Elfdalian

Elfdalian
Övdalian
övdalsk, övdalską
Native to	Sweden
Region	Älvdalen, Dalarna
Ethnicity	Swedish
Native speakers	c. 2,400 (2010)[1]
Language family	Indo-European Germanic North Germanic East Scandinavian with West Scandinavian elements (or Central Scandinavian)[2][3] Dalecarlian Elfdalian
Writing system	Latin (Elfdalian alphabet) Dalecarlian runes (until the 20th century)
Official status
Regulated by	Swedish Language Council
Language codes
ISO 639-3	ovd
Linguist List	qer
Glottolog	elfd1234
Älvdalen Municipality in Dalarna, where Elfdalian is spoken in the southeastern half

Elfdalian or Övdalian (övdalsk or övdalską, pronounced [ˈœvdɐlskãː] in Elfdalian, älvdalska or älvdalsmål in Swedish) is a North Germanic language spoken by up to 3,000 people^[4] who live or have grown up in the locality of Älvdalen (Övdaln), in the south east of Älvdalen Municipality in northern Dalarna, Sweden.

Like all other modern North Germanic languages, Elfdalian developed from Old Norse, a North Germanic language spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia and their overseas settlements during the Viking Age until about 1300. It has developed in relative isolation since the Middle Ages and is considered to have remained closer to Old Norse than the other Dalecarlian dialects.

Traditionally regarded as a Swedish dialect,^[5] but by several criteria closer to West Scandinavian dialects,^[2] Elfdalian is a separate language by the standard of mutual intelligibility.^[6][7][8] There is low mutual intelligibility between Swedish and Elfdalian, but, since education and public administration in Älvdalen are conducted in Swedish, native speakers are bilingual and speak Swedish at a native level. People who speak Swedish as their sole native language, neither speaking nor understanding Elfdalian, are also common in the area.

Elfdalian belongs to the Northern branch/Upper Siljan branch of the Dalecarlian dialects or vernaculars, which in their turn evolved from Old Norse, from which Dalecarlian vernaculars might have split as early as in the eighth or ninth century,^[9] i.e., approximately when the North Germanic languages split into Western and Eastern branches. Elfdalian (and other Dalecarlian language varieties) is traditionally placed among the East Scandinavian languages, together with Swedish and Danish, based on a number of features^[10] that Elfdalian has in common with them. According to Lars Levander,^[11] some of the West Scandinavian features that simultaneously do occur in Elfdalian are archaic traits that once were common in many Scandinavian dialects and have been preserved in the most conservative tongues east and west of Kölen. However, this is rebutted by Kroonen.^[2]

• Lack of syllable lengthening.
• Retention of voiced fricatives /ð/, /ɣ/ and /β/.
• Retention of nominative, accusative and dative cases.
• Retention of Proto-Germanic, Proto-Norse and Old Norse nasal vowels.
• Retention of Proto-Germanic voiced labio-velar approximant /w/: wattn ('water'), will ('wants'), wet ('knows'): compare English water, will, and wit and Standard Swedish vatten, vill and vet.
• Retention of consonant clusters ld, nd, mb, rg, gd and ng (with audible [ɡ]), as in ungg ('young'), kweld ('evening'), warg ('wolf') and lamb ('lamb') from Old Norse ungʀ, kveld, vargʀ (both with /w/ represented by 'v') and lamb.

• More frequent assimilation of pre-Norse mp, nt, and nk to pp, tt, and kk, as in West Scandinavian dialects.
• Shift of a to o before Pre-Norse nk (but not kk).
• Shift of Old Norse ei, ey, and au to ie, ä, and o.
• Diphthongization of Old Norse long high vowels í, ý, ú to closing diphthongs ai, åy, au, and of long rounded mid vowels ó, œ to opening diphthongs uo, yö.
• Vowel harmony (present also in other dialects of Central Scandinavia).
• Loss of h: compare Elfdalian aus with Swedish hus (or English house) and Elfdalian imil with Swedish himmel.

