Autumn, Ivar Andreas

Ivar Osen was born in Osen Farm near Hovdebugdy in the Sunnmøre region in western Norway (today Möre og Romsdal County ). He was the son of a small peasant Ivar Jonsson. Autumn Farm was far from other settlements, and Ivar had no playmates as a child, so the boy read a lot, including the Bible . Ivar's father died in 1826 . The family had eight children, but both parents died early, and the elder brother became the head of the family. He forced Ivar to work in the field and did not allow him to follow his inclinations, but there was a record in the parish book stating that Ivar had proved himself perfectly in preparation for confirmation .

In 1831, he began working as a teacher in various rural schools, and eventually became a tutor in the house of the parish priest Hans-Konrad Turesen. Then Ivar began studying the local flora and Sunnmøre dialect. Autumn went with his works to Bergen , and the bishop there, Jacob Neumann, was so pleased with the results of his dialectological work that they were published in two issues of the diocesan magazine “ Bergens Stiftstidende ” for 1841.

Dialectological Studies

After the publication of these articles and thanks to the support of Neumann, Osen received a scholarship from the Norwegian Royal Scientific Society in Trondheim to study Norwegian dialects . Autumn made his expeditions in 1843 - 1847 , recording various words, expressions and grammatical forms. In his notes proverbs are also found, but Autumn did not engage in the purposeful collection of folklore ; he was not a sociologist either. Osen was primarily interested in the dialects of Westland (Western Norway), where, as he believed, the best (that is, the least affected by the Danish language ) dialects were encountered, but ultimately he visited most of the country. For four years, Autumn traveled more than 4,000 km, reaching in the north to Helgeland .

After the scholarship expired in 1847, Autumn settled in Christiania , where he lived the rest of his life. However, he regularly went on expeditions, usually in the summer, for another 20 years. In total, he visited more than half of all municipalities in Norway within the borders of 1895.

Later years

Having gone from a peasant son to a recipient of a state scholarship, Autumn refused the professorship offered to him and continued his journeys, despite all the difficulties that they were then connected with and the resistance that was offered to him. However, in his life there were no really significant external events.

Little is known about Osen’s personal life, in particular due to a small number of sources. He had few friends, usually he sat at home and worked. Autumn received a good income, but spent a little and spent his whole life very modestly. Since 1830, Autumn kept a diary, but it mainly consists of notes on the weather, on his illnesses, notes on meetings and books read, as well as summaries of the performances he saw.

Ivar Autumn did not leave a significant epistolary heritage: most of his letters were answers to other people's questions. To his friend Moritz Orflut, he wrote one letter a year, and to brother Joon once every three years. He also almost never corresponded with the leaders of the movement that was gaining strength for the dissemination of the created lansmole - Henrik Krun received only one letter from him, Georg Grig - only a few, and Jan Pral - not a single one.

In his diary and letters, Osen only occasionally strayed into “his” language, lansmole, several letters were preserved in this language, but usually he wrote in the more familiar Danish . Osen's diaries and letters were published in 1957-1960.

In addition to linguistic works, Autumn published several more books, in particular, “A Small Reading Book on Old Norwegian Language” ( En liden Læsebog i Gammel Norsk , 1854), the operetta “Heir” ( Ervingen , 1855), “Norwegian Proverbs” ( Norske Ordsprog , 1856, second edition of 1881) and the collection of poems Symra (1863, second edition of 1875). The longest of Osen’s coherent texts on lansmole was the book (96 pages), “Inspecting the New Home: A Brief Overview of Creation and Man for the Young” ( Heimsyn: ei snøgg Umsjaaing yver Skapningen og Menneskja: tilmaatad fyre Ungdomen , 1875). This book was never very popular, while several songs from The Heir and Symra became very popular.

Ivar Osen was very critical of his works: most of them exist in two versions - the original and the better-developed final. In addition, Autumn wrote a lot "on the table" - both poems and journalistic and scientific articles. Much of his legacy was published posthumously; some are still being prepared for publication.

Traditional ideas about Osen are largely colored by information that can be extracted from the most easily accessible sources related to the last years of his life. A typical example is Anders Hovden’s biography Ivar Aasen and Kvardagslaget . Hovden, who already knew Osen as an old man, portrays him as a sick, lonely man, walking around the house in holey socks. Osen’s modern biographer, Stephen Walton, believes this picture is unfair and believes that in his younger years, Autumn looked better and led a more active social life, but those who knew him in the 1840s and 1850s left no memory of Osen . There are just a few photos of Aspen. Images from the time of his youth did not survive: one picture was created when he was more than 50 years old, and the rest was made when he was already a deep old man.

