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The Linguistic Development of Ivar Aasen's New Norse

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Einar Haugen
Einar Haugen*
Affiliation:
University of Wisconsin
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Extract

It does not often happen that a language form created by conscious deliberation and planning wins the warm support and widespread acceptance which has fallen to the lot of New Norse, the creation of Ivar Aasen (1813–1896). A large body of serious literature has grown up in this artificial common denominator of Norwegian dialects; possibly a fourth of the school-children of Norway receive their chief instruction in it. Although New Norse is far from its goal of supremacy, it is a factor of the utmost significance in Norwegian history, and a phenomenon of great interest to students of language and literature.

The earliest detailed study of Aasen's linguistic practice is found in Johan Storm's polemic pamphlet Det nynorske Landsmaal. That brilliant scholar here applied his wit and ingenuity to proving that New Norse (Landsmaal) as written, was not and could not be a language, because of its inevitable tendency to crumble up into the dialects of which it was created. To this end he analyzed in some detail the language of the various New Norse writers, among them Aasen. His purpose did not, however, involve an exhaustive study of Aasen's works, many of which were then unknown or scattered. Hence his classification was inadequate and at times definitely incorrect. He divided Aasen's New Norse into an older form, represented by Prøver af Landsmaalet (1853) and Fridtjofs Saga (1858), and an intermediary form used in Ervingen (2d ed., 1874), Heimsyn (1875) and Symra (3d ed., 1875). But this rough division (based chiefly on the change in 1858 from dan, dat to den, det) gives us no conception whatever of the gradual steps by which Aasen passed from form to form and the experimentation out of which his completed New Norse norm was shaped.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 48 , Issue 2 , June 1933 , pp. 558 - 597
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1933

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References

1 Aasen referred to the language form he had created as “Landsmaal,” an ambiguous term meaning either “country speech” or “national speech.” There is no single term in English which will render it, and it is decidedly inconvenient to leave it untranslated in an English text. As a useful term for this language the writer has employed—and would recommend to others—“New Norse.” This suggests, but does not literally translate, its present official name in Norway—“Nynorsk.” (This last is not a happy term for “Landsmaal,” as it literally means “New Norwegian” and should be reserved to include all modern Norwegian language forms and dialects.) “New Norse” is appropriate also because it emphasizes the descent of Landsmaal from Old Norse and because it does not, like “Nynorsk,” beg the question by claiming to be the only modern Norwegian language. Its rival, most commonly known as “Riksmaal” (officially called “Bokmâl”) is most accurately and euphoniously described as “Dano-Norwegian,” meaning not a Danish variety of Norwegian, but a Norwegian language of Danish extraction. By consistently using these terms, we have arrived at an English nomenclature more exactly expressive of present conditions than the original Norwegian terms: to wit, that there are two Norwegian language forms in present-day Norway—one a Dano-Norwegian, the other a New Norse.

2 Copenhagen, 1888.

3 Ivar Aasen. Ei minneskrift, ved A. Garborg, A. Hovden, H. Koht. 1913. Koht's contribution, pp. 11–200.

4 Vid. Selsk. Skr. Eist.-Fil. Klasse (1917), No. 1. Part II, in same series (1921), No. 5. See esp. i, 154–168; ii, 46.

5 Edda 1921, 161–201 (xiv). For a discussion of Aasen as a writer of Dano-Norwegian see my article in Scandinavian Studies, xii (1932), 53–59.

6 See list of New Norse production for exact titles.

7 Skr. ii, 7–13. Note, ibid., 305.

8 Cf. Langes T. ii (1848), 276–7.

9 Dic 1, vii.

10 Ibid., viii.

11 Gr 1 xii.

12 Cf. D. A. Seip, in MM, 1924, 135, and in Norskhet i Sproget hos Wergeland (Kristiania, 1914); Burgun, op. cit., etc.

13 Cf. essay of 1836, in which he wrote that the peasants had preserved the national language, “even if this is not equally true of all districts.” Skr. iii, 9. In the plan submitted to the Scientific Society in 1842, he distinctly called the western dialects “superior in age and purity, as may be supposed from their notable similarity to Icelandic.” SS 1902, 464.

14 Some features identical with his own dialect were: treatment of vowels (pt. 1 and 9); k, g before unaccented palatal vowel (5); presence of ON. Ð after accented vowel, absence after r and before cons. (6); absence of restored final cons. (12–15); use of -e- in den, det, der (26).

15 Many of these he had learned from earlier writers like P. A. Munch and L. K. Daa: doubling of long consonant, use of øy for øi, restoration of etymological nn and ll for Danish nd and ld, distinction of consonant combinations (hj, lj, gj, etc.) which had become identical in the dialects.

16 Important disagreements: adoption of -i in def. sing. of strong fem. (17), and of -a for the weak (18); distinction of weak fem, from strong in the plural (19); absence of datives (22); han in accus. case (25); absence of plural verb forms (28); use of -a in unaccented syllables, esp. wk. fem. and inf., all of which have been levelled to -e in Sm.; final r after vowel; absence of svarabhakti vowel before ON r (7), etc.