Elfdalian is comparable to Swedish and Norwegian in the number and the quality of vowels but also has nasal vowels. It has retained the Old Norse dental, velar and labial voiced fricatives. Alveolo-palatal affricate consonants occur in all Uvǫ Silan (Swedish Ovansiljan, north of Siljan) dialects. The realization of ⟨r⟩ is [r], an apical alveolar trill. Unlike many variants of Norwegian and Swedish, Elfdalian does not assimilate /rt, rd, rs, rn, rl/ into retroflex consonants. The stress is generally on the first syllable of a word.

		Labial	Dental/ Alveolar	Retroflex	Palatal	Velar
Plosive	voiceless	p	t			k
	voiced	b	d			ɡ
Affricate	voiceless		t͡s̺
	voiced		d͡z̺
Fricative	voiceless	f	s̺
	voiced	v	ð			ɣ
Nasal		m	n			ŋ
Trill/Flap			r	ɽ
Approximant	voiced	w	l		j
	voiceless		l̥

• The voiceless plosives /p/, /t/, and /k/ are aspirated word-initially unless following /s/.^[12]
• [d] and [ð], and [ɡ] and [ɣ] are allophones of /d/ and /ɡ/ respectively in complementary distribution; the fricative allophones surface after vowels when short, and the plosive allophones surface elsewhere.^[13] [ð] can surface word-initially in some pronouns and adverbs by sandhi.
• [l] and [ɽ] are allophones of /l/ in complementary distribution; the former surfaces when long, when adjacent to /t/ or /d/ and, for many speakers, before /n/, and the latter allophone surfaces elsewhere.^[14]
• [v] and [w] are allophones of /v/ in complementary distribution; the former surfaces after a tautomorphemic vowel, and the latter surfaces before a tautomorphemic vowel.^[15] It is also sometimes realised as [b] before /d/. The fricative allophone was historically realised as [β].
• Sounds /t͡s̺ d͡z̺ s̺/ are released as apico-alveolar.

	Front		Central	Back
Close		y yː		(u uː)
Near-close	ɪ ɪː	ʏ ʏː
Close-mid				o oː
Open-mid	ɛ ɛː	œ œː	ɐ	ɔ ɔː
Open	æ æː		aː

• Sounds /o oː/ are heard as /u uː/ in some parts of Övdaln.

Nasal vowels

	Front		Central	Back
Close		ỹ ỹː		(ũ ũː)
Near-close	ɪ̃ ɪ̃ː	ʏ̃ ʏ̃ː
Close-mid				õ õː
Open-mid	ɛ̃ ɛ̃ː	œ̃ œ̃ː	ɐ̃	ɔ̃ ɔ̃ː
Open	(æ̃ æ̃ː)		ãː

• Sounds /ɛ̃ ɛ̃ː/ are heard primarily in Övdaln, whereas /æ̃ æ̃ː/ are heard in other parts nearby.
• Sounds /ɔ̃ ɔ̃ː/ are heard as /õ õː/ or /ũ ũː/ in some parts of Övdaln.

The close vowel sounds /i iː/ or /ĩ ĩː/ are not present in Elfdalian.^[16]

	Front	Central		Back
Close	yœ yœː			uo uoː
Near-close	ɪɛ ɪɛː
Open-mid				ɔyː
Open		ajː	awː
Triphthongs	juo

• Sounds /uo uoː/ can be realized in some village dialects as [ʏæ ʏæː].
• /ɔy/ is realized in some village dialects [ɔj].
• /juo/ is realized in some dialects as [jʏæ].

Nasal diphthongs

	Front	Central	Back
Close	ỹœ ỹœː		ũo ũoː
Near-close	ɪ̃ɛ ɪ̃ɛː
Open		ãjː
Triphthongs	jũo

• Sounds /ũo ũoː/ can be realized in some village dialects as [ʏæ̃ ʏæ̃ː].
• /jũo/ is realized in some dialects as [jʏæ̃].

Elfdalian has nasal versions of most vowels. They have several origins, belonging to different layers of history, but most involve the loss of a nasal consonant, with lengthening and nasalisation of a preceding vowel.

