Estimated native speakers: 5 million
Estimated total speakers: 6 million
Official/de facto official language in: Norway
Language family: Indo-European – North-Germanic
A brief history:
Along with the other modern Scandinavian languages, Norwegian has its roots in the Old Norse spoken by the Vikings. In the 11th century, Christianity arrived in Norway, bringing with it the Latin alphabet and starting the division between Norwegian and the languages of neighbouring countries. Due to extensive contact with northern German tribes, a large amount of Middle Low German vocabulary entered the language in the following centuries. Throughout this period, Norwegian grammar grew progressively less complex – a development which makes today’s language one of the easier for English speakers to learn.
In 1397, the Kalmar Union brought Norway, Sweden and Denmark together. From 1536 Norway was subordinated under the Kingdom of Denmark–Norway and Danish became the language of Norway's educated class and the written language of choice. The Danish spoken in Norway took on a distinctly Norwegian sound and filtered its way down from the wealthy elite into everyday speech. With the end of the union in 1814 this Dano-Norwegian koiné had become the mother tongue of a substantial part of the Norwegian elite. This developed into Bokmål: the modern written language.
From the 1840s, some writers experimented with a Norwegianised Danish by adopting a more Norwegian syntax and Norwegian pastoral words. Knud Knudsen wanted to change the spelling of written Norwegian to reflect the Dano-Norwegian koiné. His proposals were partly acted on in language reforms in 1862, 1907 and 1917. Around the same time as Knudsen, Ivar Aasen began his work to create a new Norwegian language. He travelled across the country studying dialects and noted how Icelandic had developed virtually free of Danish influence. He called his work Landsmål, meaning “national language”. This developed into Nynorsk, which now shares official status in Norway with Bokmål.
In 1905, as Norway left a union with Sweden, both languages were developed further and reached what is now considered their classic forms after a reform in 1917. Bokmål and Nynorsk were brought closer by a reform in 1938 in an attempt to create a "Samnorsk" (Common Norwegian), which was a policy supported by the large majority of Norwegians. Opposition to the reform was, however, successful and today the two languages remain side by side. There is no one official dialect and Norwegians use their natural dialect at all times.