Nynorsk

  On the way back to Ålesund from Sæbø, we passed through the little town of Ørsta, famous as the birthplace of Ivar Åsen.

  Norway is a country  that has two official written languages. One of them is Nynorsk or Landsmål, invented by Ivar Åsen, based on some of the spoken language(s) of western Norway. 

     As I told my relatives when we were chatting over coffee the other day, in order to do the research for my book on the life of my grandfather, I had to read documents in three languages: Bokmål, Landsmål, and Dano-Norwegian (the language my grandfather wrote in). Somebody said jokingly "If only they could have shot him [Åsen] before he invented Nynorsk." 

     There is a certain amount of ambivalence to Nynorsk in the city of Ålesund, though the surrounding countryside is strongly pro-Nynorsk. 

     I suspect that some people, whether inside or outside of Norway, might have the idea that since there is a country called Norway, there should only be one Norwegian language. This is related to a phenomenon one sees in countries such as France and Japan---the central government promotes a single, "official" language to the detriment of "dialects" in its efforts to forge a nation-state. The language that is promoted is always most similar to what is spoken in the capital.

     If not for Ivar Åsen, this probably would have been the script for Norway as well. But when Norway became independent in 1905 and set about establishing a "national identity," complete with national language, Nynorsk was already a fait accompli with an established constituency. 

     Unfortunately from a certain point of view, Nynorsk was not anything at all like the way the power elite living in and around Oslo spoke. Another rule of linguistic imperialism might be that, no matter how desirable the adoption of a national language is deemed to be by a power elite, that power elite will not want to do so if it means giving up their own language and adopting the language of a lesser-status group of people. Hence, the bi-literary situation in Norway today.

 

Statue of Ivar Åsen in the center of Ørsta