• Late Proto-Germanic loss of *n before *h, which was lost in early Norse, but the nasalisation remained: gą̊tt "doorway" (Proto-Germanic *ganhtiz).
• Old Norse loss of nasal consonants before *s: gą̊ss "goose" (Proto-Germanic *gans), įster "lard" (Middle Low German: inster).
• Old Norse loss of *n before *l and *r: ųor "our" (Proto-Norse unzraz).
• Old Norse loss of word-final *n but only monosyllables: ą̊ "on" (Proto-Germanic *an), sją̊ "to see" (Proto-Germanic *sehwaną), tųo "two (accusative)" (Proto-Germanic *twanz) and the prefix ųo- "un-" (Proto-Germanic *un-).
• Central Scandinavian loss of word-final -n if it had been preserved in Old Norse generally; The change affected neither Standard Swedish, nor final geminate -nn. The shift occurred in primarily the definite noun suffix of feminine nouns but also ą̊ "she" and a few other words.
• Secondary post-Norse loss of n before s: rįesa "to wash" (Old Norse: hreinsa), wįster "left" (Old Norse vinstri with /w/-sound)
• Spontaneous (non-etymological) nasality: rįesa "to travel" (from Low German: rēsen), kęse "cheese" (Old Norse: kæsir, from Latin: caseus).
• Before nasal consonants. This case of nasalisation is allophonic and is not indicated in the orthography.

Nasal vowels are quite rare in Nordic languages, and Elfdalian and a few other neighbouring Dalecarlian dialects^[17] are the only ones that preserve nasal vowels from Proto-Norse; all other Nordic dialects with nasal vowels have developed them later as a result of the loss of a nasal consonant: compare Kalix dialect hąt and gås with Elfdalian hand and gą̊s.

In common with some other Dalecarlian vernaculars spoken north of Lake Siljan, Elfdalian retains numerous old grammatical and phonological features that have not changed considerably since Old Norse. Elfdalian is thus considered to be the most conservative and best preserved vernacular in the Dalecarlian branch. Having developed in relative isolation since the Middle Ages, many linguistic innovations also present occur.

Elfdalian has a morphological structure inherited from its Old Norse ancestor. Verbs are conjugated according to person and number and nouns have four cases, like Modern Icelandic and German. The Old Norse three-gender system has been retained. Like the other North Germanic languages, nouns have definite and indefinite forms, rather than a separate definite article (as in English). The length of the root syllable plays a major role in the Elfdalian declensional and conjugational system. The declension of warg, "wolf" (long-syllabic, strong masculine noun) was as follows in what is sometimes called "Classic Elfdalian" (as described by Levander 1909):

Declension of warg ('wolf')

	Singular		Plural
	indefinite	definite	indefinite	definite
Nominative	warg	wargen	warger	wargär
Accusative	warg	wardjin	warga	wargą
Dative	wardje	wardjem	wargum	wargum(e)
Genitive	(wardjes)	wardjemes	—	wargumes

Many speakers retain the distinct dative case, which is used especially after prepositions and also certain verbs (such as jåpa, "help").^[18] The distinction between nominative and accusative has been lost in indefinite nouns,^{[clarification needed]} and the inherited genitive been replaced by new forms created by attaching -es to the dative (see Dahl & Koptjevskaja-Tamm 2005), a trend that was well underway even in Classic Elfdalian.

Unlike other Swedish vernaculars, the syntax of Elfdalian was investigated in the early 20th century (Levander 1909). Although Elfdalian syntax has attracted increased attention, a majority of its syntactic elements are still unresearched. In May–June 2007, a group of linguists from the pan-Scandinavian NORMS network^[19] conducted fieldwork in Älvdalen especially aimed at investigating the syntactic properties of the language.

Presented with the help of generative syntax, the following features have been identified:

• Only first- and second-person plural pronouns (Rosenkvist 2006, 2010) can be dropped grammatically.
• First-person plural pronouns may be dropped only if they appear directly in front of the finite verb. Verb raising occurs, but there is variation between generations (Garbacz 2006, 2010).
• Multiple subjects seem to occur in clauses with the adverbial sakta, "actually", or the verb lär "is possible" (Levander 1909:109).

Du ir sakt du uvendes duktin dalsk.

literally: "You are ADVL^{[clarification needed]} you very good speak-Övdalian"

"You are actually very good at speaking Övdalian"

That has recently been studied more closely from a generative perspective by Rosenkvist (2007).

