I promised you that we would talk about Skåne today. And depending on how we do, we may have to spread it over several posts. Why? There’s much to talk about!

Skåne is a very odd part of Sweden. And some may argue that it’s not even Sweden at all. Well, once upon a time it was called Skåneland (Scania in English) and was one of the three lands of Denmark. The city of Lund was its center. So those who say that if you scratch a skåning, you’ll see a Dane underneath, are kind of sort of right. And those skåningar may even say that as far as the historical details go, the province is a quite recent Swedish acquisition.

In order to learn more about the event that gave Skåne to Sweden, I started to read about the Northern Wars (1655-1661) and the Treaty of Roskilde (February 26, 1658) but the overload of war-mongering kings, conquests, and who did what to whom was slowly putting me to sleep.

Roskilde is in Denmark, by the way, and today is more known for its music festival than for some old historical treaties.

And why am I telling you all this boring stuff? Because it’s hard to understand what Skåne is all about without a little bit of background research. It’s closer, much closer in fact, to Copenhagen than to Stockholm, people talk funny there, and even the climate and nature are different from the rest of Sweden.

So just how close is Skåne to Copenhagen? So close that some people who live in Malmö go to work in Denmark. It’s just a short train ride across the Öresund strait, and boom, you’re in Copenhagen, the other Capital of Scandinavia. There’s even a nice, long bridge across the Öresund to make the trip to the motherland easy and painless. Skåningar use the international airport in Copenhagen, go to Denmark for cultural events, music concerts, and shopping. If I sound just a tad bit jealous, I am. I live a day’s drive north of Stockholm and I’m slowly forgetting what a civilized world looks like. And I think Copenhagen is definitely civilized.

But all this proximity of Skåne to Denmark has left a hideous mark on the local people. They talk funny. Why? They speak skånska.

The question of whether skånska is a dialect of Swedish, or a dialect of Danish, or a whole separate language altogether, has been keeping the linguists busy for a bigger part of the last century. To this day some radical skåningar say that skånska is a suppressed minority language and should be treated as such. It’s all fine by me, the language, or dialect doesn’t even sound like Swedish to my delicate västerbottniska ears.

Take the “r” sound, for example. While we in northern Sweden think that “r” should not be tampered with and do our best to pretend that sometimes the sound doesn’t exist at all, those skåningar dredge up their rs from a deep, hidden place where only phlegm should reside. And they don’t stop there. They mess with “sj” and “ch” sounds and scores of others. They abuse the vowels, too. And did I mention they use a whole bunch of words that nobody else does?

So how can you tell if someone is speaking skånska? The easiest way is to ask the person to say something, anything, that contains those problem sounds:
Kerstin och Christer är arga. (Kerstin and Christer are angry.)

And if the speaker appears to be clearing his throat in a very violent manner, then you got, it’s skånska.

Here is an example of several skåningar clearing their throats on youtube.

And then there’s this issue of where Skåne should belong. Last December a Danish politico expressed a burning desire to see Skåne reunited with the motherland. Needless to say, it caused quite a stir on both sides of the Öresund strait. Local and national newspapers held opinion polls regarding the fate of the province. Should it stay or should it go? The results were not all that surprising at all. About half of skåningar wanted to be reunited with Denmark. The other half wanted to stay in Sweden. And on a national scale, the opinion was divided more or less equally, too. 50% was in favor of giving it back to the Danish, 50% against.

So there you have it. That’s Skåne for you.

Here are some useful words:

  • skånska – whatever it is that they speak in Skåne (en variant av svenska som talas i Skåne)
  • skånska (noun, def. skånskan, plural: skånskor) – a woman from Skåne (en kvinna från Skåne)
  • skåning (noun, def. skåningen, plural: skåningar) – a person from Skåne (en skånsk person är en skåning)