Why Nynorsk?

Imagine having two distinct ways of writing everything – twice the fun, right? Well, that's Norwegian!

There are two ways of writing the Norwegian language. On one hand, you have Bokmål, which is like the big city cousin everyone knows. It's smooth, straightforward, and loves the spotlight.

Then there is Nynorsk, literally "New Norwegian, the mountain-dwelling, slightly mysterious cousin who prefers the wilderness and doing things the traditional way.

Together, they make Norwegian a linguistic family reunion, where you never quite know which cousin you're going to run into.

Nynorsk is most prevalent in the western part of the country, though, while Bokmål is most prominent in the east.

Two official languages

In school, Norwegians learn the variety that is decided by their local authorities (Norwegians also have hundreds of dialects, but that is a chapter of its own).

When they get older, children also learn the other variety, as both languages are equally recognised as official written languages and an important part of our culture and key to understanding each other.

In the map below you'll see where the different language forms are mostly used (nøytral means neutral).

Why two languages?

Let's dive in! Both the Norwegian language variants are rooted in norrønt, Old Norse, which was a language used in Scandinavia during the Viking Era and before.

But for 434 years, from 1380 until til 1814, we were in a union with, and at times ruled by the Danes, something that affected the written language in particular but also how people spoke.

That's why Norwegians wrote in Danish in the 1800s!

In 1814, Norway broke away from Denmark, and we got our own constitution. Newly liberated, people also wanted a written language that sounded more like the way they actually spoke.

More than a thousand dialects

That was not as easy as it might sound. Norway is a long and narrow country, with thousands of valleys, islands, fjords, mountains and cities, where the people in one fjord could speak very differently than in another.

Thanks to the geographical barriers, foreign trade partners and how much and how often the local people were in contact with others, the Norwegians developed hundreds of different ways of speaking Norwegian, also called dialects. According to Språksamlingene, we still speak more than 1,300 different dialects.

This posed a major challenge when the nascent nation wanted a written language that could represent everyone!

The years went by with a lot of discussion among a lot of people who offered a variety of different solutions to the language issue.

The biggest discussion was whether to make a new language or to convert the Danish language into Norwegian.

We never agreed on any one single solution. Ultimately, two men, Ivar Aasen and Knud Knudsen, emerged with each their own solution.

Nynorsk in rural areas

Born in Ørsta, in the western part of the country, Ivar Aasen dedicated much of his life to studying Norwegian dialects. He traveled extensively throughout Norway to collect linguistic data, aiming to create a standardised Landsmaal, 'country language', that was rooted in the country's rural dialects and Old Norse, rather than the Danish-influenced written language used by the elites in urban areas.

His seminal works, such as Det Norske Folkesprogs Grammatik(1848) and Ordbog over det Norske Folkesprog (1850), laid the foundation for Landsmaal, or Nynorsk, as it is called today.

Aasen's efforts were also instrumental in promoting Norwegian cultural identity and linguistic independence during a time of national awakening. An important counterculture also emerged in the big cities centred around Nynorsk, both the language and culture, including theatre, music, and literature.

Bokmål for the elite

At the same time, Norwegian educator and linguist Knut Knudsen became the main contributor to the creation of Bokmål. Dissatisfied with the dominance of Danish in Norwegian writing, Knudsen advocated for a gradual reform of the written language to better reflect the Norwegian spoken by the educated classes.

He introduced spelling and grammatical changes that incorporated Norwegian pronunciation and vocabulary into the existing Danish-based written language.

In 1885, both languages varieties were recognised as official Norwegian written languages, as they remain today!

In recent years, the use of Nynorsk in schoolshas been in a slow decline. In 2022, only 11.6 per cent of Norwegian schools had Nynorsk as their principal language.

So, would you like to learn some Norwegian?