17 East Norwegian features: a before ng (WN Q); loss of ON r after cons., without svarabhakti vowel; distinction of weak feminine in plural; rejection of WN consonant and vowel perversions, e.g. dn for rn and diphthongization of long vowels; -a in def. sing. of weak fem. noun; dæ, den, dær (also SWN and NWN). All but the last of these forms are etymological.

West Norwegian features: Most important of all is the vowel system (pts. 1 and 9); others are pts. 2, 16, 23, 26, the use of -a in unaccented syllables (CWN), retention of short cons, after lengthened vowel (e.g. vita, EN vætta), j after short vowel plus cons. (sitja), etc.

18 Gr 2 33 n.

19 Sm Gr 8.

20 Gr 2 29; italics mine, as also in the two following quotations.

21 Dic 1 xii.

22 Gr 2 29 n.

23 Cf. letter to Landstad, Oct. 3, 1848, printed MM 1926, 32.

24 Gr 2 168 n.

25 Dic 1 ix.

26 See correspondence printed in MM 1926, 1–65. Six letters from Aasen to Landstad are included, written from 1848 to 1852. Discussions are found in M. Moe, Samlede Skrifter, iii, 172; in Koht, Minneskrift, 134; K. Liestøl, Edda, 1926, 19.

27 MM 1926, 31.

28 Langes T., 1853, 293, note 1. Italics mine.—See also article by Unger in Nor, iii, 3h., p. 123. Correspondence between Aasen and Unger 1849 to 1851 printed by G. Indrebø, SS 1924, 20–34.

29 The controversy with P. A. Munch is discussed in Koht, op, cit., 136–138.

30 Cf. Liestøl, “Ivar Aasen,” SS 1913, 341 f.

31 Quot. from Koht, op. cit., 140.

32 April 16. MM 1926, 46.

33 Skr. iii, 47.

34 Ibid., 60–61.

35 Ibid., 61.

36 Ibid., 62.

37 The article is printed by K. Liestøl in MM 1917, 4–22. This quotation from p. 14.

38 Ibid., 20.

39 Gr 2 29 n.

40 Gr 2 13 n.

41 Gr 1 48 n.

42 He made this change before April 16, cf. letter to Landstad, MM 1926, 46.

43 MM 1926, 32.

44 This is also Burgun's view, op. cit. ii, 46. Cf. Aasen, Norske Ordsprog, xxii.

45 Gr 2169 n.

46 Cf. J. Storm, Det nynorske Landsmaal, 48–49.

47 Aasen first used the term “Landsmaal” in his diary of June 1, 1851, (according to Koht, op. cit., 136), while he was working on Prøver. Just what did he mean by this term? The Norwegian word “land,” like the English “country,” may apply either to the country-side, the rural districts only, or to the country as a whole; hence “Landsmaal” may mean either “country speech” or “national speech.” Koht maintains, op. cit., 147, that when Aasen wrote Prøver af Landsmaalet, he did not think of it as primarily a “country speech,” but as a proposal for a national tongue which might find entry even into the Danicized cities. Yet it is undeniable that Aasen also constantly uses the word in the other sense. In the previously cited “Grundtanker,” written about this time, he speaks of Norway's two languages, “et Bymaal som holder sig til Dansken, og et Landsmaal som intet har at holde sig til.” (MM 1917, 9). Here he distinctly contrasts “landsmaal” with “bymaal” or city speech. Furthermore, we may suppose that the title of his book is intended to cover also the dialect specimens which constitute nearly two thirds of the book, and are all from the country. His proposal for a national language is also based entirely on the country dialects. “Landsmaalet i Norge” could hardly have borne any other meaning to contemporary readers than “the country speech of Norway”; the usual term for a standard written language was “Rigsmaal.” Aasen called his norm “et almindeligt Landsmaal,” roughly translated: “a language common to the entire country-side.” Aasen believed that this language should also be the national language, and may have been unconsciously strengthened in this belief by the linguistic confusion of the two meanings of “land.” It was easy enough to understand “et almindeligt Landsmaal” to mean also “a language common to the entire country.”

48 Prøver, 5.

49 Ibid., 83.

50 Ibid., 5.

51 Ibid., 83.

52 Review of Prøver in Drammens Tidende (June 24, 1853); reprinted Vinje, Skrifter i Samling i, 100–104.

53 Vidar 1834, No. 92, 93, 95; cf. T. Knudsen, P. A. Munch og samtidens norske sprogstrid, 24.

54 Gr 1 30.

55 Prøver, 84.

56 Gr 2 234 n.

57 Sm Gr, 70.

58 Gr 2 loc. cit.

59 Dic 1, vii.

60 Gr 2 107, 168 n.

61 Prøver, 84.

62 Den norske Folkeskole iv (1855-56), 342–347.

63 Skr. iii, 330.

64 Koht, op. cit., 154.

65 Skr. iii. 128–136.

66 In the plan of 1845, printed in Vid. Selsk. Skrifter (Trondhjem) iv, 1, p. 62.

67 Dic 2, viii.

68 Dic 1, iii. Italics mine.

69 Dic 2, viii. Italics mine.

70 Gr 1, xii.

71 This article is condensed from chapters in and iv of a doctor's thesis submitted to the University of Illinois in 1931, entitled “The Origin and Early History of the New Norse Movement in Norway.” Grateful acknowledgment is hereby made to Professor George T. Flom, under whose direction the thesis was prepared.