Revitalisation of Övdalian and the Choice of Literary Language

Övdalian (Swe. älvdalska), an East Scandinavian vernacular that is often considered a separatelanguage, has undergone preservation and revitalisation during the last 30–40 years. An interestingaspect of the revitalisation process is the choice of the morphological form of Övdalianused in books, fiction and translations, as the case morphology has changed substantially overthe past century. The vast majority of authors have nevertheless opted for a very traditionalvariant that differs substantially from contemporary spoken Övdalian. This raises questionsabout whether the revitalisation of Övdalian, of which book production is an importantaspect, is a bottom-up process or a top-down imposition of a partly idealised, archaic language(cf. Grenoble and Whaley 2006: 20).