Constitution of Norway - Language

Language

The events and the constitution of 1814 have a central place in Norwegian identity. For this reason, and to keep the text as consistent as possible, changes are written in a language close to the original. In 1814, Danish was still the universal written language, as Danish and Norwegian were considered different dialects of the same language. The current two official varieties of written Norwegian language, Bokmål and Nynorsk (until 1929 called Riksmål and Landsmål respectively), were not developed until the late 19th century. In 1903, the constitution underwent a very slight linguistic revision, changing the spelling of some words where orthography had changed since 1814 but still retaining a conservative 19th century Danish.

All recent amendments have attempted to imitate the language of the 1903 version, leading to peculiar constructions. The word "environment" is written in the ancient spelling Milieu, differing from modern Norwegian and Danish miljø; the modern context of that word was, however, non-existing in the 19th century. The "Sami ethnical group" is "den samiske Folkegruppe", even though the word Sami (samisk) was not common until the 1970s. In 1814 or 1903, the word Lappish (lappisk) would have been used.

Since amendments are elaborated by politicians not competent in 19th-century Danish, several modern Norwegian spellings have sneaked into the constitution. Different approaches to revise the language throughout the document have been suggested:

• Bring the language up to today's usage and orthography. This is the path which seems to be followed, with a Committee appointed by the parliament having proposed two equal versions of the Constitution in modern Norwegian (bokmål and nynorsk) in September 2012, just in time to, potentially, be ratified before the second centenary of the Constitution in 2014.
• Use the 1903 standard but correct various passages where newer amendments do not really conform to that standard.
• Revert the language to the standard of 1814; an objection to this is that most modern Norwegians would find it even more difficult to read.
• Update the language to one of the spelling reforms, 1917, 1938, or 1959. This would still be fairly conservative language but closer to today's speech.

A February 2, 2006 constitutional amendment was aimed at reverting 16 minor spelling errors to the proper 1903 forms.

Norway is not the only country to have a constitution written in a foreign language, but it is certainly the only state to compose new law material in an archaic language form, apart from the Vatican which uses Latin. Even the official name of the Kingdom of Norway (Norwegian: Kongeriket Norge/Kongeriket Noreg) would in fact be the (modern) Danish form Kongeriget Norge if taken literally from the constitution.