Talk:Småland

Are you sure that Kalmar was the largest city in medieval times? Their own website states it was only the third largest. http://www.kalmar.se/defaultInt.aspx?id=3675. 82.168.105.47, October 4, 2005.

Divergent versions of Nils Dacke's end
I find several Wikipedia pages giving rather divergent versions of the same events. Can somebody with a good knowlege of Swedish history try to harmonise them a bit? Adam Keller 21:37, 28 May 2006 (UTC)

Page: Nils Dacke

After this defeat the rebellion was all but over and Dacke became an outlaw. He was shot and killed in 1543 on the border between the two nowadays southern Swedish provinces Sm?land and Blekinge, then a border between Sweden and Denmark, while trying to escape from the king's mercenaries. Even though Dacke was not executed, his body was dismembered and the parts were sent for public display in larger communities that had supported him during the rebellion. Gustav Vasa ordered the annihilation of Dacke's entire family, but was milder against those who had given themselves up. Thus, the unity of the realm was restored.

Page: Dacke War

Dacke's forces were beaten and Dacke himself was wounded. The same year in August he was surrounded and shot in R?dby in Blekinge. Gustav Vasa carried through harsh punishments for the uprising. Dacke's home district was plundered and all his family members were executed or deported.

Page: Gustav I of Sweden

Nils was eventually betrayed by his own relatives, caught, and quartered; it is said that his body parts were displayed througout Sweden as a warning to other would-be rebels.

Page: Smaland

Dacke himself was shot while trying to escape to then-Danish Blekinge.

Småland: Small lands
How can Småland mean "Small lands" if the plural for land in Swedish is "länder"? This means that the term "Småland" is grammatically incorrect, for "Små" is only used as a plural for "Lite", which is "little". Does Småland have any grammatically correct definition? --Akut 14:25, 15 January 2007 (UTC)

Småland translated as "small lands" is perfectly correct. "Land" originally had a plural form identical with the singular (like many neuter nouns in Swedish still do (cf. "hus" (house), "språk" (language), etc.), and since the name "Småland" is old, it was then still the case. The modern plural form "länder" was probably influenced by German. "Små" is, as Akut almost correctly points out, the plural form of the adjective "liten" which means "small" or "little". Siuler 04:31, 12 October 2007 (UTC)

Småland & Texas
I edited the tiny part on the Småland emigration to the US because at the time it contained two misleading characterizations. One, someone had tried to claim that emigration and population reduction was responsible for Småland's economic decline. That is not consistent with the scholarship or historical record. As a number of scholarly historical sources report, Småland's 19th century economic decline was due to decreased mortality, rural population *increase,* excessive land division, and steam-powered industrialization which compelled disruptive rural commodification and internal and external migration. While the late-19th century population exit and decline immediately meant reduced human resources for industrialists, the population exit helped Småland move from disruptive industrialization to a better balance of organized class power and thereupon to economic development, and as well the quarter of migrating Swedes who returned to Sweden brought start-up capital back with them. I am not including this political-economic history because this Wikipedia entry seems to be written to a simple standard. I just got rid of the claim that implied that population decline caused the 19th century economic decline, because that characterization is false.

Also, to highlight an entrepreneurial emigrant who struck it rich in Texas, a contributor had constructed the emigration paragraph to make it appear as though Texas were a major player in Swedish migration. Texas is a bit player in Swedish migration to the U.S. Even that Småland emigrant ended up leaving Texas, drummed out of Texas because, although he had amassed his wealth by enforcing slavery and arranging the indentured servitude of his countrymen, he wasn't sufficiently pro-slavery for Texas. I did not delete the over-representation of that one product of Småland and that one U.S. state in the Småland emigration discussion, as Swenson was technically from a part of what was once the historical region of Småland. Instead I simply reconstructed the emigration paragraph to accurately relay the importance of Texas' role (miniscule and fairly irrelevant) in Swedish emigration to the U.S. However, it is unsavory, and it does prominently involve an individual "big man" not beholden to any definite accountability to human welfare, and there is a tradition of arguing that such things deserve outsized consideration. Though it may appear that I care about the Texas piece, given I edited it a bit, should another contributor deem it reasonable to further reduce the disproportionate Texan colonization of a history-lite, broad-sketch Wikipedia treatment of the historical region of Småland, I couldn't say that was unreasonable. Blanche Poubelle (talk) 19:08, 12 November 2018 (UTC)