The long history of multi-lingual coexistence in Bergen has made the dialect more susceptible to simplifications, in order to ease communication, and the influence of Danish and Low German are apparent in the modern Bergen dialect's phonetics.
The Hanseatic merchants spoke varieties of Low German, and perhaps a pidgin in dealings with the locals.
The written standard of the time, was based on the Copenhagen dialect of the Danish language, and it continued to affect Bergensk well into the 20th century.
A Dano-Norwegian koiné, resembling the non-standard Riksmål, is still spoken, although in recent decades has become much more similar to Bokmål.
One theory is that this was partly fueled by an influence from Danish[citation needed], which became the written language and already had abolished the distinction between masculine and feminine forms[citation needed], and as a simplification to ease communication between Norwegians and Germans or between people from Bergen and other parts of Norway.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, the literacy rate improved, which gave a strong influence from Riksmål, and later Bokmål.
Nynorsk, Norway's other written language, was considered rural and thus lacking prestige, and has not had a strong influence on the dialect.
While the vocabulary shows traits of both Bokmål and Nynorsk, it has characteristics that are not covered by any of these written standards.