Literature analysis for language learners: Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid by Albert Ulrik Bååth

Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid by Albert Ulrik Bååth : Difficulty Assessment for Swedish Learners

How difficult is Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid for Swedish learners? We have performed multiple tests on its full text (freely available here) of approximately 54,311, crunched all the numbers for you and present the results below.

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Difficulty Assessment Summary

We have estimated Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid to have a difficulty score of 63. Here're its scores:

Measure Score
easy difficult (1 - 100)
Overall Difficulty 63% 63
Vocabulary Difficulty 74% 74
Grammatical Difficulty 53% 53

Vocabulary Difficulty: Breakdown

74%

Vocabulary difficulty: 74%

This score has been calculated based on frequency vocabulary (the top most frequently used words in Swedish). It combines various measures of Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid's text analyzed in terms of frequency vocabulary: a plain vocabulary score, frequency-weighted vocabulary score, banded frequency vocabulary scores based on vocabulary of the text falling in the top 1,000 or 2,000 most frequent words, etc. Here's a further breakdown of how often the top most frequently used words in Swedish appear in the full text of Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid:

Vocabulary difficulty breakdown for Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid: a test for Swedish top frequency vocabulary

We have also calculated the following approximate data on the vocabulary in Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid:

Measure Score
Measure Score
Number of words 54,311
Number of unique words 8,919
Number of recognized words for names/places/other entities 2,706
Number of very rare non-entity words 2,890
Number of sentences 7,544
Average number of words/sentence 7

There is some research suggesting that that you need to know about 98% of a text's vocabulary in order to be able to infer the meaning of unknown words when reading. If true, this means that you would need to know around 8,740 words (where all the forms of the word are still counted as unique words) in Swedish to be able to read Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid without a dictionary and fully understand it.

Grammatical Difficulty: Breakdown

53%

Grammatical difficulty: 53%

Here is the further grammatical comparison on this text. You can find an explanation of all these scores below.

Measure Score
Measure Score
Automated Readability Index 4
Coleman-Liau Index 7
Type/Token Ratio (TTR) 0.164221
Root type/Token Ratio (RTTR) 0.00000302371
Corrected type/Token Ratio (CTTR) 0.00000151186
MTLD Index 68
HDD Index 68
Yule's I Index 78
Lexical Diversity Index (MTLD + HD-D + Yule's I) 71

The type-token ratio (TTR) of Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid is 0.164221. The TTR is the most basic measure of lexical diversity. To calculate it, we divide the number of unique words by the number of words in the text. For example, for this text, the number of unique words is 8,919, while the number of words is 54,311, so the TTR is 8,919 / 54,311 = 0.164221. However, the TTR is a very crude measure, as it is extremely dependent on text length. The longer the text, the lower the TTR is usually going to be, since common words tend to often repeat. Especially since the number of words in this text is more than 1,000, the TTR is not likely to give an accurate measure.

The root type-token ratio (RTTR) and corrected type-token ratio (CTTR) are measures which were suggested by researchers to partially address the problem of TTR's variance on text length. In the RTTR, the number of unique words is divided by a square of the number of words (therefore, 8,919 / (54,311 * 54,311) = 0.00000302371), while in CTTR, it is divided by a square of the number of words, multiplied twice 8,919 / 2 * (54,311 * 54,311) = 0.00000151186). However, these measures are not as easily readable, and also there is a growing body of research asserting that CTTR and RTTR do not effectively address the problems of text length. Therefore, while we do provide the full text's TTR, RTTR and CTTR on this page, these fiqures do not form part of our final calculations.

The Automated Readability Index (ARI) is one readability measure that has been developed by researchers over the years. The formula for calculating the ARI is as follows:
Formula for calculating the Automated Readability Index

The ARI should compute a reading level approximately corresponding to the reader's grade level (assuming the reader undertakes formal education). Thus, for example, a value of 1 is kindergarten level, while a value of 12 or 13 is the last year of school, and 14 is a sophomore at college. The current ARI of this text is 4, making it understandable for 4-grade students at their expected level of education.

The Coleman Liau Index (CLI) is a similar index designed by Meri Coleman and T. L. Liau, and it is supposed to compute the grade level of the reader (thus, for example, sophomore level material would be around grade 14, or year 14 of formal education, while kindergarten / primary school level material would be close to grade 1 in the CLI). The CLI is usually slightly higher than the ARI. The CLI is computed with this formula:
Formula for calculating the Coleman-Liau Readability Index

It is notable that other indexes exist, such as the Flesch-Kincaid Reading Ease, Gunning-Fog Score, and others, but we have chosen not to include them, since, contrary to the ARI and CLI, such other indexes are based on a syllable count and therefore arguably only work for English and not Swedish.

