Marius Nygaard

Marius Nygaard (13 September 1838 – 7 February 1912) was a Norwegian educator and linguist.

Personal life He was born in Bergen as a son of shipmaster and merchant Mads Christensen Nygaard (1793–1875) and Maren Behrens (1806–1875). On the maternal side he was a first cousin of Johan Diederich Behrens.

Nygaard married Elise Martin (1842–1923) in August 1863 in Bergen. They had the son William Martin Nygaard,

Career He finished his secondary education in 1855 and graduated from the Royal Frederick University with the cand.philol. degree in 1861. He worked at Bergen Cathedral School from 1862 to 1863 and Christianssand Cathedral School 1864 to 1876, and was headmaster from 1876 to 1877. He was the headmaster of the upper secondary school in Fredrikshald from 1877 to 1894 and Drammen from 1894 to 1910. He was a member of the city councils of both Christianssand, Fredrikshald and Drammen.

He published Kortfattet Fremstilling af det norske Landsmaals Grammatik in 1867, a very early grammar of Landsmål. He was a proponent of this written form of Norwegian, among others as a member of Vestmannalaget. Together with Jonathan Aars he was also a driving force behind the Norwegian orthographic reform of 1907, which marked a split between Dano-Norwegian and the new Riksmål.

He was decorated with the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav in 1890, and died in February 1912 in Kristiania.