The quality of Osen's linguistic works can be considered extremely high, given that he did not have a formal education and did not rotate in academic circles, working even without a secretary. In the 1850s, Autumn worked very quickly, publishing a new book almost every year, despite the fact that he managed to print in newspapers. In the 1860s, work slowed down a bit: for example, the Dictionary of the Norwegian Folk Language (1850) was prepared in just a year, and the second edition of the Norwegian Dictionary (1873) in nine years.

In 1848, Autumn published the book "Grammar of the Norwegian Folk Language" ( Det norske Folkesprogs Grammatikk ). Two years later, the Norwegian Folk Language Dictionary ( Ordbog over det norske Folkesprog ) was published , which included more than 25,000 words. P. A. Munch called the dictionary "a national masterpiece." The first texts on lansmole were published in the book Samples of the Country Language in Norway ( Prøver af Landsmaalet i Norge , 1853).

Community Reactions

Initially, Osen’s work in Norway was enthusiastic: he received a lifetime scholarship in the amount of a professor’s salary, reviewers praised his books with might and main, and sales were going well. Munch and other scholars supported his project, and Björnstjerne Björnson even tried to learn a new language by meeting with such Bergens as Henrik Krun . Osen's first experiment in creating a new writing form, “A Conversation of Two Peasants” ( Samtale mellem to bønder , 1849), was published in the conservative newspaper Morgenbladet .

The first to try to use the new written Norwegian language were the so-called “Bergen linguists” (primarily Jan Pral, Georg Grig and Henrik Krun), Eric Sommer from Trendelag , who published the book “Fairy Tale Songs” ( Soge-Visor ) in 1857 and O. W. Vigne .

None of them saw Osen's lansmole as anything more than just a foundation. In 1858, texts on lansmole were published by Osen, Vigne, and Pral. Each of them had, in essence, their own language, which was incomprehensible without at least elementary knowledge in Old Norse .

The language ideology of Osen

Since Autumn himself did not write a large program article, his various statements were used by supporters of different points of view. Some see him as a representative of the bourgeois national- romantic movement, while others emphasize the pedagogical aspect of his work and see him as the predecessor of the socialists . The most common opinion is that Autumn to some extent held both positions.

For Osen, archaic linguistic forms were of the greatest value and authenticity, however, some publicists because of this believed that the lansmole "lags" in its development and that modern thoughts cannot be expressed on it.

In 1858, Autumn translated the Icelandic Saga of Fritjof for the newspaper Folkevennen . This text is the most striking example of archaic tendencies in the language of Osen. Later, he somewhat modernized the norm, but he was never asked to write the text on the lansmol for publication with such a large circulation.

One of the themes that Autumn constantly returned to was the “full sounding” of Norwegian dialects, where unreduced vowels are used in unstressed positions compared to the Danish “eternal e ” (in Danish, all vowels in unstressed suffixes are reduced to a seam , which is transmitted in writing as e ). The forms that Autumn used are called “i-forms”, because in a certain form of strong (consonant-ending) feminine singular and indefinite plural forms of the middle gender, the vowel i ( sol-i 'sun + definite article) was used ', tre-i ' trees'). In the modern nurse, “a-forms” ( sola , trea ) are common , but forms with i are still included in spelling dictionaries and were quite common as far back as the middle of the 20th century. Autumn also made a distinction between strong ( ei sol ' indefinite article + sun', soli 'sun + definite article', soler 'sun', solerne 'sun' (definite form) ') and weak forms ( ei gjenta ' girl ', gjenta ' girl (certain form) ', gjentor ' girls', gjentorne 'girls (certain form)') in the feminine gender ( solerna , gjentorna are also sometimes found).

The forms of the nominative and accusative cases coincided in all dialects, however, in some dialects the dative was preserved, and the full Old Norse form of the plural in the -om ( uppi dalom 'in the valleys') became normal and became widespread, especially in verses.

On the other hand, almost no one followed Autumn in distinguishing between masculine and feminine in the weak form of the adjective ( den kaut e guten 'proud young man', but den kaut a gjenta 'proud girl').

In conjugation, Autumn consistently distinguished between the singular and plural of the verb, although just during the life of his generation this distinction went out of use in the Danish language. At Osen, thus, the forms eg er 'az esm' are used, but me ero 'we are esma'; eg hev 'i have', but me hava 'we have'; also in the past tense of strong verbs : eg fekk 'I got', eg gjekk 'I went', but me fingo 'we got', me gingo 'we went'. Osen also has conjunctiva forms of the present and past tenses, but they have not received distribution.

