Norwegian linguistic identity through history – from national identity to linguistic individualism

Abstract

This paper will discuss how linguistic identity has changed during the history of the Norwegian society and language from the time of the Vikings until today’s identity shaping of Generation Z. Because of the great span of time that is covered in this discussion it will not be possible to go into greater detail. The overall picture is that while there was little awareness about language as an identity marker during the middle ages, linguistic identity became a group project during national romanticism, even though this group project divided into two different linguistic varieties and identities, Bokmål (Dano-Norwegian) and Nynorsk (New Norwegian). In today’s society, linguistic identity is to a large extent characterized by individual language shaping, at least in social media. At the same time, there is still a tendency to accommodate to a group standard and group identity. / Keywords: language identity, linguistic identity, educational role of language, nationalism, individualism, language history