Background

He was born in Kristiania

Oslo

Oslo is a municipality, as well as the capital and most populous city in Norway. As a municipality , it was established on 1 January 1838. Founded around 1048 by King Harald III of Norway, the city was largely destroyed by fire in 1624. The city was moved under the reign of Denmark–Norway's King...

 as a son of government official (kanselliråd) Jens Kølle and his wife Catharine Hermine Juell. He attended the Christiania Cathedral School

Oslo katedralskole

Schola Osloensis, known in Norwegian as Oslo katedralskole and more commonly as "Katta" is an upper secondary school located in Oslo, Norway. The school offers the college preparatory studiespesialisering of the Norwegian school system...

, enrolled as a student in 1755 and graduated with the cand.theol.

Cand.theol.

Candidatus theologiæ , Candidata theologiæ , abbreviated cand. theol. is an academic degree with a long tradition, awarded after a six year higher education in theology in Denmark and Norway. In Norway, the title has remained after the "Quality Reform", though it is equivalent to a Master of...

 degree in 1760. He applied for various clergical positions in Denmark

Denmark

Denmark is a Scandinavian country in Northern Europe. The countries of Denmark and Greenland, as well as the Faroe Islands, constitute the Kingdom of Denmark . It is the southernmost of the Nordic countries, southwest of Sweden and south of Norway, and bordered to the south by Germany. Denmark...

, but was never appointed, supposedly because of closeness with the Moravian Church. He instead worked as a private tutor, in Kråkstad

Kråkstad

Kråkstad is a village and former municipality in Ski municipality, Akershus county, Norway.The parish of Kraakstad was established as a municipality January 1, 1838...

, Fjære

Fjære

Fjære is a former municipality in Aust-Agder county, Norway. Fjære municipality was located to the north of the town of Grimstad, and the name is still used to refer to that area, which is now a part of Grimstad.-Name:...

 and Arendal

Arendal

is a town and municipality in the county of Aust-Agder, Norway. Arendal belongs to the traditional region of Sørlandet.The town of Arendal is the administrative center the municipality and also of Aust-Agder county...

. In 1770 he bought the farm Snarøen

Snarøya

Snarøya is a populated peninsula in the inner Oslofjord in Norway. A suburb of Oslo, administratively and geographically it belongs to Bærum municipality in Akershus county. It is located south of the districts Lysaker, Lagåsen and Fornebu, and has 2,940 inhabitants.-History:Its name is derived...

 and ran his own boarding school.

Career

Kølle wrote several of the textbooks used in his school. In some of these books, he employed linguistic ideas that preceded many actual language reforms in Norway. He emphasized "purely Norwegian" words in books, and argued for more phonemic orthography

Phonemic orthography

A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. In terms of orthographic depth, these are termed shallow orthographies, contrasting with deep orthographies...

 in the written language. In an anonymous work

Anonymous work

Anonymous works are works, such as art or literature, that have an anonymous, undisclosed, or unknown creator or author. In the United States it is legally defined as "a work on the copies or phonorecords of which no natural person is identified as author."...

 released in 1785 he introduced the written feminine grammatical gender

Grammatical gender

Grammatical gender is defined linguistically as a system of classes of nouns which trigger specific types of inflections in associated words, such as adjectives, verbs and others. For a system of noun classes to be a gender system, every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be...

 in Norway, unheard of in the Danish

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

 written culture of the day, but often used orally. He also introduced a precursor to the letter "å

Å

Å represents various sounds in several languages. Å is part of the alphabets used for the Alemannic and the Bavarian-Austrian dialects of German...

" instead of "aa". Following the model of the letter ø

Ø

Ø — minuscule: "ø", is a vowel and a letter used in the Danish, Faroese, Norwegian and Southern Sami languages.It's mostly used as a representation of mid front rounded vowels, such as ø œ, except for Southern Sami where it's used as an [oe] diphtong.The name of this letter is the same as the sound...

, which was an o with a slash through it, he chose the character ⱥ (a with a slash through it), to replace aa. Although he preferred to use ⱥ, he used å or aͤ (a with superscript o or e) when this type was not available.

