AASEN, IVAR

(1813-1896)

   A Norwegian poet, dramatist, and linguist, Aasen grew up on a small farm on the coast of western Norway. He became a self-taught linguist and dialectologist and devoted his life to studying the lexicon and grammar of Norwegian dialects. Paying special attention to their relationship with the language of Viking Age Scandinavia, he published a grammar in 1848 and a dictionary in 1850. Steeped in the ideology of national romanticism, he was nevertheless no dreamer but a diligent promoter of the idea that Norway's written language, which after 400 years of political union with Denmark was strongly colored by Danish, ought to be replaced by a written norm that was founded on Norway's many different popular dialects. To this end, Aasen singlehandedly created a written form of Norwegian called Landsmaal (country language) that he then employed as a medium for both poetry and prose. Perhaps predictably, his poetry is heavily colored by the conventions of Old Norse poetry and shows his fondness for both ancient-sounding vocabulary and grammatical features that had become extinct in most forms of Norwegian even in Aasen's own day. His best-known literary works are the play Ervingen (1855; The Heir) and the poetry collection Symra (1863; The Anemone). While not among Scandinavia's greatest literary works of literature, both are considered classics in Norwegian literature written in nynorsk (New Norwegian), a less old-fashioned norm that succeeded Aasen's Landsmaal as an alternative to standard written Norwegian.