The other day I came across this really nice website, a Nordic language and literature portal. Although it is only in Italian, please have a look at its links page if you want to find out more about Scandinavian languages and literature, it’s worth it! What really surprised me was the section for students, where you can read some of their translations into Italian, which I found really good and engaging! I have tried to find a similar website in English, but have not succeeded so far, but please let us know if you do!!!

However, this website made me realise that we have never really talked about the Scandinavian languages on the blog, so let’s try to make up for it now!
In case you do not know, the Scandinavian countries are Denmark, Finland, Iceland (very very far away), Norway and Sweden. Danish and Swedish have always been linguae francae in this area, although they are slowly being replaced by English. For example, Danish is the second language that Icelandic children have to learn, although English is introduced when they are young too.

Although Scandinavia consists of 5 countries, some very far away from the others, they all have a lot in common. However, the Scandinavian languages do not include Finnish – that belongs to the Finno-Ugric family, together with Hungarian and Estonian. However, since Finland is a country with two official languages, every Finnish person learns Swedish at school, and all signs and official documents are in both languages.

And finally, do you know what Samnordisk is? It was the attempt to create a common language for Scandinavia, so that the Danes, Swedes and Norwegians would be able to communicate with each other in the same idiom. To me, it sounds a bit like Zamenhof’s attempt to create Esperanto as a lingua franca. What do you think?