Pan-Nationalist Influences on Literary Croatian and Norwegian Bokmål: Two Case Studies Showing Contingency in Nationalism

Abstract

Language planners espousing pan-nationalism influenced the orthography of standard literary Croatian and Norwegian Bokmål. Specifically, ‘Slovak’ intellectuals Jan Herkel and Jan Kollár influenced the Croatian orthography of Ljudovit Gaj, and ‘Danish’ intellectuals Rasmus Rask and N. M. Petersen influenced Knud Knudsen's Bokmål. Slovaks and Danes influenced Croatian and Norwegian orthography because Croats and Norwegians imagined the ‘national language’ in pan-national terms: Slovaks participated as fellow Slavs, and Danes as fellow Norwegians. The influence of pan-nationalism helps problematize teleological narratives of ‘national awakening’, since the emergence of the ‘Croatian’ and ‘Norwegian’ literary languages cannot be analysed solely in terms of Croatian or Norwegian nationalism.