Other syntactic properties are negative concord, stylistic inversion, long distance reflexives, verb controlled datives, agent-verb word order in coordinated clauses with deleted subjects, etc. Some of the properties are archaic features that existed in Old Swedish, but others are innovations, but none of them has been studied in any detail.

In Älvdalen, Germanic runes survived in use longer than anywhere else. The last record of the Elfdalian Runes is from the early 20th century;^[20] they are a variant of the Dalecarlian runes. Älvdalen can be said to have had its own alphabet during the 17th and 18th century.

Due to the great phonetic differences between Swedish and Elfdalian, the use of Swedish orthography for Elfdalian has been unpredictable and varied, such as the one applied in the Prytz's play from 1622, which contains long passages in Elfdalian, or in the Elfdalian material published in the periodical Skansvakten.^[21]

A first attempt to create a separate Elfdalian orthography was made in 1982 by Lars Steensland. Bengt Åkerberg elaborated it, and it was applied in some books and used in language courses^[21] and is based on Loka dialect and is highly phonetic. It has many diacritics (Sapir 2006).

In March 2005, a uniform standard orthography for Elfdalian was presented by Råðdjärum (lit. "Let us confer"), The Elfdalian Language Council, and accepted by Ulum Dalska (lit. "Let us speak Dalecarlian"), The Organization for the Preservation of Elfdalian.^[21] The new orthography has already been applied by Björn Rehnström in his book Trair byönner frą̊ Övdalim 'Three Bears from Älvdalen' published in 2007. Råðdjärum's orthography was also used in Bo Westling's translation of Saint-Exupéry's The Little Prince, Lisslprinsn.

The Elfdalian alphabet consists of the following letters^[22]

The Elfdalian alphabet
Upper case	A	Ą	B	C	D	Ð	E	Ę	F	G	H	I	Į	J	K	L	M	N	O	P	Q	R	S	T	U	Ų	V	W	X	Y	Y̨	Z	Å	Ą̊	Ä	Ö
Lower case	a	ą	b	c	d	ð	e	ę	f	g	h	i	į	j	k	l	m	n	o	p	q	r	s	t	u	ų	v	w	x	y	y̨	z	å	ą̊	ä	ö

Other than the letters occurring in the Swedish alphabet, Elfdalian has letters with ogonek, denoting nasal vowels: Ąą, Ęę, Įį, Ųų, Y̨y̨ and Ą̊ą̊. Additionally, it uses the letter eth (Ð, ð) for the voiced dental fricative.

As of 2009, Elfdalian had around 2,000 speakers and is in danger of language death. However, it is possible that it will receive an official status as a minority language in Sweden, which would entail numerous protections and encourage its use in schools and by writers and artists. The Swedish Parliament was due to address the issue in 2007, but has not yet done so.^[23][24] The Council of Europe has urged the Swedish government to reconsider the status of Elfdalian on a total of five occasions.^[24] The Committee of Experts now encourages the Swedish authorities to investigate the status of Elfdalian through an independent scientific study.^[25] In 2020, the Committee of Experts concluded that Elfdalian fulfils the criteria of a Part II language, and asked the Swedish authorities to include reporting on Elfdalian in its next periodical report as the language covered by Part II of the Charter, which the Swedish Ministry of Culture has not done in its 8th periodical report to the Council of Europe.^[26][27]

Ulum Dalska, The Organization for the Preservation of Elfdalian, was established in 1984 with the aim of preserving and documenting the Elfdalian language. In 2005, Ulum Dalska launched a process aimed at bringing about an official recognition of Elfdalian as a language by the Swedish authorities.

Råðdjärum, The Elfdalian Language Committee was established in August 2004 within Ulum Dalska, its first task being to create a new standard orthography for Elfdalian. In March 2005, the new orthography created by Råðdjärum was accepted by the Ulum Dalska at their annual meeting. Råðdjärum consists of five permanent members: linguist Östen Dahl, dialectologist Gunnar Nyström, teacher Inga-Britt Petersson, linguist and coordinator of the committee Dr. Yair Sapir, and linguist Lars Steensland.

