Elfdalian books out of copyright pdf's

[Rigognos Molinarios]

Hello, I am an editor on my spare time for Wiktionary and I am having a hard time finding books on Elfdalian (or Älvdalsk as it is called in Sweden). My main problem seems to be that most of the reading material is Swedish so I do not know where to search first. I have been trying to find works written in Elfdalian or about Elfdalian prior to the first quarter or the 21st century (when Elfdalian was still widely spoken in Älvdalen). So far I have found a pdf for Lars Levander's grammar (It should be out of copyright at least in Sweden) and a pdf for Johannis Prytz's En Lustigh Comoedia om Konung Gustaf den Första (available for free through Google books). Because Levander's text is a grammar an is arranged in a logical format with many easily translatable Latinate terms, it has been easy to work with in spite of being written in Swedish. The play by Prytz, however, has been difficult if not impossible to work with. The text is written in a hard to read and very ornate blackletter font and only a small section of the work is in Elfdalian.
The next book I have learned was written about Elfdalian more than one hundred years ago was a collection of wedding poems (or bröllopsdikter as they are called in Swedish). The book is titled Bröllopsdikter på Dialekt och Några Andra Dialektdikter från 1600- och 1700-Talen edited by Hesselman, Bengt and Lundell, Johan August published in 1937. Unfortunately I have not been able to find any pdf's for this book and I am not even sure if it is out of copyright in Sweden yet.
I would like help finding the passages in the first book that are not intelligible to a native speaker of Swedish and help finding if the second book by Hesselman is out of copyright yet so it can be scanned and determined which of the "bröllopsdikter" in the book are written in Elfdalian and not some other Swedish folkspeech/language. This is partially for help in learning the endangered language but also so I can help edit the Elfdalian section on Wiktionary.
For anyone who can read Swedish, the Swedish Wikipedia has an excellent article on Älvdalsk. The page there has a list of authors who wrote in the language during the 17th century when most of the "bröllopsdikter" (or wedding poems) in Hesselman's work were written. that might be of some help in determining which poems in the book are Elfdalian (if the book is even out of copyright).

[Stefan]

I'm not sure if I understand the question but Bengt Hesselman passed in 1952 and, according to Swedish law, copyright protection last 70 years after the authors death. So it should be out of copyright in 2022 or 2023.

I checked my local library to see if I could help but only a handful of libraries offer it and they are in storage so you have to pre-order it at the specific library while not being allowed to bring it home.

[Rigognos Molinarios]

At least you could still help me with En Lustigh Commoedia... by Johannis Prytz. This book is available on google books. As long as you can read the ornate Gothic/blackletter font used in the text, you could at least find which portions of the text are unintelligible to native Swedish speakers and I could continue from there. I don't want to encourage anyone to commit piracy so don't worry about Hesselman's text.

[Rigognos Molinarios]

Another thing to keep in mind is that the poems themselves in Hesselman's collection were composed between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and the authors of the original poems have long-since passed away well over seventy years ago. This makes the copyright situation for the poems in Hesselman's work potentially legal to quote under Swedish law as you have mentioned; however, the text as a whole including Hesselman et. al. and their comments on the poems would not be free to copy. Nevertheless, I do not want to bend any rules around here and it would be best to check the laws in your country further. I don't want to make anyone pirate information just so I can learn an endangered language.

[Rigognos Molinarios]

Hello? Is anyone going to answer yet? it's been almost a week. My thread on another forum got locked and the moderator noted: (beyond the scope of this forum).

[Rigognos Molinarios]

I think I have figured out which parts of Prytz's play are written in Elfdalian. There are apparently five characters that speak the language in the play. They are the following in order of appearance: Kietelogs Lasse, Spiote Säbbens Nisse, Kiätis Jugås Gunnar, Michiol, and Kars Ulfsson Mats. The passages in Elfdalian are found in Act 1. Scene-V, Act 1. Scene-VI, And Act 2. Scene-II. Kietelogs Lasse, Spiote Säbbens Nisse, and Kiätis Jugås Gunnar appear in the first act and Michiol and Kars Ulfsson Mats appear in the second act. I found a website that has the text in a modern Roman style font but I cannot get the text to appear on any archive page I save with the wayback machine. http://litteraturbanken.se/forfattare/PrytzAJ/titlar/ComoediaOmKonungGustaf/sida/13/etext

[jeff_lindqvist]

I'd ask the polyglot Yair Sapir. He is one of the big names in the Elfdalian world.

[Rigognos Molinarios]

I sent a message to the Email address on the link you posted, but are you even sure that that is the best way to contact Yair Sapir? If not, then do you have any idea what is the best way to contact him?

[Rigognos Molinarios]

It looks like Yair Sapir replied. He said he will try to contact me again in a week.

[jeff_lindqvist]

That's good news! I assumed that Yair was contactable since the web site I found had fairly recent info.