Norwegian (norsk) is a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Norway, where it is the official language.

Together with Swedish and Danish, Norwegian forms a continuum of more or less mutually intelligible local and regional variants. These Scandinavian languages together with the Faroese language and Icelandic la nguage, as well as some extinct languages, constitute the North Germanic languag es (also called Scandinavian languages). Faroese and Icelandic are hardly mutual ly intelligible with Norwegian in their spoken form because continental Scandina vian has diverged from them. As established by law and governmental policy, there are two official forms of w ritten Norwegian Bokml (literally "book tongue") and Nynorsk (literally "new Norw egian"). The Norwegian Language Council is responsible for regulating the two fo rms, and recommends the terms "Norwegian Bokml" and "Norwegian Nynorsk" in Englis h. Two other written forms without official status also exist, the major one bei ng Riksml ("national language"), which is somewhat closer to the Danish language but today is to a large extent the same language as Bokml. It is regulated by the Norwegian Academy, which translates the name as "Standard Norwegian". The other being Hgnorsk ("High Norwegian") that is a more purist form of Nynorsk, which ma intains the language in an original form as given by Ivar Aasen and rejects most of the reforms from the 20th century. This form of Nynorsk has very limited use . There is no officially sanctioned standard of spoken Norwegian, and most Norwegi ans speak their own dialect in all circumstances. The sociolect of the urban upp er and middle class in East Norway can be regarded as a de facto spoken standard for Bokml because it adopted many characteristics from Danish when Norway was un der Danish rule.[2] This so-called standard stnorsk ("Standard Eastern Norwegian" ) is the form generally taught to foreign students. From the 16th to the 19th centuries, Danish was the standard written language of Norway. As a result, the development of modern written Norwegian has been subje ct to strong controversy related to nationalism, rural versus urban discourse, a nd Norway's literary history. Historically, Bokml is a Norwegianised variety of D anish, while Nynorsk is a language form based on Norwegian dialects and puristic opposition to Danish. The now abandoned official policy to merge Bokml and Nynor sk into one common language called Samnorsk through a series of spelling reforms has created a wide spectrum of varieties of both Bokml and Nynorsk. The unoffici al form known as Riksml is considered more conservative than Bokml, and the unoffi cial Hgnorsk more conservative than Nynorsk.