We compute a further compound lexical diversity index, which should range from 1 to a 100 (with the standard deviation being around 10, and its average value being around 50) - it is 71 in the present case. The compound lexical diversity index consists of the following indexes, averaged out (and also provided in the table above):

  • the Measure of Textual Lexical Diversity (MTLD) index - a measure which is based on computing the TTR for increasingly larger parts of the text until the TTR drops below a certain threshold point (around 0.7 in our case) - in which case, the TTR is reset, and the overall counter is increased; the counter is at the end divided by the number of words in text; as a result, the MTLD does not significantly vary by text length;
  • the Yule's I index (based on Yule's K characteristic inverted) - an index based on the work of the statistician G.U. Yule, who published his index of Frequency Vocabulary in his paper "The statistical study of literary vocabulary"; Yule's I takes into account the number of words in the text, and a compound summed measure of word frequency;
  • the Hypergeometric Distribution D (HD-D) index (based on vocd) - an index which assesses the contribution of each word to the diversity of the text; to calculate such contributions, a hypergeometric distribution is used to compute probabilities of each word appearing in word samples extracted from the text; then such distributions are divided by sample sizes and added up;

Our overall measure of grammatical diversity is based on a combination of the compound lexical diversity index (which includes the MTLD, Yule's I and HD-D indexes), the ARI and CLI, all normalized and given certain weight. The score should normally range from 1 to 100. In this case, the score is 53.

Other Information about Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid by Albert Ulrik Bååth

We provide you a sample of the text below, however, the full text of the Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid is also available free of charge on our website.

Sample of text:

Visserligen ligger ej så långt härifrån en ö, som vi ännu ej genomsökt; men ingen bygd finnes där; där bor blott en fattig fiskare.» »Där skolen I dock först leta», förklarade galdermän-nen; »ty för våra ögon hvilar mycket dunkel öfver denna ö. Det är oss icke lätt att klart genomse denne gubbes hus, och frukta vi för, att han är framsynt och att han visst icke är den, han anses vara.» »Då skola vi genomspäja ön», utbrast Frode; »fastän det tyckes mig besynnerligt, att en gammal fiskargubbe understår sig att, oss till trots, gömma dessa kungasöner.» Tidigt en morgon vaknade gubben Vifil ute på ön. »Mycket underligt», utropade han, »är nu på färde; hit hafva stora och mäktiga fylgjor kommit. Stån upp, Halfdans söner, Roar och Helge, och hållen eder i mina ...

Top most frequently used words in Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid by Albert Ulrik Bååth*

Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
Position Word Repetitions Part of all words
1 och 1,910 3.52%
2 att 1,095 2.02%
3 han 913 1.68%
4 en 742 1.37%
5 de 727 1.34%
6 den 726 1.34%
7 som 675 1.24%
8 till 649 1.19%
9 det 634 1.17%
10 sig 588 1.08%
11 med 497 0.92%
12 på 472 0.87%
13 jag 440 0.81%
14 af 423 0.78%
15 om 382 0.7%
16 honom 347 0.64%
17 var 342 0.63%
18 man 330 0.61%
19 så 329 0.61%
20 för 329 0.61%
21 hon 306 0.56%
22 du 303 0.56%
23 är 267 0.49%
24 ej 248 0.46%
25 ett 242 0.45%
26 sin 239 0.44%
27 där 236 0.43%
28 dem 231 0.43%
29 mig 214 0.39%
30 hans 213 0.39%
31 icke 200 0.37%
32 Då 191 0.35%
33 sade 190 0.35%
34 men 188 0.35%
35 dig 176 0.32%
36 upp 160 0.29%
37 skall 152 0.28%
38 hade 146 0.27%
39 konung 143 0.26%
40 henne 140 0.26%
41 Torsten 139 0.26%
42 vid 132 0.24%
43 kunde 129 0.24%
44 öfver 129 0.24%
45 ty 129 0.24%
46 mycket 127 0.23%
47 eller 125 0.23%
48 när 123 0.23%
49 kom 120 0.22%
50 alla 120 0.22%
51 andra 119 0.22%
52 ut 116 0.21%
53 sedan 114 0.21%
54 fram 113 0.21%
55 skulle 113 0.21%
56 in 112 0.21%
57 sina 110 0.2%
58 vi 110 0.2%
59 se 109 0.2%
60 från 109 0.2%
61 nu 107 0.2%
62 sitt 106 0.2%
63 emot 105 0.19%
64 gick 104 0.19%
65 än 102 0.19%
66 denna 101 0.19%
67 såg 100 0.18%
68 efter 100 0.18%
69 män 96 0.18%
70 ned 96 0.18%
71 detta 96 0.18%
72 min 95 0.17%
73 äfven 95 0.17%
74 vara 95 0.17%
75 har 93 0.17%
76 allt 91 0.17%
77 konungen 89 0.16%
78 här 88 0.16%
79 voro 86 0.16%
80 blef 86 0.16%
81 Olof 84 0.15%
82 hafva 83 0.15%
83 svarade 82 0.15%
84 ur 81 0.15%
85 hvad 81 0.15%
86 tog 80 0.15%
87 vill 79 0.15%
88 kan 77 0.14%
89 få 75 0.14%
90 oss 74 0.14%
91 deras 74 0.14%
92 dessa 72 0.13%
93 stor 71 0.13%
94 såsom 68 0.13%
95 ville 68 0.13%
96 dock 68 0.13%
97 under 67 0.12%
98 denne 66 0.12%
99 land 62 0.11%
100 ingen 62 0.11%
101 din 62 0.11%
102 bort 60 0.11%
103 något 60 0.11%
104 mot 60 0.11%
105 båda 57 0.1%
106 Gudmund 56 0.1%
107 bad 56 0.1%
108 hennes 56 0.1%
109 själf 55 0.1%
110 någon 55 0.1%
111 dess 53 0.1%
112 varit 52 0.1%
113 åter 51 0.09%
114 lät 51 0.09%
115 skola 50 0.09%
116 eder 50 0.09%
117 blott 50 0.09%
118 genom 48 0.09%
119 Odd 48 0.09%
120 fick 48 0.09%
121 sist 48 0.09%
122 komma 46 0.08%
123 taga 45 0.08%
124 utan 44 0.08%
125 Därpå 44 0.08%
126 ännu 43 0.08%
127 snart 43 0.08%
128 sporde 43 0.08%
129 kommit 43 0.08%
130 många 43 0.08%
131 aldrig 43 0.08%
132 hafver 42 0.08%
133 mera 42 0.08%
134 gaf 42 0.08%
135 hos 42 0.08%
136 död 42 0.08%
137 satt 41 0.08%
138 satte 41 0.08%
139 två 40 0.07%
140 ifrån 40 0.07%
141 frågade 40 0.07%
142 dröm 39 0.07%
143 gifva 39 0.07%
144 kunna 39 0.07%
145 annan 39 0.07%
146 hvilken 39 0.07%
147 föll 39 0.07%
148 åt 39 0.07%
149 blifvit 38 0.07%
150 väl 38 0.07%
151 samma 38 0.07%
152 all 38 0.07%
153 låg 38 0.07%
154 kommo 38 0.07%
155 stod 38 0.07%
156 dag 38 0.07%
157 dörren 38 0.07%
158 både 37 0.07%
159 folk 37 0.07%
160 göra 36 0.07%
161 drömmar 36 0.07%
162 gå 36 0.07%
163 måste 35 0.06%
164 mina 35 0.06%
165 huru 35 0.06%
166 medan 35 0.06%
167 äro 35 0.06%
168 hem 35 0.06%
169 fader 34 0.06%
170 annat 34 0.06%
171 stora 34 0.06%
172 igen 34 0.06%
173 gång 34 0.06%
174 hvilka 34 0.06%
175 gjorde 33 0.06%
176 fara 33 0.06%
177 son 33 0.06%
178 dit 33 0.06%
179 Gerröd 33 0.06%
180 ser 32 0.06%
181 natt 32 0.06%

This list excludes punctuation or single-letter words, also some different-case repeats of the same words.

If you think the text would be accessible to you, you can read it on our site (click on the cover to access):

Cover of Nordmannamystik. Bilder från nordens forntid by Albert Ulrik Bååth

Other resources and languages

If you like this analysis, you should have a look at out our lists of Swedish short stories and Swedish books.

If you like literature as a means to learn languages - please take a look at our project Interlinear Books. We even have a Swedish Interlinear book available for purchase.