Wednesday, January 04, 2006

Traitor to the Swedish tongue

My native language, Swedish, is small: less than 10 million speakers, plus 10 million speakers of Norwegian and Danish who understand Swedish when they want to. Scandinavians are extremely affluent and well educated seen in a global perspective, which accounts for the fact that these little languages actually produce a good book now and then.

As you may have noticed, this blog is not written in Swedish, but in my previously posited language-of-the-most-good-books, hegemonic English. This is because I want as many interested readers (and correspondents) as possible. The blog's subject matter isn't exactly front page issues, reflecting the fact that I have very little knowledge of and interest in such things. But writing in English and marketing the blog through Technorati, I hope to reach a global scattering of oddballs who may enjoy the blog.

After less than three weeks, the blog has about 40 unique visitors daily. About 80% of them are located in Scandinavia. I can see several reasons for this: I began by marketing the blog to my friends and colleagues (you guys are of course more likely than the random netizen to share my interests), I write a lot about Scandinavia, and in particular a lot about Scandinavian archaeology. This subject is for some reason not a very big deal outside of northern Europe (unlike Scandinavian furniture design, cell phones and pornography).

Dear Reader, I'm thrilled to have you. Please feel free to drop me a line, just to say hi or to send me a link to something fun and bloggable. And do tell your friends. Peace!

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5 Comments:

Blogger Morelli said...

40 readers a day sounds like a good amount! I´m one of them,
I find your blogg unpredictable and amusing
"Pölsan" ( Mashed Lung) is by the way an excellent book written in our small language. The author is Torgny Lindgren.

04 January, 2006 15:38  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Fellow Archaeologist here from the U.S.

I have been dropping in almost daily to browse the posts. Sometimes funny, sometimes insightful.

04 January, 2006 23:46  
Blogger Martin said...

Thank you! Maybe one day I'll manage to be both funny and insightful. (-;

05 January, 2006 10:02  
Blogger Wicked Wench of the West said...

I'm just a passing odball with a Finn fiancee but I don't own a Nokia cell phone. Go figure. I look forward to my move to Finland and the opportunity to travel throughout Scandinavia. Kippis!

05 January, 2006 23:05  
Blogger Space babe said...

Wasn't going to comment, but the word verification was "jufrou"!!!

09 January, 2006 19:49  

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