Peter Syv

Peder Pedersen Syv (also spelled Siuf) or in Latin Petrus Petri Septimius (22 February 1631 – 17 February 1702) was a Danish philologist, folklorist, and Lutheran priest, best known for his collections of Danish proverbs and folk songs and his contributions to the development of Danish as a written language.

Early life and education

Syv's father was a tenant farmer in the village of Syv (today called Kirke Syv) near Roskilde—likely named Peder Olufsen—and his mother was named Anna Mortensdatter. The family was fairly well off for their social class, and several of Peder's siblings were able to take up professions. One of his brothers seems to have been an uneasy soul, and died on a trip to the Danish East Indian colonies in 1674.

In 1663, Syv published the philological treatise Nogle Betenkninger om det Cimbriske Sprog ("Some Thoughts about the Cimbrian Language"). The treatise was a programmatic defense of vernacular national languages as vehicles of literature. He argued that just as Dante Alighieri and Martin Opitz had contributed to making their local vernacular languages respectable languages for written literature, so this was to be done for the Danish language. He pointed out that for this to happen it would be necessary to write a grammar and a dictionary to produce a written standard, and to convert the orally transmitted language forms to the written medium.

In 1685, Syv published the first grammar of Danish written in Danish (two other Latin grammars of Danish had been published in the preceding decades), named Grammatica or Den Danske Sprog-Kunst ("The Danish Language-Art") and began preparations for the first dictionary, which however was never finished. The grammar introduced Danish grammatical terminology to replace traditional latinate terms, for example, navnord (literally "name-word") replacing Latin Nomen and biord (literally "by-word") standing for adverbium.

In the 1680s, Syv prepared and published two volumes of Aldmindelige Danske Ord-Sproge og korte Lærdomme ("Common Danish Proverbs and Short Learnings"), containing some 15,000 Danish proverbs and idioms. This work is considered a classic in Danish literature. In 1695, Syv published a collection of folksongs Tohundrede Danske Viser ("Two Hundred Danish Songs"), which reprinted 100 folksongs published in 1591 by Anders Sørensen Vedel as well as 100 other songs. The work also included songs by his friend the priest Laurids Olufsen Kok. Among the songs in the collection are versions of Elveskud (of a knight seduced by an elven maid), and the well known song Thyra Danebod written by Kok.

Writing in 1878, Syv's biographer Frederik Winkel Horn describes him as primarily notable for his dedication to the Danish language, though not of outstanding wit. Horn notes that Syv's dictionary and grammatical writings had been influential in spite of their shortcomings, and that his main importance lay in his collections of proverbs and folksongs.