2014 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of the Norwegian nation following centuries of Danish rule. This book offers an account of that entire 200-year period, and analyses how Norwegians defined, fought over, and developed their own independent Scandinavian language, differentiating it from Danish and Swedish, through language planning.

Preface; Land and people, language and language planning; Part I: The Nationalist Period, 1814-1917; Before the start of language planning: 1814-1845; A language based on upper-middle-class speech or peasant dialects? The programmes proposed by Knud Knudsen and Ivar Aasen; The language question becomes a major political issue: 1860-1907; Two Norwegian written standards - is linguistic reconciliation possible? Early 20th century up to the 1917 language reforms; Part II: The Sociopolitical Period, 1917-1966; The post-war language struggle (1945-1966) to counter the sociolinguistic experiment of 1938; Part III: From a Single-Standard to a Two-Standard Strategy; The end of the single-standard policy (1966-2002): reforms in 1981 and 2005 (for Bokmal) and 2012 (for Nynorsk); Summary and concluding remarks; References; List of terms for language varieties discussed in this book; Timeline for the important terms in this book and the different written varieties; Timetable of important events for language planning and conflict in modern Norway.