About Ivar Aasen
Ivar Andreas Aasen (Norwegian pronunciation: [ˈîːvɑr ˈòːsn̩]; 5 August 1813 – 23 September 1896) was a Norwegian philologist, lexicographer, playwright, and poet. He was best known for having assembled one of the two official written versions of the Norwegian language, Nynorsk, from various dialects. == Background == Iver Andreas Aasen was born in 1813 in Åsen (also spelled as Aasen at the time), inside the parish of Ørsten (now Ørsta Municipality) in Sunnmøre, on the west coast of Norway. His father, Ivar Jonsson, a small-scale farmer, died in 1826. Iver was brought up doing farmwork, but spent all his leisure time reading. An early interest of his was botany. When he was eighteen, he opened an elementary school in his native parish. In 1833, he entered the household of Hans Conrad Thoresen, the husband of the eminent writer Magdalene Thoresen, in the parish of Herø (now Herøy Municipality), where he picked up the elements of Latin. Aasen gradually mastered several languages and began the scientific study of their structure. == Career == When Aasen travelled to Bergen in 1841, he met Bishop Jacob Neumann, who was very impressed with his work and had excerpts of it published in Bergens Stiftstidende ("Bergen Diocese Newspaper").
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