Reviewed by Elly van Gelderen, Arizona State University

Ernst Håkon Jahr is a prolific Norwegian linguist who has published widely over the past thirty-five years on the Norwegian sociolinguistic situation, specific phonological shifts, Russenorsk, language planning and contact, the history of linguistics, and a variety of other topics. He has authored, coauthored, or edited more than forty books in addition to many articles, chapters, and presentations. In cases such as this, a Festschrift for a person that contains a collection of the person’s own writings is an excellent idea. Seven of the papers as well as the introduction are in Norwegian but even those who cannot read Norwegian will still get much out of the remaining thirteen articles. The chapters in this book are organized chronologically (from 1978–2007) rather than thematically. I will discuss a few themes in this book because organizing the volume thematically would have made it more accessible to non-Norwegians and more usable in general.

One common theme in Jahr’s work is the language situation in Northern Norway and in the pidgin Russenorsk. ‘Language contact in Northern Norway’ (97–108) discusses the multilingual situation in the eighteenth century. The major languages spoken in the region were Norwegian, Finnish, and Sami. It is interesting to read about the social status of these languages, their influence on each other, and the policies that the authorities tried to impose on the Norwegian people. Other languages spoken in the region, especially during the fishing season in the summer, were Swedish, Danish, Russian, English, German, and French. ‘On the pidgin status of Russenorsk’ (210–24) discusses the equal social status of Norwegian and Russian speakers and how a stable pidgin was able to develop and stay alive until the Russian revolution made an end to this relationship. An analysis of Russenorsk is also included. A later chapter (‘The emergence of a TMA [tense-mood-aspect] grammatical device’; 258–66) goes into more detail on a specific aspect of Russenorsk.

Another theme in this volume is phonological phenomena, which is represented by chapters on l-phonemes in Oslo cityspeak (80–96), on the development of s before l (121–29), and on sound change in Oslo Norwegian (130–35). Jahr also analyzes his own syntax in two chapters, ‘Min egen syntaks’ (73–79) and ‘Middle-aged male syntax’ (158–69), using tapes that were made while he interviewed speakers. His descriptions of Oslo urban-rural and social distinctions are also very interesting (e.g. East Oslo as a lower class and West Oslo as an upper and middle class).

Jahr has long worked on language preservation and planning, with Norway as an ideal location because of its peoples’ high regard for dialects and its two official varieties, Nynorsk and Bokmål. (The choice of one variety over the other is indicative of a person’s social and political views.) Other themes that emerge in this volume are the history of linguistics in Norway and the influence of Low German on the languages of the region.