Why is Norway spelled Noreg on these coins?

On this 50 øre coin, Norway is spelled Noreg, which I’m aware is the Nynorsk spelling for Norway. But almost every other coin has the Bokmål spelling of Norway, Norge. The current 5 krone coin also has the Nynorsk spelling, the only other coin in the numista catalog that has that spelling. Why are these two the only ones with this spelling?

Nynorsk, the choice of the Norwegians. No better answer can be found!

I'm not Norwegian, but as far as I know, both languages are official in Norway and thus used without any distinction, at least officially. If you have a look at the Norges bank website, for example, much of it is in bokmål, while the page about monetary statistics is in nynorsk (and the IRL of the same page is in bokmål again).

https://www.norges-bank.no/tema/Statistikk/Seddel-og-mynterstatistikk/

So I guess both languages are used interchangeably by official institutions and that's why some coins use bokmål and some nynorsk version of the name, without any apparent logic of such use.

Hardly interchangeable on coins.  From 1875 to today 67 coins have NORGE and only 2 have NOREG.  So why those 2?

For the 5 kroner, we know it started in 1998-2017 (N#1448) and in 1996-2011 for the 50 oere (N#1442). None of those denominations have been minted in later years, than the periods indicate. I could not find any reason, why only those two coins used “Noreg”.

The 5 kroner is still in circulation, whereas the 50 öre is no longer valid, see this 

from https://www.norges-bank.no/en/topics/notes-and-coins/legal-tender-notes-coins/5-krone-coin/5-design/

rsirian1

Hardly interchangeable on coins.  From 1875 to today 67 coins have NORGE and only 2 have NOREG.  So why those 2?

From what I know, the official acceptance of nynorsk was long and quite complicated process and Norway only started using it on cash in 1980s, starting with this banknote. 

N#207606

If one supposes that it would have been quite expensive to change dies of already circulating coins just because one word, it makes sense that Norway used nynorsk on coins from the next coin series, which was the one still circulating nowadays. If one looks at all its original denominations (50 øre, 1 kr., 5 kr., 10 kr., 20 kr.), there is indeed a certain pattern in use of nynorsk: 50 øre in nynorsk-1 krone in bokmål-5 krone in nynorsk-10 kroner in bokmål. According to this pattern, 20 kroner should also have lettering in nynorsk, but for one reason or another, it just does not. 

My point is that the Norges bank has only been using nynorsk on its banknotes and coins for relatively short time now, which is one reason why the country's name is spelled Noreg on only two coins. The other one is the interchangeability of the two languages I wrote about earlier-the use of nynorsk on certain denominations doesn't really need to have any special purpose and it is as good as bokmål for official authorities. Both coins mentioned here were issued within the last coin series, which means that two circulating coins of this series use nynorsk and remaining three use bokmål. 

It seems to me that this could be the only reason for the different spelling-to have approx. half of circulating denominations with nynorsk lettering and the other half with bokmål, regardless on which denomination it is.

Have a read at etymology. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Noreg

More information regarding the Norwegian language conflict;

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language_conflict .

Aidan.