Ivar Autumn built a kind of hierarchy of dialects in proximity to the Old Norse state. In the preface to The Village Language Patterns, he explains that the dialects of Hardanger , Sogn and Voss are the best, while “the dialects of the northern mountains are the worst and more damaged.” Autumn also did not derive much benefit from trips to Northern Norway , since the morphology there is "extremely poor and simple." Hedmark's dialects, where the monophthongization of ancient diphthongs took place, did not interest him either.

Today, nurses are most prevalent just in those areas where dialects approved by the Autumn are widespread. At the time of Osen, it was believed that in the Viking era in Norway a single national language was spread, but now linguists (M. Hagstad, D. A. Seip) established that even then there were dialectic differences and many features that Autumn attributed to Danish influence and "Pollution" are actually Norwegian.

Language Development

When Ivar Osen began his work collecting Norwegian dialects, nationalist romanticism in Norway reached its peak. Herder’s concepts, according to which each nation had its own “ national spirit ” ( German: Volksgeist ), which found expression in language, literature, art and other elements of culture, were popular throughout Europe in the 1840s . In this sense, the existence of its own written language could emphasize the independence of the Norwegian nation, independent of the Danes.

Since about 1860, this concept has been losing popularity. Despite the fact that no attempts were made to stop paying scholarships to Autumn, his work was largely ignored, reviewers did not pay attention to his books, and sales affairs went much worse.

There are several opinions in the literature as to why this happened. One of the reasons is that Autumn started its work too late: in 1842 , when he presented his project, national romanticism was at the peak of prosperity, which was passed in 1849 . Since the 1850s, the "more Norwegian" nature of lansmole has no longer been a granted advantage.

The normalized form of lansmole in the 1864 Norwegian Grammar and the 1873 Norwegian Dictionary is characterized by significant archaism, a complex grammatical system, and extremely puristic tendencies in the selection of vocabulary (in particular, all low German borrowings with the prefixes be'- and an- were excluded ). Thus, in the confrontation between "pedagogical" and "national" considerations, the latter won.

In 1858, Autumn published a translation of The Fritiof Saga into Lansmole, which was published as an appendix to the magazine Friend of the People ( Folkevennen ). In connection with this publication, E. Sundt published an essay “On the Norwegian language”, where he wrote the following:

Sundt emphasizes that many Norwegians will try to understand the "peasant" language and therefore recommends readers to delve into Osen's translation. He also writes:

.

At the same time, although Sundt supported the Osen project in principle, he himself adhered to the norm developed by K. Knudsen .

Björnstjerne Björnson , who in his youth tried to write poetry in lansmole, also became an adherent of Knudsen's variant, since for him lansmole was too difficult. In the end, Bjørnson became disillusioned with the Osen project itself and began to support the Norwegian Rixmole Union .

For other figures in the linguistic movement, since P. A. Munk and J. Pral, the language of Osen was, on the contrary, not archaic enough: Osen did not want to normalize ancient forms that were not preserved in any dialect. So, if Osen wrote the form of the personal third person plural pronoun ('they') as dei , then Munk chose the form deir (cf. Isl. Þeir ).

Later authors writing in Lansmole, such as O. Fjortoft and A. Garborg , also used the Osen language very freely, which caused him dissatisfaction. One of Osen’s recent works has been the unpublished book, Language Deception, in which he criticizes authors writing on lansmole for using “Danish” forms, such as upp-yver 'up on something' instead of upp-etter . Autumn also did not like many of the neoplasms introduced by Garborg, such as norskdom 'Norwegian'. He criticized the use of rural and colloquial urban forms.

Ivar Osen himself never engaged in organization and agitation, and the “language movement” developed without his participation. Arne Garborg only started organizing it in the 1870s . Autumn himself did not want a “struggle” between the two options and rarely reacted to criticism, and after 1860 completely stopped journalistic activities.

In later times, much was said that the written language, based on dialects, is easier for children to learn at school. It is not clear how important this was for Osen: he came from a peasant environment, where the ability to read and write in Danish was widespread. Autumn himself also learned German and English .

Osen was criticized a lot for his too archaic spelling, which prevented Lansmole from becoming a truly common written language in Norway. In the 20th century , a number of spelling reforms were carried out, during which many puristic and etymological elements of lansmole were discarded, and spelling was brought closer to the pronunciation of bohemia and East Norwegian dialects spoken by a larger number of speakers. By this time, Herder’s romantic ideas had been completely abandoned, and the main stimulus for the development of Lansmole (Nynorsk) was the socialist ideology of liberating the people through education. Similar ideas began to appear already during the life of Osen, but they found full expression in the first official standard of Nynorsk (1901). Many words were also introduced into the language, which Autumn considered “non-Norwegian”, although the ban on the prefixes be- and an- as a whole remained.

