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been adopted from the popular language. The Dano-Norwegian
syntax shows many points of similarity with the genuine Norwegian
one, and the same is the case with the order of the words in the
sentence. The Norwegian form of the language as written, very
often lacks the grace and trimness of the Danish, the easy jest,
the fine irony, the periphrastic designation. Conversationalists and
artists in letter-writing are rare with us. Simplicity and strength
are the qualities that we value the most. The simple
architecture of the phrase is the one which comes most easy to us.
The influence of the scanty and concise Saga style is noticeable
from the days of Peder Claussøn (1545—1614) down to Bjørnson.
Even to the tenderest emotions we prefer to give a virile
expression. There is in the voices of our best poets a strength
and a ring which may sometimes become declamatory.
Swedish has hardly exerted any influence on the
Dano-Norwegian. The fact that this language is nevertheless more closely
related to Swedish than is the Danish, is due to the similarity
between the popular idioms. Swedish, for instance, with reference
to the fulness of the unaccented vowel sounds agrees with our
dialects, while Danish (and Dano-Norwegian) have weakened them
into a dull-toned e. The French influence which is very
remarkable in Swedish, has been very unimportant with us. The flowery
style has maintained itself in Sweden since the days of
romanticism, while even our oratory is almost devoid of rhetorical
ornament.
8. While the traces of the period of weakness which
Norway underwent during her 400 years of union with Denmark, have,
in the course of the century, been almost effaced, we have in our
regular written language a lasting reminder of the price a country
has to pay for the loss of its independence. By the introduction
of Danish, a wall of separation was erected between town and
country, from which our political life has not been the least
sufferer. But even this wall is going to fall. Every day a
conscious and unconscious approximation is going on between the
imported language and the native one. While the dialects are
being influenced through books and schools, and the «Landsmaal»
is every day adopting Dano-Norwegian words and phrases, other
channels are leading the treasures of the popular language into the
Dano-Norwegian. The dialects have come to be the eternal and
inexhaustible fountain-head from which Norwegian writing and
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