--- In BoundaryPoint@yahoogroups.com, jesniel@i... wrote: > Bornholm has been Danish since 950. Naive question: Since when did Denmark, Sweden, Norway (Iceland) exist as separate entities? Is it not true that there was a Norse community? kingdom? until the early Middle Ages?

Norway has at least since 1814 existed as a separate entity - kingdom of course; 1814-1905 we shared king with the Swedes (In 1536 the King of Denmark declared the Kingdom of Norway, founded in 872, included into Denmark); Denmark and Sweden since prehistory times. Before the 9th century it is not known any inter-Norse kingdom or statehood. Until 1814 Iceland was belonging to Norway, thereafter de facto to Denmark as an own kingdom, until 1944 when it declared itself a republic - the only Scandinavian country not being ruled by a monarch. > The Bornholmers feel very much Danish, even though their dialect is related > to Swedish. I was under the impression that the Nordic languages form a continuum on the dialect level, and only the standard languages are really separate.

This is how you see it. I may agree very much with this statement. Most native Danes, Norwegians and Swedes (and Swedish-speaking Finns) understand each other, but not the Icelandics, even if all these languages descend from a more or less common Norse language which until Middle Ages (1350-1540) practically was identical to the present Icelandic language which has changed very little during the last 1000 years!

Jan