The initiative for linguistic control in Norway did not come from the state, but from two individuals: Ivar Aasen (1813-1896) and Knud Knudsen (1812-1895). As early as the 1830s, on their own, Aasen and Knudsen set out to create written Norwegian. Aasen traveled through Norway to listen to the different dialects; borrowing a little from each, he created the language that is now called Nynorsk. As for Knudsen, he wanted to make the Danish written language more Norwegian; it evolved in Norway to become what is now called Bokmål. In fact, the result of these two Norwegian linguists gave rise to the birth of Landsmål, the ‘language of the country and of Riksmål, the ‘language of the kingdom.’ Although the term Landsmål remained, Aasen gave it various names: ‘language of our people’ (vort almuesprog), ‘true Norwegian’ (det rette norske folksprog), ‘national language’ (nationalsprog), ‘Norwegian national language’ (Norske Landsmål), and Norwegian (Norsk). Knud Knudsen's supporters mobilized around the word Riksmål, a word modeled on the German reichssprache.
It was the start of a long struggle between two competing variants of Norwegian - Landsmål and Riksmål. In 1885, Norway became an officially bilingual state by recognizing Landsmål and Riksmål as the country's official national languages. In 1929, the Act of Parliament changed the names of the two official languages: Landsmål became Nynorsk, which is ‘New Norwegian’, and Riksmål was called Bokmål, which is 'the language of books. Other attempts were made to unite the two variants of Norwegian, but they all failed.
In 1966, the Norwegian government did an about-face. Not only did it abandon its policy of merging but also renounced all linguistic planning. By the time the government decided not to intervene, the sociolinguistic situation had become radically different from what it was 20 years before. From 32% of the population, speakers of Nynorsk had fallen to 17.9%: industrialization and urbanization favored Bokmål, the language is traditionally spoken in the cities, the language of intellectuals and business in addition; it was, therefore, the language of the social elite of Norway.
In any case, the defense of Nynorsk in Norway remains an expression of nationalism, but a regional nationalism that does not concern the entire country. It is also led by an influential elite that represents the regions. This is from the 19th century when Nynorsk is a symbol of the movement of Norwegian national emancipation. Since people in rural areas have never accepted the cultural domination of the capital, the movement is here to stay. Today, the Norwegian government believes that the written ‘Norwegian' should be stabilized, but avoid frequent spelling changes as much as possible. It appears that more comprehensive reforms were preferred over annual adjustments to ad hoc problems.
