The Indo-European hypothesis (updated)
12 o'clock, October 13, 2005
Apparently when you tell google Google’s Advanced Search “Return pages written in English,” it figures you really mean “Oh, anything North Germanic, we don’t care what.”
Update: For the two of you actually following the Ahnlund/Jelinek story, an amusing twist: Apparently it’s not actually possible for Ahnlund to resign from the Swedish Academy. Also, he’s apparently been in a snit and boycotting the Academy since 1996.
It’s oddly . . . legitimizing to know that this sort of behavior isn’t confined to our little literary demimonde. Though I’m willing to believe that Ahnlund’s Svenska Dagbladet piece was a little more coherent than Mr. Truesdale’s opus.
When I follow that link, all ten of the top search results are in English.
(The first one also contains a quotation in another language, but the primary language of the page is English, and half of Google's snippet/excerpt is English.)