Available online: https://pub.norden.org/nord2021-004/ The Nordic Council of Ministers has asked 2,000 young people aged 16-25 throughout the Nordic region about their language skills and their attitudes towards language and culture. The survey reveals first and foremost that young people’s understanding of the Scandinavian languages ​​varies greatly between the Nordic nations and between the languages. In several countries, large proportions do not consider it easy to understand one or more of the Scandinavian languages. The report also discusses what these results may mean for the integration between the Nordic countries and the Nordic identity.

People in the Nordic states – Norway, Sweden, Finland, Denmark, and Iceland – rank as among the most proficient speakers of English in the world. In this unique volume, international experts explore how this came to be, what English usage and integration looks like in different spheres of society and the economy in these countries, and the implications of this linguistic phenomenon for language attitudes and identity, for the region at large, and for English in Europe and around the world. Led by Elizabeth Peterson and Kristy Beers Fägersten, contributors provide a historical overview to the subject, synthesize the latest research, illustrate the roles of English with original case studies from diverse communities and everyday settings, and offer transnational insights critically and in conversation with the situation in other Nordic states. This comprehensive text is the first book of its kind and will be of interest to advanced students and researchers of World/Global Englishes and English as a lingua franca, language contact and dialect studies/language varieties, language policy, multilingualism, sociolinguistics, and Nordic/Scandinavian and European studies.

Annotation This handbook is conceived as a comprehensive history of the North Germanic languages from the oldest times up to the present day. Whereas most of the traditional presentations of Nordic language history are confined to individual languages and often concentrate on purely linguistic data, the present work covers the history of all Nordic languages in its totality, embedded in a broad culture-historical context. The Nordic languages are described both individually and in their mutual dependence as well as in relation to the neighboring non-Nordic languages. The handbook is not tied to a particular methodology, but keeps in principle to a pronounced methodological pluralism, encompassing all aspects of actual methodology. Moreover it combines diachronic with synchronic-systematic aspects, longitudinal sections with cross-sections (periods such as Old Norse, transition from Old Norse to Early Modern Nordic, Early Modern Nordic 1550-1800 and so on). The description of Nordic language history is built upon a comprehensive collection of linguistic data; it consists of more than 200 articles, written by a multitude of authors from Scandinavian and German and English speaking countries. The organization of the handbook combines a central part on the detailed chronological developments and some chapters of a more general character: chapters on theory and methodology in the beginning, and on overlapping spatio-temporal topics in the end.

More parallel, please is the result of the work of an Inter-Nordic group of experts on language policy financed by the Nordic Council of Ministers 2014-17. The book presents all that is needed to plan, practice and revise a university language policy which takes as its point of departure that English may be used in parallel with the various local, in this case Nordic, languages. As such, the book integrates the challenge of internationalization faced by any university with the wish to improve quality in research, education and administration based on the local language(s). There are three layers in the text: First, you may read the extremely brief version of the in total 11 recommendations for best practice. Second, you may acquaint yourself with the extended version of the recommendations and finally, you may study the reasoning behind each of them. At the end of the text, we give some suggestions for further reading in this highly explosive area.