A man and his language
Thomas Hylland Eriksen Norway Now, November 1996
Ivar Aasen (1813-96)[Image] "A language is a dialect backed by an army,"
according to a critical perspective on
About this site nation-building. Nation-builder Iver Andreas
Aasen (1813-96), later famous under the name
[Image] of Ivar Aasen, had no illusions about any
army backing him at any time during his long
life of dedicated hard work. He nevertheless
Relational index created an entirely new language from bits
and pieces, and lived to see it become an
[Image] official language in his country. We are
Thematic index celebrating the centenary of his death this
year.
[Image]
Alphabetic index Ivar Aasen's name is known abroad to a few
linguists, historians of nationalism and
[Image] other specialists. In Norway, his is a
Recent household name. Hated by some, loved by more
and respected by all, the self-taught and
[Image] extremely prolific scholar Aasen
World singlehandedly devised a comprehensive
grammar, a lexicon and indeed a literature
for the new language, nynorsk or New
Norwegian. Nynorsk or landsmaal (&laqno;Rural
Language╗) as it was first called, was
envisioned to replace Dano-Norwegian as the
national language of the new nation. Alas,
this never came about. Ironically, rather
than uniting the people, the new national
language quickly became the source of one of
the most bitter and protracted controversies
dividing the Norwegian nation, right from the
beginning in the mid-nineteenth century up to
the present.
Like in many small, peripheral and colonised
European countries, Norwegian elites were in
this period busy negotiating and developing
their national identity as a prelude to
serious claims of political independence. For
centuries, the country had been a mere Danish
province; it was now in an enforced union
with big brother Sweden, which would last
until 1905. The Danish influence was still
very strong, not least in the cultural field.
Notably, the written language, as well as the
spoken language of the urban bourgeoisie, was
all but Danish. Many Norwegian dialects, on
the other hand, were quite remote from
Danish. The winds of German Romanticism blew
powerfully across the land, preaching that
the soul of a people resided in its language.
In other words, the time was ripe for a
generation of Norwegian intellectuals who had
the capacity and courage to counter the
Danish cultural hegemon. Ivar Aasen was
perhaps the most uncompromising and brilliant
of them. Born and raised in modest conditions
in western Norway, Aasen found his vocation
early in life. Collecting vocabulary and
grammar from large parts of the country, he
meticulously built his distinct form of
Norwegian, as a rule retaining the words and
phrases which he deemed as the most ancient
and closest to Old Norse.
Aasen's project was compatible with the
Romantic nationalism in vogue at the time,
which emphasised both the virtues of the
rural life and postulated connections with
the Viking era in its anti-Danish and
anti-Swedish imagery. However, during the
early attempts to officialise Aasen's New
Norwegian, it quickly transpired that a large
part of the Norwegian elite would be happy to
see Aasen's innovation as a symbol of
nationhood, but were less enthusiastic about
actually using it. As a result, the country
was divided between Dano-Norwegian and New
Norwegian inclinations. This is still the
situation, despite ingenious attempts at
bridging the gap between the two varieties --
which are mutually intelligible -- through
the development of hybrid forms, which have
only contributed further to the general
linguistic confusion in the country.
Today, there are "radical" and "conservative"
variants of both New Norwegian and reformed
Dano-Norwegian (bokmål, Book Language, or
riksmål, National Language). Both are
official languages, although the great
majority of the population uses some form of
bokmål, nynorsk being predominant in the west
and in the central mountain areas of Southern
Norway. Twenty-five per cent of national
broadcasts are in nynorsk. In the areas where
the majority of the population use nynorsk,
it is the language of instruction in schools;
and schoolchildren all over the country have
to write compositions in both variants of
Norwegian.
The choice of language form is not a mere
linguistic issue. Indeed, one probably has to
be Norwegian in order to fully understand the
subtle political nuances and connotations
associated with the language controversy.
Nynorsk is associated with the rural life and
with a commonsensical scepticism vis-α-vis
the affectations, hierarchies and mannerisms
of the urban centres. It is perceived as more
"folksy" and more "rooted" than bokmål, which
does not mean that it is anti-intellectual.
Many of Norway's finest writers and most
outstanding thinkers write in nynorsk. It
nevertheless remains in many ways a
counterculture of resistance - more than a
hundred years after its officialisation.
So which language form, then, does the
Norwegian army support? The obvious answer
is: Neither, but it remains firmly committed
to defending the dispute to the last man.
⌐ Thomas Hylland Eriksen 1996
[Image]
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