The voice on the ferry tannoy is read out in three languages. The first is in Danish:
“Velkommen ombord Forsea færgen Aurora. Overfarten tager tyve minutter.”
The welcome is repeated in Swedish:
“Välkommen ombord på Forsea-färjan Aurora. Överfarten tar tjugo minuter.”
As you can see, some minor spelling differences aside, these phrases are pretty much the same. The third voice is in English, and to my surprise, is read out in a beautiful female Scottish accent. “Welcome on board the ForSea ferry Aurora. The crossing takes twenty minutes.”
Although the Danish and Swedish words look similar on paper, the accent and pronunciation are quite different. Danish is rather gutteral and throaty, Swedish usually has great clarity and a charming cadence. I say usually, because we’re heading for Skåne, a southern region of Sweden where people have an uncommon Swedish accent, gutteral and halfway to Danish!
I’m only telling you all this because of Professor Alf Baird. One of Alf’s great talents is that he can explain colonial repression, also for dummies. Part of that repression has been linguistic.
I created an audiogram for Twitter recently that featured Professor Baird. “Scotland has all the characteristics and features of a colonial entity,” he says, ‘its economic exploitation, its political control is outside, its culture is imposed, its language is deprived. We don’t teach our Scots language to the bairns in school!”
Alf is rightly scunnert by the fact that oor wee yins dinnae lairn the mither tongue. Of course to some, Scots is just a corrupt form of English, at least that’s what we’ve been told. But try telling the Swedes or Danes on the ferry, that either of their languages is a corrupt form of the other’s and see what happens.
Swedish and Danish are close in some of the basics, but are also entirely different. As a Danish speaker, the more you venture into Sweden and Swedish, the less you understand. It goes without saying that you are also less able to make yourself understood.
After a 50-minute drive we arrive in the coastal town of Båstad. We left early and the idea was to enjoy a late breakfast in Sweden. I know a little book cafe up on the main street. ‘Kafe Bokhandlaregården’ is a charming place that serves coffee, cakes, sandwiches and even some hot dishes. It is quintessentially Swedish and is reminiscent of the illustrations of Carl Larsson.
The sign outside assured us that the cafe was ‘öppet’, Swedish for ‘open’ – the Danes say ‘åben’. Inside, communication for my daughter is in English. One hour into Sweden and Swedish really is a foreign language for her. I manage with Danish and a sprinkling of Swedish words that are suddenly recognised by the girl behind the counter. Here, ‘cream’ is ‘grädde’ (in Danish, ‘fløde’) which is for those of us who don’t like ‘svart kaffe’ (in Danish, ‘sort kaffe’) – in other words, black coffee. I could bore you for hours with these etymological details, but I’ll spare you.
Try as you may, you’ll be hard pressed to find a Dane, Swede or Norwegian who doesn’t insist that their mother tongue is a language in its own right. Common roots, perhaps, but with their own unique vocabulary and accent.
Similarly, I’ve yet to hear anyone from the Nordics describe themself as ‘Scandinavian’ first and Danish, Norwegian or Swedish second – in the way some people in our geographical region describe themselves as ‘British’ first, then Northern Irish, Scottish or Welsh second. Over here they’ve had it with political and personal unions, not to mention shared heads of state. Been there done that, centuries ago. The ‘quintessentially British’, ‘we are the peepel’, tub-thumping, 1690, orange Sash-wearing, anti-Catholic, monarch worshipping bigot, has no analogue in Scandinavia.
Scots came to the fore once again recently, as Alex Salmond recited Winnie Ewing’s favourite quote:
“The heirts ay the pairts ay,
That maks us richt or wrang”
I’d never read Burns’ ‘Epistle to Davie’. To be honest, it’s unlikely that anyone in my family would have known the meaning of those words, apart from my late Aunt Harriet.
A language repressed, neglected and unknown.
In Professor Baird’s book ‘Doun-hauden’, I found more than 1,000 references to the word ‘language’. No, I didn’t count them, my Kindle did.
“Since the UK union was established in 1707 it can be argued that Scotland has suffered from what is known as cultural imperialism,” he writes, “which is also referred to as cultural colonialism. This involves unequal relationships which favour the more powerful civilisation and its culture…”.
He goes on to state that,
“Cultural imperialism involves imposing and promoting the culture and language of the powerful entity onto the oppressed people and society.”
After our Swedish ‘frukost’ (‘morgenmad’ in Danish) we wander down to the small harbour. It’s crowded, Båstad is Sweden’s tennis mecca. There’s a very laid-back atmosphere here. I tend to avoid the main stadium these days. It’s become a monument to sterile corporatism. If you ever come here for the ATP 250 event, I recommend courts 2 & 3 which are used both for training, for some doubles matches, and main draw singles. Entry is free. Gulls, sea and sport – ye cannae beat it. If it gets too hot there’s a sandy beach 100 metres away.
A couple of high-quality doubles were followed by a round of 32 match between Pavel Kotov and Marco Cecchinato. It’s the brawest clay-court tennis where you’re only a few metres from the players. The 24-year-old Pavel is coached by his mother – a wonderful babushka who was just a few seats in front of us. He won his match convincingly to set up an all-Russian encounter with world number 7, Andrey Rublev.
Tiny Båstad is old world Sweden. It’s a far cry from the major cities with their gangs, shootings and failing immigration policies. It’s also a world away from Iraq where the Swedish embassy has been set on fire after the government in Stockholm allowed yet more public burnings of the Quran. Several Middle-Eastern countries are now calling for a boycott of Sweden.
This small country, that used to be a humanitarian superpower and internationally non-aligned, is fast losing any remaining respect it had in the ‘global south’. Its uncritical support of NATO’s proxy war, and its eagerness to cast its neutrality to the winds was unthinkable just a decade ago. But a generation of mediocre, low-grade political careerists has blighted not only Sweden but most of the Nordic nations. They’ve become vassal states hanging on to the coat-tails of London, Washington and Brussels. It really doesn’t bear thinking about.
Still, Sweden is a great holiday destination this year. The Swedish kroner has lost 30% of its value compared to the Danish currency. Despite a strong economy the SEK is hitting record lows. The country faces inflation and ongoing high energy prices – fall-out from the conflict in Ukraine. Questions are now being asked about the price of NATO membership. The people were not consulted, as they were on EU membership and the Euro, but they now find themselves heading for NATO membership but without any real influence within the organisation. Military spending will inevitably increase and the country will be expected to join whatever conflict NATO chooses to involve itself in next. Sweden has mounted, figuratively speaking, Tam O’Shanter’s mare.
Burns experts tell us that Scotland’s national poet was advised by close friends to avoid two things – the Scots language (it would incomprehensible in London) and politics. Fortunately, he avoided neither and he remains the greatest ambassador for our native language, centuries after his death. As Billy Kay writes, “Even people that dinnae understand the language, feel its power to communicate something profound in the human condition.”
peteryoung.dk 