Tips for using Historical Swedish Language Newspapers

Swedish alphabet

Swedish uses a 29-letter alphabet based on the modern 26-letter basic Latin alphabet plus the three letters Å/å, Ä/ä and Ö/ö.
There are several ways to enter the special Swedish letters into a search in the Search Tool if you do not have a Swedish-language keyboard:

• You can copy the letters from this page or another location and paste them into the search box.
• You can turn on the Windows International Keyboard (see the Microsoft support website for instructions).
• You can type the following keyboard sequences into the search box, holding the Alt key down while typing the sequence of numbers:

Å - Alt 0197

Ä - Alt 0196

Ö - Alt 0214

å - Alt 134

ä - Alt 132

ö - Alt 148

Historical spelling and word choice

• Swedish word usage has not changed greatly since the 19th century, although official documents were more formal and archaic. For example, newspapers were more likely to say “gifte sig” than “vigdes.”
• Swedish spelling has changed since the 19th century. For example, wigde became vigde and arf became arv.
• In 1898, the Swedish Academy recommended reducing the use of q (qvinna became kvinna), the use of w (Swerige became Sverige), the use of “short” e (jern became järn; enka became änka), and the use of th (Götheborg became Göteborg).
• In 1906, an official and government-mandated language reform did away with originally logical but unnecessarily complex spelling, so that godt became gott,  öfver became över, hwad became vad, etc.
• Swedish American newspaper editors did however continue to use the old spellings for many years after the changes were recommended.

Fraktur typeface

Some older Swedish American newspapers were printed in Fraktur typeface, a blackletter typeface derived from calligraphic handwriting.

Example of Fraktur typeface:

Using Google Translate

To use Google Translate to translate the newspaper text from Swedish to English:

• Open the page with the content you wish to translate in the Search Tool Viewer.
• Click on the clipboard button at the top of the page and use the mouse to select the page text you want to translate. The digital text will open in a pop up screen.
• Copy the text by using "Ctrl+C" and "Enter" or right click on the selected text and click "Copy". 
• Open Google Translate in a new browser window and paste your select text into the left-hand text box. The program should automatically recognize it to be Swedish, and an English translation will appear in the right-hand text box.

Google translate has some limitations that may impact the quality of the translation. Google Translate should be viewed as a tool to help English speakers understand the general meaning of the newspaper text, not as an exact translation.

• Sometimes words have multiple meanings, and the translation offered for any word or phrase may not be the originally intended meaning.
• Spelling variations in the original text or errors in the Optical Character Recognition (OCR) process will result in poor and possibly unintelligible translation results. The original OCR text can be improved using the Search Tool's text correction feature, which will improve the quality of the translation.

Useful words

Seasons – årstider

Spring – vår

Summer – sommar

Autumn – höst

Winter – vinter

Months – månader

January – januari

February – februari

March – mars

April – april

May – maj

June – juni

July – juli

August – augusti

September – september

October – oktober

November – november

December – december

Days of the Week

Monday – måndag

Tuesday - tisdag

Wednesday - onsdag

Thursday - torsdag

Friday - fredag

Saturday – lördag

Sunday - söndag

Common vocabulary

Newspaper – tidning / tidningen

Editor/Publisher – redaktör / utgivare

Correspondent/reporter – korrespondent / reporter

News – nyheter

Page – sida / blad / page

Edition – upplaga / edition

Issue – utgåva / nummer

Volume – årgång / band / volym

Part—del  / avsnitt

Supplement – bilaga

Weekly – varje vecka

Daily – daglig

Monthly – månatlig

Publish – publicera

Morning—morgon