Norway's two languages

Though American, I grew up overseas in the 1960s and 70s. At one of my favorite used bookstores I decided to buy four old Life World Library books; Britain; The Arab World; Scandinavia; and Colombia, Venezuela, Guianas; covering some of the countries in which I lived. All of these were published in the 1960s and I looked forward to leafing through, reminiscing about a world that seems oddly different and distant.

I started with the Scandinavia book and before I even glanced at any of the pictures, I came across this oddity. I never lived in Norway but lived next door in Sweden and I have travelled there at least twice and never knew this.

The Norwegians carry their sense of individuality even into language. When the country was ceded by Denmark to Sweden in 1814, its official language was Riksmål , a Danish dialect mostly spoken by upper class townspeople. Many dialects spoken in rural areas stemmed, however, not from Danish but Old Norse, the language of the 13th Century sagas. These dialects had no written forms. While literary figures were urging that Riksmål be made "more Norwegian" by incorporating more Norwegian words into it, a patriotic philologist invented Landsmål, a language based on the rural dialects, and gave written forms to it. Spurred by nationalistic fervor, Landsmål quickly caught on, and the government was forced to make it an official language. Today, both languages are taught in the Norwegian schools, and Norway periodically simmers over the question of changing or modifying one or the other of them.

Here is Wikipedia on Bokmål, the current day evolution of Riksmål. The modern derivative of Landsmål is now called Nynorsk.