From fjords to mountains, schools of herring to herds of reindeer, Scandinavia is rich in astonishing natural beauty. Less well known, however, is that it is also rich in languages. Home to seven languages, Scandinavia has traditionally been understood as linguistically bifurcated between its five Germanic languages (Danish, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese) and its two Finno-Ugric ones (Finnish and Sami). In The Languages of Scandinavia, Ruth H. Sanders takes a pioneering approach: she considers these Seven Sisters of the North together. While the two linguistic families that comprise Scandinavia's languages ultimately have differing origins, the Seven Sisters have coexisted side by side for millennia. As Sanders reveals, a crisscrossing of names, territories, and even to some extent language genetics-intimate language contact-has created a body of shared culture, experience, and linguistic influences that is illuminated when the story of these seven languages is told as one. Exploring everything from the famed whalebone Lewis Chessmen of Norse origin to the interactions between the Black Death and the Norwegian language, The Languages of Scandinavia offers profound insight into languages with a cultural impact deep-rooted and far-reaching, from the Icelandic sagas to Swedish writer Stieg Larsson's internationally popular Millennium trilogy. Sanders's book is both an accessible work of linguistic scholarship and a fascinating intellectual history of language.

This is a reader for college students of German, introducing them to literature or cultural studies at the advanced level. The short-stories are postwar and contemporary, by German and Austrian writers, and focus on family life. The stories are arranged in order of increasing complexity- in vocabulary and syntax as well as in style, topic and approach. The text includes footnotes for difficult or idiomatic phrases, a glossary for virtually every word found in the stories, and pre- and post- reading discussion questions. This text is designed to foster not just the comprehension of the story, but also the development of literacy in German. Includes: ''Am Rande'' by Monika Helmecke; ''Das Testament'' by Gertrud Fussenegger; ''Gutes Karma Aus Zschopau'' by Doris Dorrie; ''Das Heimweh'' by Hans Leber."