His principles were attacked by J. J. Vangensten in Norway's first newspaper Norske Intelligenz-Sedler, and by Jens Kragh Høst in the Danish Kiøbenhavnske Efterretninger om lærde Sager, both in 1796. A rebuttal by Kølle was printed in both publications in 1797. He was a predecessor of later language reformers, including Rasmus Rask and Knud Knudsen. The letter å eventually became introduced in Norwegian in 1917, and written feminine grammatical gender also became a reality.

Kølle released the topographical

Topography

Topography is the study of Earth's surface shape and features or those ofplanets, moons, and asteroids...

 pamphlet Kårt Beskrivelse over Snarøen, en liden Gård ved Christiania in 1792. The pamphlet is a useful historical source on Snarøen (now: Snarøya

Snarøya

Snarøya is a populated peninsula in the inner Oslofjord in Norway. A suburb of Oslo, administratively and geographically it belongs to Bærum municipality in Akershus county. It is located south of the districts Lysaker, Lagåsen and Fornebu, and has 2,940 inhabitants.-History:Its name is derived...

), and also contained a section of farmer's advice. The pamphlet was embedded with an issue of Norske Intelligenz-Sedler. In 1794 he released the Enlightenment

Age of Enlightenment

The Age of Enlightenment was an elite cultural movement of intellectuals in 18th century Europe that sought to mobilize the power of reason in order to reform society and advance knowledge. It promoted intellectual interchange and opposed intolerance and abuses in church and state...

-typical book Ær det Fårnuftigt at have Religion? Åk Vilken av så mange ær den Fårnuftigste?. Both written in his own phonemic orthography

Phonemic orthography

A phonemic orthography is a writing system where the written graphemes correspond to phonemes, the spoken sounds of the language. In terms of orthographic depth, these are termed shallow orthographies, contrasting with deep orthographies...

. In 1805 he released an autobiography.

Personal life

He was married to Elisabeth Monrad (1758–1829), who was a sister of Lars Monrad (1762–1836), owner of a noted pharmacy in Bergen

Bergen

Bergen is the second largest city in Norway with a population of as of , . Bergen is the administrative centre of Hordaland county. Greater Bergen or Bergen Metropolitan Area as defined by Statistics Norway, has a population of as of , ....

.
They had three daughters. One of them, Catharine Hermine Kølle

Catharine Hermine Kølle

Catharine Hermine Kølle was a Norwegian adventurer and painter.She was born at Snarøya in the Oslofjord as the daughter Christian Kølle . Her father was a language teacher and theologian. In 1803 the family moved to Kopervik on the island of Karmøy in the county of Rogaland, Norway...

 (1788–1859), is known as both the first female hiker and the first female painter in Norway. Christian Kølle sold the farm in 1803, and moved with his family to Kopervik

Kopervik

Kopervik is the largest city on the island of Karmøy in the county of Rogaland, Norway and is the administrative centre of the municipality of Karmøy, and Kopervik have 8,192 inhabitants. It is part of the traditional district of Haugaland. -Population:...

, a place which he considered safer in the event of war. He had intended to move to Strandebarm

Strandebarm

Strandebarm is a former municipality in Hordaland county, Norway.It was created in 1837 as Strandebarm formannskapsdistrikt. In 1863 the rural district Jondal, located on the opposite shore of the Hardangerfjord, was separated from Strandebarm to constitute a municipality of its own...

, then changed his mind, but soon became dissatisfied with Kopervik as well. They moved on to Ulvik

Ulvik

Ulvik is a municipality in Hordaland county, Norway. The municipality stretches from the Hardangerfjord to 1,800 metres above sea level, and borders the municipalities of Granvin, Eidfjord, Ullensvang, Voss, Aurland, and Hol. It takes around two hours to drive from Bergen to Ulvik. The nearest...

 in 1805, where he again opened a small learning institution. He died at his farm in 1814, and his wife died in 1829 in Os, Hordaland

Os, Hordaland

Os is a municipality in the county of Hordaland, Norway. Due to its proximity to Bergen, Os is experiencing strong population growth. -History:...

. In modern times, a road at Snarøya has been named after him.