NORWEGIAN DISTINCTIVENESS. A CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION
NORWEGIAN DISTINCTIVENESS. A CULTURAL CONSTRUCTION

Summary/Abstract: Norwegian Distinctiveness. A Cultural Construction. The article aims to present the correlation between ideology and culture / literature during the Norwegian nation building endeavour whose result was the creation of the Norwegian nation-state after almost four hundred years of Danish rule, in 1814. Still, it was only in 1905 that the Norwegian nation-state gained its full independence. In this context, it will be argued how the political and cultural strategies of the nation builders of 19th century Norway, in search for the distinct “national character”, resulted in what can be perceived as the distinctiveness of the Norwegian culture having two Norwegian standard written languages, and consequently two Norwegian “literatures” – the Nynorsk (New Norwegian) literature and the Bokmål (literally “Book language”) literature.

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