In 1911, the Kristiansund school board circulated among its teachers a document that required that their oral instruction had to be in the same language as the district's written language, in this case Riksmål. A teacher, Knut Grimstad, refused to accept this on the grounds that neither the school district nor the Norwegian national authorities had the right to impose a version of a spoken language as instruction. He found support in the 1878 resolution that required that all students—"as much as possible"—should receive instruction in a language close to their native tongue. This was subsequently clarified to mean that they were supposed to be taught in "the Norwegian language", a phrase also open to interpretation.
