Ivar Aasen

Ivar Aasen was a Norwegian philologist, lexicographer, playwright, and poet. He is best known for having assembled one of the two official written versions of the Norwegian language, Nynorsk, from various dialects. He was born as Iver Andreas Aasen at Asen in Orsta, in the district of Sunnmore, on the west coast of Norway. His father, a peasant with a small farm, died in 1826. The younger Ivar was brought up to farmwork, but he assiduously cultivated all his leisure in reading. An early interest of his was botany. When he was eighteen, he opened an elementary school in his native parish. In 1833 he entered the household of Hans Conrad Thoresen, the husband of the eminent writer Magdalene Thoresen, in Herøy, and there he picked up the elements of Latin. Gradually, and by dint of infinite patience and concentration, the young peasant mastered many languages, and began the scientific study of their structure. About 1846 he had freed himself from all the burden of manual labour, and could occupy his thoughts with the dialect of his native district, Sunnmøre; his first publication was a small collection of folk songs in the Sunnmore dialect (1843). His remarkable abilities now attracted general attention, and he was helped to continue his studies undisturbed. His Grammar of the Norwegian Dialects (1848) was the result of much labour, and of journeys taken to every part of the country. Aasen's famous Dictionary of the Norwegian Dialects (1850) appeared in its original form in 1850, and from this publication dates all the wide cultivation of the popular language in Norwegian, since Aasen really did no less than construct, out of the different materials at his disposal, a popular language or definite folke-maal (people's language) for Norway. With certain modifications, the most important of which were introduced later by Aasen himself, but also through a latter policy aiming to merge this Norwegian language with Dano-Norwegian, this language has become Nynorsk ("New Norwegian"), the second of Norway's two official languages (the other being Bokmål, the Dano-Norwegian descendant of the Danish language used in Norway in Aasen's time). An unofficial variety of Norwegian closer to Aasen's language is still found in Høgnorsk ("High Norwegian"). Aasen composed poems and plays in his composite dialect, while continuing to augment and refine his grammar and dictionary. His definitive grammar was published in 1864, followed in 1873 by his definitive dictionary of Nynorsk. He also published several collections of folk tales, proverbs, and songs. He received several honors for his work, including the Order of St. Olav and a stipend from the Norwegian government. He died of pneumonia in 1896 in Kristiania (now Oslo).