Ortnamnspolitiken i svenska Pommern: En diskursanalytisk och kontaktonomastisk studie

Abstract

The article presents the results of a pilot investigation into the seventeenth-century name policies associated with large-scale cadastral mapping of the Swedish conglomerate state and their implementation in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern. The material studied consists of the Land Survey’s directives issued by the Swedish Crown between 1628 and 1700, as well as 759 place name attestations excerpted from the B I volume of cadastral maps of the Wolgast District from 1694. The article reveals how both practical and symbolic aspects of political discourses are evident in the regulations of place name collection and processing. Particular attention is paid to the Swedification discourse analysed by the tools native to Foucaultian discourse analysis and proximisation theory. The Wolgast material shows that the Swedish land surveyors did not comply with the instructions to Swedify or translate Pomeranian names. The tentative explanation offered builds on the idea of linguistic and cultural proximity between the German-speaking region and the Swedish land surveyors.