About: Olav Jakobsen Høyem

Olav Jakobsen Høyem (1830–1899) was a Norwegian teacher, telegrapher, supervisor of banknote printing and linguist. He was born in Byneset outside Trondheim, Sør-Trøndelag. His father was Jakob Høyem and his mother Karen Olsdatter Prestegaard Høyem. As a linguist, he fought for a Nynorsk written normal which was more consistent with Trøndersk than Ivar Aasen's version was. One notable thing is that he etymologically employed the Old Norse character ð as a silent letter in e.g. með [meː], preposition 'with', from Old Norse með, which was spelled med in Ivar Aasen's normal. He also preferred to use a endings where Ivar Aasen's normal has i, e.g. sola noun 'the sun' instead of soli.