Dansknorsk

Dansknorsk is a scholarly term used to describe the historical linguistic relationship between Danish and Norwegian within the Danish-Norwegian union, roughly from the 16th to the early 19th century. It denotes the shared written standard and the pervasive Danish influence on Norwegian language practices during this period.

In administration and culture, Danish functioned as the prestige language. Norwegian speech varieties persisted in daily life, while written Norwegian often followed Danish orthography and vocabulary, especially in official documents, literature, and education. This situation created a diglossic dynamic where Danish-based norms structured much of the written Norwegian standard.

Linguistic characteristics associated with dansknorsk include a Danish-based orthographic system present in many Norwegian texts, extensive Danish loanwords, and a tendency toward Danish syntactic and inflectional patterns in written forms. Spoken Norwegian dialects retained their phonological and morphological features, leading to a divergence between speech and the formal written language across regions and social groups.

The concept of dansknorsk is most discussed in historical linguistics and is not a living language. After Norway's separation from Denmark in 1814, language reforms and nationalist movements fostered the development of distinct Norwegian standards, notably Bokmål (a Danish-influenced form) and Nynorsk (based on rural Norwegian dialects). The term remains a descriptive label for a historical period of intense language contact rather than a contemporary linguistic entity.

See also: Danish-Norwegian union, Bokmål, Riksmål, Nynorsk, language contact in Scandinavia.