Det Norske Samlaget

A small group of determined men came together in Christiania in 1868 and formed the Norwegian Samlaget. One of the founders and first chairman was Hagbard Emanuel Berner; he remained chairman until 1877. The formation of Norwegian Samlaget was a natural extension of the efforts to promote Landsmål as the predominant literary and official language of Norway. In 1929, Landsmål was renamed Nynorsk. This promotion of indigenous languages was a common movement over much of the Europe of that period. Iceland sponsored a form of Icelandic in opposition to the official Danish, Finns promoted use of Finnish in opposition to the official Swedish, Flemish was promoted in Belgium, Provençal in the south of France and Slavic dialects proliferated to the east. The debate about a Norwegian language reformation had been in progress for years, and fifteen years earlier Ivar Aasen had put forward the idea of reconstituting the Norwegian folk language. Although efforts had previously been made toward organization in the 1860s, it had been heavy work, and they met a great deal of resistance.