Russenorsk originated from Russian traders from Kola (north-western Russia) and Norwegian fishermen from Tromsø (northern Norway).
This barter was supported by the Norwegian government, and King Christian VII conferred city status to several settlements, such as Tromsø, to facilitate it.
The trading went on throughout the sunny months of the year and was beneficial to both sides; Norwegians had access to cheap fish in the summer, whilst Russians had surplus wheat.
[4] Traders came from the areas near Murmansk and the White Sea, most often to the towns of Vardø, Hammerfest, and Tromsø, occasionally further south to the Lofoten islands.
[7] Furthermore, the Soviet Union limited international contact significantly, decreasing the need for the common language between Norwegians and Russians.
In the few Russian records of the language, there are examples of both /z/ and /ts/ in the words презентоме (prezentome, 'to give') and принципал (printsipal, 'captain'), for which the Norwegians used /s/.
Corpora of Russenorsk consist of lists of individual words and phrases as well as records of dialogues compiled by linguists such as Just Knud Qvigstad.
[5] The origin of its vocabulary is generally held to be approximately 40% Russian and 50% Norwegian, with the remaining 10% from Dutch, Low German, French, English, Sami, and Swedish.
The main indication of a verb is the suffix -om, for example, kapitan på kajuta slipom (the captain is asleep in his cabin).
[7] One characteristic syntactical attribute of Russenorsk is the tendency to move the verb to the final position when the sentence has adverbs.