Reintroducing the Kalmar union

Today on the 27th of October 2009 the historian Gunnar Wetterberg propose (1, 2, 3, 4, 5) to reintroduce the Kalmar union (Picture 1, 'Rigens baner' the flag introduced by Eric of Pomerania).

As a supreme regent would be the Danish queen Margarethe II (Picture 2). Well why not? It is clearly better than the Swedish king Carl XVI Gustav.

Upon writing a staggering 66 % of the SvD's readers are positive to the idea.

Personally I would not have any problems letting Finland out of the picture but that would probably be unthinkable for the Swedish (Picture 3, the land area of the original Kalmarunion).

Unfortunately you see can see all kinds of nasty and flamboyant anti-Danish and anti-Scanian sentiments among the Swedish article comments. It is interesting to note that Swedish still can have these open prejudices and get away with it.

I guess the Swedish are still recovering from the Swedish separatist movement in 1523. The day Gustav I took the throne is the basis of the Swedish national day even though large part of Sweden of today was not part of Sweden then.

We can then also combine the Scandinavian languages with one common ortography: Standard Scandinavian.

And they say that Scandinavism as an ideology is dead...

Läs även andra bloggares åsikter om Kalmarunionen, Sverige, Danmark, Norge, Finalnd, Island, Grönland

The language on Bornholm is now Swedish

According to the latest SIL rapport (Lewis, M. Paul (ed.), 2009. Ethnologue: Languages of the World, Sixteenth edition. Dallas, Tex.: SIL International. Online version: http://www.ethnologue.com/ the Danish on the Danish island of Bornholm is now classified as speaking Swedish (Languages of Sweden, Languages of Denmark).

This is very probable due to Swedish pressure. In the former version of Ethnologue (15th) Scanian was properly defined as the historical East Danish language in Skåne (Scania propria), Halland, Blekinge and Bornholm, nowadays situated in both Sweden and Denmark.

On the SIL:s map depicting Denmark it is clearly visible that the people on the Danish island of Bornholm are suppose to speak Swedish.

According to UNESCO, Scanian is defined as spoken in "The regions of Scania, Halland and Blekinge, Sweden; Bornholm island, Denmark; the original ISO code [scy] for Scanian has been retired on false grounds".

There are several organizations such as FUEN, and UNPO and acknowledging Scanians as a minority within Sweden and Denmark. Recently FUEN unanimously adopted a Scanian language resolution in protection of the Scanian language which was partly reported in the media (1, 2, 3).

The pressure is now on from the Swedish establishment to maintain their Swedification ambitions. It is has obviously now even extended to the Danish island of Bornholm - the very island the Swedes were once kicked out from!

The Swedish credo has therefore been slightly modified and may be expressed as:

"One Swedish nation, one Swedish people, one Swedish history, one Swedish language - now including Bornholm"

I wonder what the Danes are saying?

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Articles/blogs based on this blog entry:

DR Bornholm - Bornholmians speak Swedish (Danish)
Modern Swedish imperialisms (Swedish)
Bornholmian is not Swedish! (Danish)
DR P4 Bornholm - UNESCO: The language on Bornholm is in danger (Danish)
More Danish reactions on contemporary Swedenization policies  (Danish)

Was the Danish island Bornholm conqered by Sweden while we were sleeping? (Danish)
Is the Dansih island Bornholm Swedish? (Swedish)

Bornholm's history according to oresunddirekt.com (Swedish)

Email a complaint:
dialekt.dk at University of Copenhagen (dialekt.dk@hum.ku.dk).
DAL at Lund university (dal@sofi.se)
SIL (Editor_Ethnologue@sil.org)
UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger (atlas@unesco.org)

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