The first Bokmål orthography was officially adopted in 1907 under the nameRiksmål after being under development since 1879.[7] The architects behind the reform wereMarius Nygaard and Jacob Jonathan Aars.[8] It was an adaptation ofwritten Danish—commonly used since thepast union withDenmark—toDano-Norwegian, thekoiné spoken by the Norwegian urban elite, especially in the capital. When the large conservative newspaperAftenposten adopted the 1907 orthography in 1923, Danish writing was practically out of use in Norway. The nameBokmål was officially adopted in 1929 after a proposition to call the written languageDano-Norwegian lost by a single vote in theLagting.[7]
The government does not regulatespoken Bokmål and recommends that normalised pronunciation should follow thephonology of the speaker's local dialect.[9] In Eastern Norway,Urban East Norwegian (Standard East Norwegian) is generally accepted as the de facto spoken standard of Bokmål/Riksmål.
All spoken variations of the Norwegian language are used in theStorting (parliament) and in Norwegian national broadcasters such asNRK andTV 2, even in cases where the conventions of Bokmål are used. The spoken variation typically reflects a speaker's native region.
Up until about 1300, the written language of Norway,Old Norwegian, was essentially the same as the otherOld Norse dialects. The speech, however, was gradually differentiated into local and regional dialects. As long as Norway remained anindependent kingdom, the written language remained essentially constant.[10]
In 1380,[11] Norway entered into apersonal union with Denmark. By the early 16th century, Norway had lost its separate political institutions, and together with Denmark formed the political unit known asDenmark–Norway until 1814, progressively becoming the weaker member of the union.[citation needed] During this period, the modern Danish and Norwegian languages emerged. Norwegian went through aMiddle Norwegian transition, and a Danish written language more heavily influenced byLow German was gradually standardised. This process was aided by theReformation, which promptedChristiern Pedersen's translation of the Bible into Danish. Remnants of written Old Norse and Norwegian were thus displaced by the Danish standard, which became used for virtually all administrative documents.[10][12]
Norwegians used Danish primarily in writing, but it gradually came to be spoken by urban elites on formal or official occasions. Although Danish never became the spoken language of the vast majority of the population, by the time Norway's ties with Denmark were severed in 1814, aDano-Norwegian vernacular often called the "educated daily speech"[citation needed] had become the mother tongue of elites in most Norwegian cities, such asBergen,Kristiania andTrondheim. This Dano-Norwegiankoiné could be described as Danish with regional Norwegian pronunciation (seeNorwegian dialects), some Norwegian vocabulary, and simplified grammar.[13]
With the gradual subsequent process of Norwegianisation of the written language used in the cities of Norway, from Danish to Bokmål and Riksmål, the upper-classsociolects in the cities changed accordingly. In 1814, when Norway was ceded from Denmarkto Sweden, Norway defied Sweden and its allies, declared independence and adopted a democratic constitution. Although compelled to submit to a dynastic union with Sweden, this spark of independence continued to burn, influencing the evolution of language in Norway. Old language traditions were revived by the patriotic poetHenrik Wergeland (1808–1845), who championed an independent non-Danish written language.[12] Haugen indicates that:
"Within the first generation of liberty, two solutions emerged and won adherents, one based on the speech of the upper class and one on that of the common people. The former called for Norwegianisation of the Danish writing, the latter for a brand new start."[10]
The more conservative of the two language transitions was advanced by the work of writers likePeter Asbjørnsen andJørgen Moe, schoolmaster and agitator for language reformKnud Knudsen, and Knudsen's famous disciple,Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, as well as a more cautious Norwegianisation byHenrik Ibsen.[10][14] In particular, Knudsen's work on language reform in the mid-19th century was important for the 1907 orthography and a subsequent reform in 1917, so much so that he is now often called the "father of Bokmål".
Since the creation ofLandsmål, the Danish written in Norway was referred to as(det almindelige) Bogmaal, etc. ("(The ordinary) book language"), e.g. inDen norske Literatur fra 1814 indtil vore Dage (Hans Olaf Hansen, 1862), or the synonymBogsprog, e.g. in the 1885 decision that adopted Landsmål as a co-official language.
The termRiksmål (Rigsmaal), meaningNational Language, was first proposed by Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson in 1899 as a name for the Norwegian variety of written Danish as well as spoken Dano-Norwegian. It was borrowed from Denmark where it denoted standard written and spoken Danish. The same year the Riksmål movement became organised under his leadership in order to fight against the growing influence of Nynorsk, eventually leading to the foundation of the non-governmental organisationRiksmålsforbundet in 1907, which he led until his death in 1910.