Proceedings of Ivar Osen

• Fem Viser i søndre Søndmørs Almuesprog (1842)
• Det norske Folkesprogs Grammatik (1848)
• Ordbog over det norske Folkesprog (1850). Electronic Edition on Google Books
• Søndmørsk Grammatik (1851)
• Prøver af Landsmaalet i Norge (1853)
• En liden Læsebog i gammel Norsk (1854)
• Ervingen (syngespel, 1855, ny versjon 1873)
• Norske Ordsprog (1856, 1881)
• Symra (1863, 1875) Electronic Version
• Norsk Grammatik (1864) (revised edition of Det norske Folkesprogs Grammatik )
• Norsk Ordbog (1873) (revised Ordbog over det norske Folkesprog )
• Heimsyn (1875)
• Norsk Maalbunad (1876, published 1925) (a dictionary of synonyms based on the Roger Thesaurus model)
• Norsk navnebog eller Samling af Mandsnavne og Kvindenavne (1878)
• Bidrag til vort folkesprogs historie (published 1951)

Collected Works

• Norske Minnestykke (1923) - posthumous publication of folklore materials collected by Autumn
• Brev og Dagbøker (1957-1960) Edition of letters, diaries and other texts
• Skrifter i samling . (3 vols., 1911-12).
• Reise-Erindringer og Reise-Indberetninger 1842-1847 (published 1917)

Publication

• Sunnmørsgrammatikkane (1992) Contains: Det søndmørske Almuesprogs grammatikalske Indretning; Tillæg til Undersøgelserne af det søndmørske Almuesprogs grammatikalske Bygning; Den søndmørske Dialekt; Søndmørsk Grammatik ISBN 82-90186-82-7 / ISBN 82-90186-83-5
• Målsamlingar frå Sunnmøre (1994) ISBN 82-90186-93-2
• Målsamlingar frå Bergens Stift (1995) ISBN 82-7834-002-1
• Målsamlingar frå Christiansands og Agershuus Stifter (1997) ISBN 82-7834-007-2
• Målsamlingar frå Trondhjems og Tromsø Stifter (1998) ISBN 82-7834-009-9
• Målsamlingar 1851-1854 (1999) ISBN 82-7834-014-5
• Målsamlingar 1855-1861 (2001) ISBN 82-7834-021-8
• Målsamlingar 1862-1883 (2002) ISBN 82-7834-025-0
• Dansk-norsk Ordbog (2000) ISBN 82-7834-016-1

Literature

• Garborg, Arne, Anders Hovden og Halvdan Koht 1913: Ivar Aasen: granskaren, maalreisaren, diktaren: ei minneskrift um livsverket hans. utgjevi av Sunnmøre frilynde ungdomssamlag. Kristiania: Norli
• Hjorthol, Geir 1997: Forteljingar om Ivar Aasen: Aasen-resepsjonen i fortid og notid. Skrifter frå Ivar Aasen-instituttet . nr 2. Volda: Høgskulen i Volda
• Hovden, Anders 1913: Ivar Aasen i kvardagslaget . Trondheim. ISBN 82-521-4642-2
• Krokvik, Jostein 1996: - Ivar Aasen: diktar og granskar, sosial frigjerar og nasjonal målreisar . Bergen, 1996. ISBN 82-7834-005-6
• Krokvik, Jostein 1996: Ivar Aasen: diktar og granskar, sosial frigjerar og nasjonal målreisar [Bergen]: Norsk bokreidingslag
• Munch, PA 1873: Anmeldelse: Det Norske folkesprogs grammatik af Ivar Aasen . 1831-Marts 1849 Samlede Afhandlinger s. 360—374
• Myhren, Magne 1975: Ei Bok om Ivar Aasen: språkgranskaren og målreisaren . Orion-bøkene 170. Oslo: Det norske Samlaget
• Venås, Kjell 1996: Détida var fullkomen . Oslo, 1996. ISBN 82-7099-251-8
• Venås, Kjell 200. Ivar Aasen og universitetet . Oslo, 2000 ISBN 82-90954-12-3
• Walton, Stephen J. 1987: Farewell the spirit craven: Ivar Aasen and national romanticism . Oslo: Samlaget
• Walton, Stephen J. 1991: Ivar Aasens nedre halvdel . Oslo: Samlaget
• Walton, Stephen J. 1996: Ivar Aasens kropp . Oslo: Samlaget. ISBN 82-521-4531-0

• Ivar Osen Center (Norwegian)
  • Timeline of life
  • Library
  • Gallery
• Ivar Osen Institute
• Språknytt No. 1, 1996 (unavailable link) Thematic issue about Autumn