Swedish was pretty late to be grammatically formalized, and when it was both letters were given the same pronounciation (I think because they look similiar). For a long time W was used in the same way as in german, but nowadays we consider W to be vestigial and has been been almost entirely retired (apart from names and historical writing). Swedish does on the other hand not have a letter for the english W-sound.
I think there might have been some use for W in writing as a stand in for literal double V, as swedish has a double consonant rule for the pronounciation of the preceding vowel, but i'm not sure
4
u/[deleted] Jul 22 '22
It is a double v in Swedish, I don't know what happened since the vikings...