Hence, prominent Norwegians, such as Henrik Wergeland and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, advocated a standardized Norwegian language, to be based on the legacy of the Danish language as used in Norway by the upper class of Christiania. This was proposed by Knud Knudsen, a schoolteacher, who had witnessed how schoolchildren struggled with the Danish language they were taught, since it was very different from the spoken language they were used to. However, as late as in 1883 the Danish intellectual Georg Brandes stated that the language in Norway was Danish, and that the Norwegians did not have a language of their own.