Fig. 35—Sketch map of Schleswig-Holstein showing languages spoken. According to the Danish viewpoint. Scale, 1:1,200,000. (After Rosendal based on Clausens and Heyers.)
In Norway the linguistic problem goes under the name of Maalstraev. The question of language in that country was debated with marked fervor[79] during the years prior to the separation from Sweden. “Freedom with self-government, home, land and our own language” was the plea of Mr. Jörgen Lövland, subsequently Premier of Norway, in an address to the Norwegian youth in 1904. “Political freedom,” then said Mr. Lövland, “is not the deepest and greatest. Greater is it for a nation to preserve her intellectual inheritance in her native tongue.”
Norwegian history is not continuous, complaisant historians to the contrary. A long break occurs from the Union of Kalmar in 1397, when the country ceased to exist as a political entity, to 1814. During this period of extinction, Norway was a mere geographical shuttlecock tossed between Sweden and Denmark. The latter country as a rule obtained the upper hand in its dealings with Norway. This relation accounts for the analogies in the languages of the two nations. But although Norway had seceded from Denmark in 1814, the Danish language, representing the speech of the more energetic and better educated Danes, remained official. Four and a half centuries of union between the two countries had made Danish the medium of intellectual development throughout Norway. But this linguistic invasion was accompanied by a notable modification of Danish. Norwegian intonations and sound articulations became adapted to it and the Norwego-Danish language, which is spoken today, gradually came into use.
This hybrid language, however, does not prevail exclusively. About 95 per cent of the Norwegians speak, according to districts, different dialects derived from the Old Norse. The Norwego-Danish, or Riksmaal, is the language of polite society and the one which a foreigner naturally learns when in Norway. The language of the land, or Norsk as it is called by the Norwegians, has the merit of being more homogeneous than either Danish or Swedish.
Nationality and language have grown apace in Norway. Prior to the nineteenth century the use of words taken from the Norwegian dialects was considered bad form. The granting of a constitution to the Norwegians, in 1814, created a strong feeling of nationality throughout the land. This spirit was reflected in active research for every form of Old Norse culture. Hitherto despised patois words were forced into prose or poetry by the foremost Norwegian writers, a movement to Norsefy the Riksmaal thus being originated.
As a result of these endeavors a new language, the “Landsmaal,” or fatherland speech, came into being about the middle of the nineteenth century. The name of Ivar Aasen will always be linked with it. This highly gifted peasant devoted his life to the idea of a renaissance of the Old Norse language through the unification of the current peasant dialects. Scientific societies, urged by patriotism no less than by genuine scholarly interest, granted him subsidies which enabled him to carry on his studies. Two of his works—“The Grammar of the Norwegian Popular Language,” published in 1848, and a “Dictionary of the Norwegian Popular Language,” in 1850—virtually established a new medium of speech in Norway.
Landsmaal was happily introduced just about the time when a sense of national consciousness began to dawn on Norwegian minds. By a number of enactments of the Storting the study of the new national tongue was made compulsory. This body first acted in May 1885 by requesting the Government “to adopt the necessary measures so that the people’s language, as school and official language, be placed side by side with our ordinary written speech.”[80] Then, in 1892, the following law for elementary schools was framed: “The school board (in each district) shall decide whether the school readers and text-books shall be composed in Landsmaal or the ordinary book-‘maal’ and in which of these languages the pupil’s written exercises shall in general be composed. But the pupil must learn to read both languages.” Finally, in 1896, the study of Landsmaal was made obligatory in the high schools.
After Norway secured complete national independence, in 1905, the Landsmaal advanced rapidly. Its use was permitted in university examinations. By 1909 one hundred and twenty-five out of six hundred and fifty school districts had adopted “New Norse” as the medium of instruction.[81] In the bishopric of Bergen the new language came to stay in 56 out of 101 country parishes. The issue between Landsmaal and Riksmaal being closely linked with nationalism in Norway, many Norwegians have now come to look upon the Danish tongue as a sign of former vassalage. New Norse, on the other hand, embodies the newly acquired national independence. In the eyes of patriots it is the language which is most closely allied to the saga tongue of their Viking ancestors. And yet it is stated that less than a thousand persons in Norway actually use New Norse in their conversation.[82] The supplanting of Norwego-Danish by the made-to-order Landsmaal bids fair to take time. But the process of welding Norwegian dialects into a single national language is going on. In this must be sought the significance of Norway’s language agitation. A Norwegian tongue which will be spoken within Norwegian boundaries is being formed. In recent years it has been customary to publish all acts of Parliament both in Norwego-Danish and in Landsmaal.
The Swedish language differs from Norwegian by a typical accentuation. The growth of the language to its present form may be traced back to the Runic period of the thirteenth century. At that time Swedish was free from foreign admixture. The influence of Latin and of Middle and Low German was felt later. The language passed successively through the period of Old Swedish (1200-1500) and Early Modern Swedish (1500-1730). Its present form belongs to the Later Modern School, although it is spoken now without much change from the language of the middle eighteenth century.