Dialect polishing and solidarity with ‘the others’: merchants as language creators in the 19th century

Abstract

Abstract In this article, the linguistic choices of a group of young merchants and merchants’ sons are discussed. Living in Bergen in the second half of the 19th century, they wrote Danish and spoke a dialect marked by centuries of dialect and language contact. Most of them had some competence in German, some also in English and French. When Romanticism and nation building became dominating ideas in Norway, the merchants’ European culture and their mixed dialect did not seem appropriate. These men therefore turned their backs on both city culture and city language and started studying Old Norse and rural dialects as part of a movement promoting a language called Landsmål. They formed an organization called Vestmannalaget ‘The Association of Westmen’ in 1868, with the aim of helping to create a new Norwegian standard. In other places in Norway, those working for this new standard language usually had a rural background, and their mission was to promote pride in and the use of their own dialects and their own culture. The Association of Westmen however, aimed to learn a refined version of the dialects of the less privileged classes. This was controversial in the social class to which they belonged, and most of them did not linger on in the Landsmål movement as adults. They were young radicals who paved the way so that others, with closer ties to rural Norway, could take over the linguistic struggle.