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physical anthropology.
545
of the Scandinavian. The best known of his numerous works is his "Glossarium
Sviogothicum", which still holds a prominent place among etymological glossaries.
Also our native dialects received his attention. Foremost among dialecticians
is to be mentioned S. Hof (1703—86), who, among other things, wrote an
excellent work on the dialect of West-Gothia. A diligent and influential
grammarian and lexicographer is found in A. Sahlstedt (1716—76). Among
runologists, 0. Celsius (1670—1756) stands forth as a worthy contemporary of
Ihre and Hof in sound scientific criticism and keen observation. To the
beginning of the following period we assign the runologist J. O. Liljegren (1789—
1837).
Able orientialists were the above-mentioned 0. Celsius, C. Aurivillius (1717 —
86), J. J. Björnstdhl (1731—79), M. Norberg (1747—1826), A. F
Sturtzenbecker (1757—84), K. M. Agrell (1764—1840), J. Berggren (1790—1868), and
J. D. Akerblad (1763 —1819), a man of genius, who, on account of his important
contribution to the interpretation of the Rosetta stone, has been called "the first
egyptologist".
In the middle of the 19th century, the historical and comparative study of
languages — the science of Rask, Grimm, and Bopp — pushed its way into
Swedish philology and especially into the study of Scandinavian tongues. Excellent
material had, even before this, been provided in the splendid edition of the
old laws of Sweden, by K. J. Schlyter (1795—1888), as also in the
publications of the Early Swedish Text Society, instituted in 1843, in which G. E.
Klemming (1823 — 93) displayed special activity. The man who introduced the
historical method of research into Sweden was J. E. Rydqvist (1800 — 77) by
his great work "Svenska språkets lagar" (The Laws of the Swedish Language),
which is "the first and largest strictly scientific history of our native tongue".
J. E. Rietz (1815 — 68) published an extensive Glossary of Swedish Dialects.
K. Säve (1812—76), the first professor of Northern Languages at the University
of Uppsala, left behind him important dialectological collections.
The advance philology has made in Sweden, during the last 40 years, is very
considerable. The old school of students in historical grammar, Rydqvist and
his contemporaries, had essentially devoted themselves to accidence. A
satisfactory knowledge of the various modifications of form is certainly needful for
the interpretation of languages so essentially characterized by grammatical
inflexion as those of ancient Scandinavia. Such a knowledge was, therefore,
the natural outcome of the study of our older literature, and a comparison
of documents from various ages immediately provided a survey of how the
Scandinavian system of inflexion had developed towards constantly increasing
simplicity. In this department, therefore, the older school had elicited the
essentials of what we now know, even though this knowledge has been partially
rectified and refined by later investigation. r
Of what has been tellingly called the body or the physical side of the
language there remained for the scholars of the last generation another main
department to be scientifically worked up, viz. the system of sounds and its
history. Just as natural as it was to use the ivritten monuments of the language
as a starting point for the descriptive and historical analysis of accidence, just
as natural it was to use the spoken idiom — the standard languages as well
as the dialects — as a starting point for the investigation of phonology. This
study found a mighty lever in the new-awakened interest in the speech and
life of the country-people, which, in the early years of the seventies, led to the
formation of the Dialect Societies of Uppsala, Lund, and Helsingfors, which
were combinations within the different associations or "nations" of students, with
a view to investigating the rustic speech and life of their native places. K. J.
Sundevall (1801—75) produced a suggestion for phonetic letters in 1856.
35—133179. Sweden. I.
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