Around year 1000, the same language, called Old Norse, was spoken in Norway and Iceland. The Norse sagas, skaldic poems, and Eddas were written in Old Norse. In Iceland, due to their geographic position as an isolated outpost, the Old Nordic language was not influenced and changed by other languages.

Norway is not the only country in the world with lots of dialects or accents, nor the only one with two official languages. Others have even more (Belgium has 3 official languages), but only Norway has 2 Norwegian languages! Bokmål, or "Book Language," and Nynorsk, or "New Norwegian", respectively. For a Norwegian native, it is quite easy to understand both languages, since they do not vary that much. Most words are the same, though sometimes spelt different. For instance the word "I" is "jeg" in Bokmål and "eg" in Nynorsk.

Of these two languages, Bokmål (formerly Riksmål, "the language of the nation") is the oldest one, influenced by Danish during the 434-year union of the two nations. Nynorsk was created out of the rural dialects about 100 years ago.

In this century, it has been a political goal to merge the two languages with "force", i.e. imposing changes in Bokmål which were unnatural and illogical. This project would not succeed, of course, since a language will follow natural laws of development and not change when ordered to. Today, there is much greater tolerance on both parts of the "language barrier".

Know, however, that there are not many people actually speaking Nynorsk, people have lots of different dialects and accents all over Norway and Nynorsk does not contain all the variants. Writing Bokmål or Nynorsk is a matter of choice, already in school pupils decide which language they want as their "main" language - though they will have to study both during 6 or 8 years. Statistics show that more than 80 percent of the children have Bokmål as the main language in school.

Still, the two languages are equal and all official papers exist in the two variants.

Notes on language

| Cyber Clip ||| Norway Info | Mail | Pictures | A year in norway | Link collection | Medialinks | Norwegian words | Genealogy | Food | Articles | Bookstore |

Comments to webmistress. CyberClip. Norway Info. Norwegian Words.