Landsmål

Landsmål, meaning "national language", was the name Ivar Aasen gave the Norwegian orthography he created in the 19th century. In 1885 it was adopted as an official language in Norway alongside Danish. In 1929, Landsmål was renamed Nynorsk. The name "Landsmål" is sometimes erroneously interpreted as meaning "rural language" or "country language".

Previous to the advent of Landsmål, there was no written standard for Norwegian language, though written Danish, which was the commonly written language in Norway and generally intelligible by Norwegians, was sometimes referred to as Norwegian. Currently, the most widely written language in Norway is Bokmål, a Norwegianized descendant of the Danish language.

In 1938, official Nynorsk went through a radical spelling reform. Today, the term Landsmål is used to refer to the pre-1938 versions of Nynorsk. A minority of users still adheres to Landsmål standards, contemporarily known as Høgnorsk.