In Norwegian, many nouns can be either feminine or masculine according to the dialect, level of formality or whim of the speaker/writer. Even the two written forms of the language have many nouns whose gender is optional. Choosing the masculine gender will often seem more formal than using the feminine. This might be because before the creation of Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål in the late 19th century, Norwegians wrote in Danish, which has lost the feminine gender, thus usage of the masculine gender (corresponding exactly to Danish common gender in conjugation in Norwegian Bokmål) is more formal sounding to modern Norwegians.
In Norwegian, many nouns can be either feminine or masculine according to the dialect, level of formality or whim of the speaker/writer. Even the two written forms of the language have many nouns whose gender is optional. Choosing the masculine gender will often seem more formal than using the feminine. This might be because before the creation of Norwegian Nynorsk and Norwegian Bokmål in the late 19th century, Norwegians wrote in Danish, which has lost the feminine gender, thus usage of the masculine gender (corresponding exactly to Danish common gender in conjugation in Norwegian Bokmål) is more formal sounding to modern Norwegians.