Scandinavians and their pidgins and creoles

Abstract

This paper discusses a number of contact languages that have been used in Scandinavian contexts. In their forts and colonies in North America, Greenland, West Africa, India and the Caribbean, Swedes and Danes used pidginized and creolized varieties of an Amerindian language, Greenlandic, Portuguese and Dutch respectively. The paper also compares the three known pidgins based on Scandinavian languages, and discusses possible historical connections between these three and possibly other northern pidgins. Some social and typological differences are brought forward to explain the different results.