Course content

NORD1106 includes Old Norse, and the history of language from older and recent period. Old Norse and older language history: The objective of this course is to give the students a foundation of understanding the development of Norwegian and other Scandinavian languages, and enabling students to gain something by reading Old Norse literature. The course includes an overview of the phonological, morphological and sentential structure development from the first Scandinavian languages up until 1500, as well as an overview of the language structure in Old Norse which enables the student to read an easy, unfamiliar text with help of a dictionary and an outline of Old Norse declinations. A reading of a normalized old norse prose text is also included in this component of the course. Language of the recent period: The aim of this component is to give students insight and a deeper understanding of the interaction between written and spoken language - an important principles in language planning and the forces governing the development of the Norwegian language. The course includes an overview of recent language history (mainly after 1814). In addition, there will be readings of philological documents which will shed light on and deepen the debates on Norwegian language policy.

Learning outcome

At the completion of the course the student is expected to be able to give a detailed account of the main developmental features in Norwegian from the earliest days up until today. In this context, students are expected to understand(translate) and explain the grammatical features of an unknown normalized prose text in Old Norse.

Learning methods and activities

Lectures and group work including writing exercises. There will be supervision through the course of the semester. There will also be a separate course in Danish if the department's resources allows it. Compulsory activity: Approved written assignment. The assignment's extent should be up to five pages. There will be oral/written assessment (approved/not approved) of the paper. Students may bring an Old Norse dictionary, an outline of Old Norse declination and a list of important dates in the history of language to the exam. The students must write one of the written assignments on the language courses on the basic level (i.e. NORD1102 and NORD1106) in "nynorsk" and one in "bokmål". The students must write two of the four exams on the basic level (i.e. NORD1102, NORD1104, NORD1106 og NORD1108) in "nynorsk" and two in "bokmål".

Compulsory assignments

• One approved written assignment (5 pages)

Recommended previous knowledge

EXFAC0003 and NORD1102, or equivalent.

Required previous knowledge

None.

Course materials

A reading list will be available first day of class.

Credit reductions