From: mike@NOMAD.LBL.GOV (Michael Helm)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic
Subject: Archaic Viking dialect in the news
Date: 6 Apr 92 18:10:16 GMT
Article-I.D.: nomad.9204061810.AA01500
Reply-To: mike@nomad.lbl.gov

Reposting this from another source ... I've never heard of this
dialect before.  Does anyone have anything to say about the
article below?  Are the claims made for this dialect valid?
Thanks, ==mwh

--- Forwarded mail from GAELIC-L@IRLEARN.ucd.ie

>From GAELIC-L@IRLEARN Mon Apr  6 04:36:54 1992
Reply-To: GAELIC-L@IRLEARN.ucd.ie
From: EVERSON@IRLEARN.UCD.IE
Subject:      Archaic Viking dialect in the news
To: irish@fionn.lbl.gov (michael helm)

>From The Guardian, 3 April 1992, p. 26:
     
LAST BATTLE TO SAVE A VIKING TONGUE
Alex Duval Smith on the dialect you were not supposed to speak in public.
     
  Teachers in Sweden are campaigning to save A"lvdalska, the Scandinavian
dialect closest to the language of the Vikings.
  A"lvdalska is taught in a dozen schools in northern Dalerna, central
Sweden, where the dialect has survived thanks to the region's remoteness
and despite a ban which lasted until 1960 on speaking it in public.
  A"lvdalska is the remnant of the language which was spoken in
Scandinavia by the Vikings 900 years ago. Among national languages, only
Icelandic and Faeroese come close [to] it, while Swedish, Danish, and
Norwegian have incorporated many Germanic and Latin words. Today,
A"lvdalska is incomprehensible to most Scandinavian[s].
  In 1990, 12 schools in an area of Dalarna which has speakers of
A"lvdalska, began teaching it for three hours a week--the time
allocated for the teaching of native languages, usually to immigrant
children.
  Now the grant for the special lessons has been withdrawn, prompting
campaigners to claim immigrants have a better chance of maintaining
their knowledge of their mother tongues--through the native languages
teaching schemes--than A"lvdalen's children.
  According to Ulumdalska, which campaigns for the dialect, 70 per cent
of pensioners in A"lvdalen county use it daily but only 5 per cent of
children and 20 per cent of their parents do. "You can photograph and
restore old objects for posterity but a dialect is a living cultural
inheritance which must be passed on by being spoken", said Aake Haarden
a teacher in the town of Aasen.
  The Swedish education ministry says  it cannot bring the teaching
of A"lvdalska into its native languages programme as it is not a
foreign language.
  There are also local disputes because the dialect is spoken in
such a remote area that there are six variants of it within a 200
kilometre radius and campaigners cannot agree on which should
be adopted as standard.
  Meanwhile, Ulumdalska campaigners are saying: <Wildum fersyo"ts dja"ro
nod fer te biwaaraa dialekte>, which means, "we want to do something to
save the dialect". And, they add, A"lvdalska is <spraatser saa int will dao>,
--"the language that will not diw".
  But it may die. "This is the last generation that can save the dialect,"
said Haarden. If they can agree on which variant of the dialect to save.
     
Michael Everson
School of Architecture, UCD, Richview, Clonskeagh, Dublin 14, E/ire
Phone: +353-1-706-2745  Fax: +353-1-283-7778


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Newsgroups: soc.culture.nordic