh, way); ld, nd are pronounced like 1, nn; s is the general genitive ending in singular and plural, &c. The vocabulary, which in earlier times only borrowed a few, and those mostly ecclesiastical, words, is now-chiefly owing to the predominant influence of the Hanse towns-inundated by German words, such as those beginning with be-, bi-, ge-, for- and und-, and ending in -hed, and a great number of others, as blive, to become, ske, to happen, fri, free, krig, war, buxer, pantaloons, ganske, quite, &c.

An Old Danish grammar is still wanting, and the preparatory studies which exist are, although excellent, but few in number, being chiefly essays by the Danes K. J. Lyngby and GramL. F. A. Wimmer. N. M. Petersen's treatise Det Danske, matical Norske, og Svenske sprogs historie, vol. i. (1829), one of the treatment. first works that paid any attention to Old Danish, which till then had been completely neglected, is now surpassed by V. Dahlerup's Geschichte der dänischen Sprache (1904). A dictionary on a large scale covering the whole of Old Danish literature, except the very oldest, by O. Kalkar, has been in course of publication since 1881; older and smaller is C. Molbech's Dansk Glossarium (1857

1866).

Modera Danish

sources.

translation of the Bible, by C. Pedersen, Peder Palladius and others, 2. Modern Danish.-The first important monument of this is the the so-called Christian III.'s Bible (1550), famous for the unique purity and excellence of its language, the dialect of Zealand, then incontestably promoted to be the language of the kingdom. The first secular work deserving of the same praise is Vedel's translation of Saxo (1575). The succeeding period until 1750 offers but few works in really good Danish; as perfectly classical, however, we have to mention the so-called Christian V.'s Law of Denmark (1683). For the rest, humanism has stamped a highly Latin-French character on the literature, striking even in the works of the principal writer of this period, Holberg. But about the year 1750 there begins a new movement, characterized by a reaction against the language of the preceding period and by purist tendencies, or, at least, efforts to enrich the language with new-formed words (not seldom after the German pattern), as omkreds, periphery, selvstændighed, independence, valgsprog, devise, digter, poet. The leading representatives of these tendencies were Eilschow and Sneedorf. From their time Danish may be said to have acquired its present essential features, though it cannot be denied that several later authors, as J. Ewald and Öhlenschläger, have exercised a considerable influence on the poetical style. As the most important differences between the gram- Form matical forms of the 18th and 19th centuries on one hand and those of the 16th and 17th centuries on the other, may be noted the following: most neuter substantives take a plural ending; those ending in a vowel form their plural by adding - (as riger, for older rige, plural of rige, kingdom), and many of those ending in a consonant by adding -e (as huse for hus, of hus, house); substantives ending in -ere drop their final -e (as dommer for dommere, judge); the declension with suffixed article becomes simplified in the same way as in Swedish; the plural of verbs takes the singular form (as drak for drukke, we drank); and the preterite subjunctive is supplanted by the infinitive (as var for vaare, were).

of the language.