Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 21.djvu/388

Rh sultan, who had invaded Albania. He died in January 1467 at Alessio, leaving an infant son named John, whom he commended to the care of the Venetians. After a twelve years' war, the Turks finally gained possession of Croya, the representatives of Scanderbeg settling in Calabria.     SCANDINAVIAN LANGUAGES. By this expression we understand the closely allied languages which are and have been spoken by the Germanic population in Scandinavia, and by the inhabitants of the countries that have been wholly or partially peopled from it. At present the territory of these languages embraces—Sweden, except the most northerly part (Lapland and inland parts of Vesterbotten, where Finnish and Lappish exclusively or chiefly prevail); certain islands and districts on the coast of western and southern Finland, as well as Åland; a small tract on the coast of Esthonia, where Swedish is spoken, as it is also to some extent in the Esthonian islands of Dagö, Nargö, Nukkö, Ormsö, and Rågö; Gammalsvenskby ("Galsvenskbi") in southern Russia (government of Kherson), a village colonized from Dagö; the Livonian island of Runö, where Swedish is spoken, as it formerly was on the island of Ösel; Norway, except certain regions in the northern part of the country, peopled by Finns and Lapps (diocese of Tromsö); Denmark, with the Faroes, Iceland, and Greenland, where, however, Danish is only spoken by a very small part of the population; the northernmost part of Schleswig; and, finally, several Scandinavian colonies in the United States of North America. Scandinavian dialects have besides been spoken for varying periods in the following places: Norwegian in certain parts of Ireland (800-1300 ) and northern Scotland, in the Isle of Man, the Hebrides (800-1400, or longer), the Shetland Islands (800-1800), and the Orkneys (800-1800); Danish in the whole of Schleswig, in the north-eastern part of England (the "Danelag"), and in Normandy (900-1000, or a little longer); Swedish in Russia (from the end of the 9th to the beginning of the 11th century). At what epoch the Germanic population settled in Scandinavia we cannot as yet even approximately decide. It is quite certain, however, that it already existed there before the Christian era, nay, most probably as early as the beginning of the so-called Stone Age (three thousand years before Christ). If this view be correct, the Scandinavian languages have had an existence of more than four thousand years. But we do not know anything about them during the period before the birth of Christ. It is only from that epoch we can get any information concerning the language of the old Scandinavians, which seems by that time not only to have spread over Denmark and great parts of southern and middle Sweden and of (southern) Norway, but also to have reached Finland (at least Nyland) and Esthonia. In spite of its extension over this considerable geographical area, the language appears to have been fairly homogeneous throughout the whole territory. Consequently, it may be regarded as a uniform language, the mother of the younger Scandinavian tongues, and accordingly has been named the primitive Scandinavian (urnordisk) language. The oldest sources of our knowledge of this tongue are the words which were borrowed during the first centuries of the Christian era (some of them perhaps even earlier) by the Lapps from the inhabitants of central Sweden and Norway, and by the Finns from their neighbours in Finland and Esthonia, and which have been preserved in Finnish and Lappish down to our own days. These borrowed words, denoting chiefly utensils belonging to a fairly advanced stage of culture, amount to several hundreds, with a phonetic form of a very primitive stamp; as Finn. terva (O. Sw. tiæra, Germ. theer), tar; airo (O. Sw. ar.), oar; kansa (O.H.G. hansa), people; napakaira (O.H.G. nabagêr, O. Sw. navar), auger; nekla (Got. nêþla, O. Sw. nal), needle; ansas (Got. ans, O. Sw. as), beam; Lapp sajet (Got. saian, O. Sw. sa), sow; garves (O.H.G. garawêr, O. Sw. gör), finished; divres (O. Sax. diuri, O. Swed. dyr), dear; saipo (O.H.G. seifa, Sw. såpa), soap. These words, with those mentioned by contemporary Roman and Greek authors, are the oldest existing traces of any Germanic language. Wrested from their context, however, they throw but little light on the nature of the original northern tongue. But a series of linguistic monuments have come down to us dating from the end of the so-called early Iron Age (about 450 ),—the knowledge and the use of the oldest runic alphabet (with twenty-four characters) having at that period been propagated among the Scandinavians by the southern Germanic tribes. In fact we still possess, preserved down to our own times, primitive northern runic inscriptions, the oldest upon the utensils found at Thorsbjerg, dating back to about 300, which, together with the MS. fragments of Ulfila's Gothic translation of the Bible, about two hundred years later in date, constitute the oldest veritable monuments of any Germanic tongue. These runic inscriptions are for the most part found on stone-monuments (sometimes on rocks) and bracteates (gold coins stamped on one side and used for ornaments), as well as on metallic and wooden utensils, weapons, and ornaments. Up to this time there have been discovered more than one hundred, but of these only about one-half give us any information concerning the language, and most of them are only too short. The longest one, the stone-monument of Tune, in south-eastern Norway, contains only sixteen words. Their language is somewhat later in character than that of the oldest words borrowed by the Lapps and Finns: accented ê, for example, is already changed into a (cf. mari = Goth. mêrs, renowned; but the Finn, borrowed word nêkla = Goth. neþla, needle), and the voiced s into a kind of r (cf. dagaR = Goth. dags,