As an initiative from Ulum Dalska to encourage children to speak Elfdalian, all school children in Älvdalen who finish the ninth grade and can prove that they can speak Elfdalian receive a 6,000 Swedish krona stipend.^[28]

An online version of Lars Steensland's 2010 Elfdalian dictionary was published in September 2015.^[29]

In March 2016, Swedish Radio reported that the Älvdalen City Council had decided that, starting in autumn 2016, the local kindergarten would operate solely through the medium of Elfdalian.^[30][31]

In 2015, a new genus Elfdaliana of deep-sea nudibranch molluscs was named after the Elfdalian language in reference to evolutionary basal characters of the new genus never before reported for the family, just as Elfdalian preserves ancestral features of Old Norse.^[32]

• Dahl, Östen and Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm. 2005. The resilient dative and other remarkable cases in Scandinavian vernaculars. Ms. University of Stockholm.
• Garbacz, Piotr (2008). Älvdalska – ett mindre känt nordiskt språk. s. 1. Oslo universitet
• Nationalencyklopedin, entry älvdalsmål, subentry Dalarna
• Sapir, Yair and Lundgren, Olof. 2024. A Grammar of Elfdalian. London: UCL Press.
• Sapir, Yair. 2006. Elfdalian, the Vernacular of Övdaln In: Rapport från första konferensen om älvdalska (Report from the First Conference about Elfdalian), Gunnar Nyström (ed.).
• Garbacz, Piotr. 2006.Verb movement and negation in Övdalian. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 78: 173–190. (PDF)
• Levander, Lars. 1925. Dalmålet. Beskrivning och historia.
• Levander, Lars. 1909. Älvdalsmålet i Dalarna (Doctoral thesis published in Svenska landsmål, 1909, (105).
• Rosenkvist, Henrik. 2006. Null Subjects in Övdalian. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 78:141–171.
• Rosenkvist, Henrik. 2007. Subject Doubling in Oevdalian. Working Papers in Scandinavian Syntax 80:77–102.
• Rosenkvist, Henrik. 2010. Null referential subjects in Övdalian. Nordic Journal of Linguistics 33.3:231–267.
• Garbacz, Piotr. 2010. 2008a. Bisatsledföljden i älvdalska. In Jóhannesson, K. et al. (eds.) Nog ordat? Festskrift till Sven-Göran Malmgren den 25 April 2008. 105–112. Meijebergs institut för svensk etymologisk forskning.
• Garbacz, P. 2008b. Negationens syntax i älvdalskan. In Bukowski, P. et al. (eds.) Perspektiv på svenska språket och litteraturen 193–202. Kraków: Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego.
• Garbacz, Piotr. 2010. Word Order in Övdalian. A Study in Variation and Change. Lundastudier i nordisk språkvetenskap 70. Lund University. (PDF)
• Melerska, Dorota. 2010. Vem är ”en riktig älvdaling”? Identitetsmarkörer i dagens Älvdalen. Folia Scandinavica Posnaniensia, vol. 11, 2010, pp. 123–133 (PDF)
• Melerska, Dorota. 2011. Älvdalskan – mellan språkdöd och revitalisering. PhD-thesis. Adam Mickiewicz University (PDF)

• "Witch hunts, mystics and race cars: inside the weirdest village in Sweden". The Guardian.
• "In the mists of Älvdalen". Financial Times. Archived from the original on 11 December 2022. Retrieved 20 April 2013.
• Omniglot: Elfdalian alphabet
• Yair Sapir: Elfdalian, the Vernacular of Övdaln – an article with an outline of Elfdalian (history, background, linguistic features, present
• Guus Kroonen: Fight on to preserve Elfdalian
• The Last Elfdalians, BBC Sounds

• Elfdalian-swedish dictionary
• Förslag till en enhetlig stavning för älvdalska ("Project for a unified orthography for Elfdalian").
• Volume of The First Conference on Elfdalian / Fuost konferensn um övdalskų, with English summaries
• Volume of The Second Conference on Elfdalian / Oðer råðstemną um övdalskų, with English summaries
• SOFI the Institute for Language and Folklore – Älvdalen
• Mikael Parkvall, Sveriges språk. Vem talar vad och var?. RAPPLING 1. Rapporter från Institutionen för lingvistik vid Stockholms universitet. 2009 [1], pp. 29–72