The 1907 reform documents do not mention the language by name, but the termRiksmål eventually caught on and was adopted by the Ministry of Church and Education in the years leading up to the 1917 spelling reform, appearing in its 1908 publicationUtredning av spørsmaalet om et mulig samarbeide mellem landsmaal og riksmaal i retskrivningen ("Investigation of the question of a possible cooperation between Landmål and Riksmål with regards to orthography"). Through this work an official policy to merge the standards (to a commonSamnorsk) through spelling reforms came to be.
In line with these plans, the 1917 reform introduced some elements fromNorwegian dialects and Nynorsk as optional alternatives to traditional Dano-Norwegian forms. The reform met some resistance from the Riksmål movement, andRiksmålsvernet (The Society for the Protection of Riksmål) was founded in 1919.
In 1929, the parliament voted to rename the written standards.Bokmål was re-introduced as the official name for the Dano-Norwegian standard, replacingRiksmål, whileLandsmål was renamedNynorsk.
In 1938 both written standards were heavily reformed and many common spellings and grammatical endings were made mandatory. This meant the removal of many traditional Dano-Norwegian forms in Bokmål, a decision that was harshly criticised by the Riksmål movement for being too radical and premature. While it criticised the adoption of Nynorsk spellings, it initially also expressed support for making the orthography morephonemic, for instance by removing silent h's in interrogative pronouns (which was done in Swedish a few years earlier).
The resistance culminated in the 1950s under the leadership ofArnulf Øverland. Riksmålsforbundet organised a parents' campaign against Samnorsk in 1951, and the Norwegian Academy for Language and Literature was founded in 1953. Because of this resistance, the 1959 reform was relatively modest, and some of the common traditional Danish spellings and inflections were admitted back into the standard through the reforms in 1981 and 2005.
Currently, Riksmål denotes a language form regulated by the non-governmental organisation The Norwegian Academy of Language and Literature. It is based on pre-1938 Bokmål and has been regulated by The Academy as a private alternative to the official Bokmål spelling standard since the 1950s. Over time it has accepted widespread "radical" spellings into the Riksmål standard. Since the official Samnorsk policy was abolished, Riksmål and Bokmål have converged, and The Academy currently edits an online dictionary that covers both. The differences have diminished (now being comparable toAmerican and British English differences), but The Academy still upholds its own standard.
Norway's most popular daily newspaper,Aftenposten, is notable for its use of Riksmål as its standard language. Use of Riksmål is rigorously pursued, even with regard to readers' letters, which are "translated" into the standard.[citation needed]Aftenposten gave up its most markedly conservative "signal words" in 1990.
While the specifics of the debate are unique to Norway, some parallels can be found in Austrian German and theOne Standard German Axiom, which revolves over the kind of standard to be used in a non-dominant country.
Språkloven is a Norwegian law that was passed by theStorting in 2021.[15] The law promotes equality between Bokmål and Nynorsk.[16] The law also contains provisions on the protection and status of several minority languages:Kven,Romani,Romanes,Sami languages and Norwegian sign language.[17] Before the law was passedRiksmålsforbundet criticised the law claiming it favours Nynorsk over Bokmål: "[I]t does not reflect the actual use of the written standards [...]. In practice, the 25 percent is a Nynorsk percentage, [...] Nynorsk users in the population is less than half of this proportion."[18] Peder Lofsnes Hauge, the leader ofNoregs mållag, argues that: "As a less used language, Nynorsk needs its own strengthening, which Bokmål does not. [...] We must rather favor Nynorsk until it is as easy to be a Nynorsk user as it is to be a Bokmål user."[19]
Map of the official language forms of Norwegian municipalities. Red is Bokmål, blue isNynorsk and gray denotes neutral areas.
In the Norwegian discourse, the termDano-Norwegian is seldom used with reference to contemporary Bokmål and its spoken varieties. The nationality of the language has been a hotly debated topic, and its users and proponents have generally not been fond of the implied association with Danish (hence the neutral namesRiksmål andBokmål, meaningstate language andbook language respectively). The debate intensified with the advent ofNynorsk in the 19th century, a written language based on ruralModern Norwegian dialects andpuristic opposition to the Danish and Dano-Norwegian spoken in Norwegian cities.
Most natives of Oslo today speak a dialect that is an amalgamation ofvikværsk (which is the technical term for the traditional dialects in the Oslofjord area) and written Danish; and subsequently Riksmål and Bokmål, which primarily inherited their non-Oslo elements from Danish. The present-day Oslo dialect is also influenced by other Eastern Norwegian dialects.
The following table shows some important cases where traditional Bokmål andStandard Østnorsk followed Danish rather than the traditionalOslo dialect as it is commonly portrayed in literature about Norwegian dialects.[20] In many of these cases, radical Bokmål follows the traditional Oslo dialect and Nynorsk, and these forms are also given.
Differences between Bokmål and the traditional Oslo dialect
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