Hør dog hvad de siger - Note-to-Self: Trials & Errors

central perspective in our approach is Benedict Anderson’s (1991) notion of ‘imagined com-
munity’.
2. Background and perspectives
The seven communities picked out as representatives of what the inhabitants in the Nordic
countries themselves refer to as Norden (‘the North’) are the most populous in the area.
Areally, Sweden and Norway together constitute the Scandinavian Peninsula; together with
Denmark these three countries are commonly, and also in this study, referred to as Scandina-
via, and their languages are referred to as the Scandinavian languages. The three languages
are very closely related – so much so that Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are typically held
up as good examples of a linguistic situation where these three would be considered different
dialects if they were spoken in the same nation. To be sure, it is part of the tradition, mythical
or not, that speakers of Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish should have mutual understanding
of each other’s languages. This is even put forth as a fact in the official website of the Nordic
Language Council (www.norden.org). Faroese and Icelandic are genetically related to the
Scandinavian languages, but more distantly so, and are not (believed to be) immediately com-
prehensible to speakers of Scandinavian. Politically, the Faeroe Islands belong to Denmark,
and all Faroese are bi-lingual to some extent. Iceland was formerly under Danish rule, and
Danish is still taught in Icelandic schools. Finally, Finland has two national languages, Fin-
nish and Swedish. Finnish is a Finno-Ugric language and as such genetically not related to the
other, Germanic i.e., Indo-European languages. 23 When in the following we speak of ‘inter-
Nordic (language) understanding’ this is meant as a short-hand to grasp the rather complex
communication situations in this area as a whole. Spelled out, we should rather be speaking
about: ‘inter-Nordic use of Scandinavian languages as mother tongue(s) and/or foreign lan-
guage(s)’. When native speakers of the three Scandinavian languages speak with each other,
they will typically use their mother tongue, and the communication will in effect look more
like an ‘inter-dialectal’ one. When one or more non-native speaker, i.e. a Faeroese, Icelandic
or Finnish speaker, is present, he or she will use one of the Scandinavian languages as a for-
eign language, and the situation will be more of a lingua franca situation.
For centuries, these communities have had substantial (sometimes politically forced) coo-
peration and similar interests. To a large extent as a result of the influence of the national ro-
mantic movement, the Finnish, Icelandic and Faroese communities felt themselves to be un-
23 For an overview of the Nordic languages, see Vikør (1993), Kristiansen & Sandøy (this volume).
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