SCANDINAVIAN DIALECTS  .—As above remarked, the Scandinavian dialects are not grouped, so far as their relationship is concerned, Dialects. as might be expected judging from the

literary languages . Leaving out of account the Icelandic dialects and those of the Faeroes, each of which constitutes a separate group, the remainder may be thus classified: I . West Norwegian Dialects—spoken on the western coast of Norway between Langesund and Molde . 2 . North Scandinavian—the remaining Norwegian and the Swedish dialects of Uppland, Vastmanland, Dalarna, Norrland, Finland and Russia . 3 . The dialects on the island of Gotland . 4 . Middle Swedish—spoken in the rest of Sweden, except the southernmost parts (No . 5) . 5 . South Scandinavian—spoken in the greater part of Smaland and Halland, the whole of Skane, Blekinge and Denmark, and the • Danish-speaking part of Schleswig .

This group is distinctly divided into three smaller groups—the dialects of

southern Sweden (with the 1 See A . Western, " Kurze Darstellung des norwegischen Lautsystems " in Phonebische Studien II.; I . C . Poestion, Lehrbuck der norwegischen Sprache (2 . Aufl., 1900).island of Bornholm), of the Danish islands and of Jutland (and Schleswig) . The study of the Modern Scandinavian dialects 2 has been very unequally prosecuted . Hardly anything has been done towards the investigation of the Icelandic dialects, while those of the Faeroes have been studied chiefly by V . U . Hammershaimb, J . Jakobsen, and A . C . Evensen .

The Norwegian dialects have been thoroughly examined, first by

Aasen, whose works give a general account of them; then by J . Storm, who has displayed an unwearying activity, especially in the minute investigation of their phonetic constitution, to which Aasen had paid but . scant attention; in our own days by H . Ross and A . B . Larsen.' For the study of Danish dialects less has been done . Molbech''s Dialect-Lexicon of 1841 is very deficient . The Schleswig dialect has been admirably treated of by E . Hagerup (1854), K . J . Lyngby (1858) and others . H . F .

Feilberg's

great dictionary (1886 seq.) of the dialect of Jutland is in every respect an excellent work . A dialect map on a large scale, and containing the whole territory, is (since 1898) being edited by V . Bennike and M . Kristensen . Finally, several dialect monographs by P . K . Thorsen may be mentioned as being especially valuable . A phonetic alphabet for the purpose of dialectal investigations is worked out by 0 . Jespersen and published in the journal Dania, vol. i . (189o) . There is, however, no country in which the dialects have been and are studied with greater zeal and more fruitful results than in Sweden during the last hundred and'fifty years . Archbishop E .

Benzelius the younger (d . 1743) made collections of dialect words, and on his work is based the dialectical dictionary of Ihre of 1766 . An excellent work considering its

age is S . Hof's Dialectus Vestrogothica (1772) . The energy and zeal of C . Save (d . 1876; essays on the dialects of Gotland and Dalarna) inspired these studies with extra-ordinary animation at the middle of the 19th century; in 1867 J . E . Rietz (d . 1868) published a voluminous dialect dictionary; the number of special essays, too, increased yearly . From 1872 so-called " landsmalsforeniggar " (dialect societies) were founded among the students at the universities of Upsala, Lund and Helsingfors (thirteen at Upsala alone) for a systematic and thorough investigation of dialects . We find remarkable progress in scientific method—especially with regard to phonetics—in the constantly increasing literature; special mention may be made of the detailed descriptions of the dialects of Varmland, Gotland and Dalarna by A .

Noreen (1877 seq.), A . F . Freudenthal's and H . Vendell's mono-graphs of the Finnish and Esthonian-Swedish dialects, as well as O . F Hultman's (1894) and B . Hesselman's (1902 seq.) excellent

comparative treatment of certain dialect groups . Since 1879 the Swedish dialect societies have published a magazine on a comprehensive plan, De Svenska Landsmklen, edited by J . A . Lundell, who has invented for this purpose an excellent phonetic alphabet (partially based on C . J . Sundevall's work, Om phonetiska bokstafver, 1855) . (A .