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The North Germanic languages, including Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Faroese, and Icelandic, evolved from Old Norse. Norwegian has two written forms, Bokmål and Nynorsk. Danish is mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Swedish. These languages are related to English and share some words.
The North Germanic languages are a group of Germanic languages spoken in parts of Northern Europe. These languages can be further divided into East and West, although there is some dispute as to which North Germanic languages belong to which category. The language family includes Norwegian, Swedish, Danish, Faroese and Icelandic, languages that have a lot in common with each other. Overall, millions of people speak at least one North Germanic language.
These languages derive from Old Norse, a language that evolved into several dialects that eventually became their own languages by the mid-14th century. Old Norse was widely spoken throughout Scandinavia, with Icelandic being the closest living language to Old Norse. Faroese is also thought to be very similar to Old Norse, with a collective community of about 14 speakers in the Faroe Islands and parts of Norway. The Faroe Islands were at one point under the strict control of Denmark, and traces of this can be seen in the evolution of Faroese.
In contrast to the relatively small Icelandic and Faroese-speaking communities, there are approximately five million speakers of Norwegian in Norway and in communities abroad. Norwegian actually has two written forms, Bokmål and Nynorsk. Bokmål is closely related to Danish, proving that Danish was the official language of Norway until the 1800s. Nynorsk was developed in the 1800s by Ivar Aasen, in an attempt to clearly differentiate Norwegian from Danish. This was part of a larger movement to recover Norwegian linguistic traditions, and has been the subject of much discussion and debate within Norway itself; currently, most Norwegians use written Bokmål.
About six million people speak Danish, which is considered mutually intelligible with both Norwegian and Swedish, meaning speakers of these languages can usually understand each other with minimal effort. This illustrates the close relationship between the North Germanic languages and the cultures that speak them. Danish also includes several individual regional dialects. Swedish is the largest of the North Germanic languages, with nearly 10 million speakers and a number of important dialects.
The North Germanic languages may also be referred to as Scandinavian or Norse languages. Incidentally, they are related to English, which is also a Germanic language. This explains why English has many words in common with the Norse languages, although some of these words are “false friends” in the sense that although they sound alike, they have different meanings.
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