Two official “versions” of Norwegian exists, Bokmål and Nynorsk (Book Language and New Norwegian). At first glance, one might think it’s highly impractical to include a “New” Norwegian when there is already an old one, and maybe it is. However, after being ruled from Copenhagen for several centuries, the written language in Norway was Danish, and the upper social classes were very influenced by it – they were speaking “Danish with a Norwegian accent”. As in most other countries, the language of these people was favoured when the written language was to be changed to a more “Norwegian” one.

However, the greatest hero known of all times, Ivar Aasen, travelled around the country, describing the dialects of the common people. He then used this information, with good help from the system of the Old Norwegian language, to develop a written Norwegian language. The way of writing was based upon the written Danish at the time, which in turn got many rules from German, e.g. capitalizing the first letters of nouns. Aasen called this language “Landsmaal” (Country Language). Landsmaal was very written very etymologically. For example, it included the O.N. ending -t with all weak verbs, as well as a ‘-d’ where O.N. had ‘-ð’, even though it’s long gone in spoken language. This practice of including silent letters is present, to some extent, in both Bokmål and Nynorsk. It is, however, far from consistent, and thus very confusing, especially for foreigners.

Riksmaal ((King)dom Language) and Landsmaal, as they were called, were later renamed “Bokmål” and “Nynorsk”, and the government tried to make them merge into Samnorsk (Uni-Norwegian), but had to give up. As a result, so much freedom of choosing different forms exists in both languages that one can make each one look more or less like the other, or completely different.

Riksmål and Høgnorsk (High Norwegian) are often called “conservative” versions of Bokmål and Nynorsk. This is one way of putting it, but I see it as an oversimplification. They are more consistent than their official counterparts (Høgnorsk more so than Riksmål, though), and they seek to preserve tradition. I will leave Riksmål at this point, because I see it as unnecessary.

Høgnorsk is more “modern” than Landsmaal, in that it excludes most of the long, etymological endings, while still being consistent with the remaining ones, like the ‘-d’s of nouns of adjectives. It is important to note, though, that Høgnorsk doesn’t have an official norm (being unofficial and all), and individual varieties exist. The important thing about Høgnorsk is that it seeks to preserve the tradition from Aasen’s work, while still using a modern way of writing. It’s more puristic than Nynorsk, including Norwegian alternatives to most/all Danish/German/Dutch loanwords (exceptions exist, mainly words that were borrowed already in O.N.). Latin and greek words that are deemed generally universal are usually accepted, as long as no Norwegian alternatives exist, although certain purists (myself included) seek to eliminate even these. In addition, Høgnorsk is a symbol of “Norwegianism”, or “positive nationalism”, as a friend of mine once said.