Norwegian language conflict

The Norwegian language conflict (målstriden, sprogstriden) is an ongoing controversy in Norwegian culture and politics related to the written versions of Norwegian. From 1536/1537 until 1814, Danish was the standard written language of Norway due to the union of crowns with Denmark, in which time the Danish Empire was founded. As a result, the overall form of chosen modern written Norwegian and its leaning towards or away from Danish underpins controversies in anti-imperialistic nationalism, rural versus urban cultures, literary history, diglossia (everyday dialects versus formal, standard language), spelling reform, and orthography. In the United Kingdoms of Denmark and Norway of the dates above, the official languages were Danish and German. The urban Norwegian upper class spoke Dano-Norwegian (dansk-norsk): Danish with Norwegian pronunciation and other minor local differences, while most people spoke their local and regional dialect. After secession, Dano-Norwegian held status as the sole official language until 1885. In the early 1840s, young linguist Ivar Aasen traveled the countryside gathering up the words and grammar used there. He assembled a Norwegian language based on dialects little affected by Danish and published his first grammar and dictionary of the Norwegian people's language (Folkemål), in 1848 and 1850 respectively. He and many other authors wrote texts in their own dialects from around this time. Norwegian is a North Germanic language. Dano-Norwegian, from a tongue readily accessible to, and essentially written as Danish, took in increasing amounts of Norwegian. Meanwhile, Aasen's "folk's speech" became established. Parliament decided in 1885 that the two forms of written Norwegian were to be equally official. Both went through some name changes until 1929, when parliament decided that the one originally based on Danish should be called Bokmål (literally "book language") and the one based on Norwegian dialects should be called Nynorsk ("new Norwegian").