| Abstract (about 50 words): | The Protestant Reformation, with its religious and political consequences, was a powerful force behind the consolidation of the modern Swedish state. Thus, in the quest for a national identity, the literary use of the Swedish language became more and more significant. Of great importance is the publication of the New Testament, NT (1526) and Gustav Vasa’s Bible, GVB (1541). Against this background, Äldre Nysvenska ‘Early Modern Swedish’ paves the way for the further establishment of Standard Swedish. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to account for the innovative linguistic features in the Swedish translations of the NT and GVB. The following aspects are taken into consideration: the linguistic implications of the new spelling conventions and the Latin and German influence on sentence and lexical structure. It is argued that the linguistic changes brought about by the Reformation translations of the Bible were a significant achievement in the development of the Swedish language in an attempt to “bring power and concentration to the Word of the Bible, now heard from the pulpits in the language of the country” (Ståhle 1968: 520). |