Nordiacorp field trip to Östergötland, Småland and Gotland

We met with informants in this old factory house in Ankarsrum. Nowadays, it holds an industrial museum displaying items produced in the town during the years.

On 17th June, Cajsa Ottesjö and Andreas Widoff left Göteborg for a weeklong field trip to Östergötland, Småland and Gotland. We made our first stop in the picturesque village of Asby in southern Östergötland, and then went to the mill town of Ankarsrum in north-eastern Småland. Our last stop on the mainland was in the coast parish of Sankt Anna, known for its islands and skerries. We then took a ferry from Oskarshamn to Visby. On Gotland, we visited Fårö in the north and Sproge in the south.

Although situated in Småland, the Ankarsrum dialect seems to have more in common with the dialects of Östergötland, than with those of Småland. For instance, the locals here use two allophones of /r/: a front variant in most positions, and a back variant before stressed syllable, that is, the so called Götamålsskorrning characteristic of Östergötland and Västergötland.

In the test sentences played back for informants, we usually make some adjustments to the dialect under investigation. This time, however, in some sentences I decided not to change the standard form blev ‘was’ to vart, but to record the sentences in two variants, one with each form. This approach produced some interesting results. In Asby, Ankarsrum and Sankt Anna, where both blev and vart are accepted (as the former being standard Swedish and the latter dialect), two of the sentences with periphrastic passive were given higher points when constructed with blev. Some informants did not at all accept sentences like Huset vart byggt 1952 ’The house was built in 1952’, while they judged Huset blev byggt 1952 as well-formed. Apparently, in some constructions, these informants make a rather strong distinction between the variants.

Olders informants in Ankarsrum.

A reoccurring issue in the Swedish language debate is the use of vart, instead of var, for location, as in Vart är han? ’Where is he?’. Often this is said to be a trait in the speech of young people. However, our data shows that this is not true for all parts of the country. In Fårö and Sproge, younger as well as older informants accepted both vart for location and var for direction; in Sankt Anna, only olders informants accepted both variants; and, in Ankarsrum, olders informants accepted vart for location but not var for direction. Evidently, not only young people disregard the distinction between direction and location. In some dialects, this goes for the older generation as well.

All informants reported the interrogative words of standard Swedish.

/Andreas Widoff