Old Norse language

Old Norse (also called Old Nordic, and Old Scandinavian), is a Germanic language that was spoken in Scandinavia, during the Viking Age, until about 1300. It was also spoken in Iceland, the Faeroe Islands, Orkney Islands and other places that Scandinavians started settlements (similar to colonies).

Modern Icelandic is the modern language that is the closest to Old Norse when written. Another language that is close to Old Norse, is Elfdalian. Other languages that come from Old Norse are Swedish, Danish, Faroese, and Norwegian.

 Old East Norse 
upright=1.1|thumb|right|The Rök runestone in Östergötland, Sweden, is the longest surviving source of early Old East Norse. It is inscribed on both sides.
Old East Norse was a dialect of Old Norse which evolved into the languages Old Danish and Old Swedish from the 9th century to the 12th century.

History
Between 800 and 1100, East Norse is in Sweden called Runic Swedish and in Denmark Runic Danish. The use of Swedish and Danish is not for linguistic reasons as the differences between them are minute at best during the more ancient stages of this dialect group. Changes had a tendency to occur earlier in the Danish region, and until this day many Old Danish changes have still not taken place in modern Swedish. This renders Swedish as the more archaic out of the two languages, concerning both the ancient and modern versions. They are called runic because the body of text appears in runes.
Runic Old East Norse is characteristically archaic in form, especially Swedish (which is still true for modern Swedish compared to Danish). In essence it matches or surpasses the archaicness of post-runic Old West Norse which in its turn is generally more archaic than post-runic Old East Norse. While typically "Eastern" in structure, many later post-runic changes and trademarks of EON had yet to happen.

 Development from Old Norse 
The combinations -mp-, -nt-, and -nk- mostly merged to -pp-, -tt- and -kk- in Old West Norse at around the 7th century, marking the first distinction between the Eastern and Western dialects. The following table illustrates this (note the mutual influence of East and West Norse on each other):
 English  Northish  Faroese  Icelandic  Old East Norse  Proto-Norse  Old West Norse  Swedish  Danish  Dano-Norwegian mushroom  sopp  soppur  sveppur  swǫppʀ  *swampu  svampr  svamp  svamp  sopp steep  bratt  brattur  brattur  brattʀ  *brantaz  brantr  brant  brat  bratt widow  enkje  einkja, arch. ekkja  ekkja  ekkja  *ain(a)kjōn  ænkja  änka  enke  enke shrinke  kreppe  kreppa  kreppa  kreppa  *krimpan  krimpa  krympa  krympe  krympe sprinte  sprette  spretta  spretta  spretta  *sprintan  sprinta  spritta, dial. sprinta  sprætte  sprette sinke  søkke  søkka  sökkva  søkkva  *sankwian  sænkva  sjunka  synke  synke

References

 Other websites 
 Heimskringla.no, an online collection of Old Norse source material
 Old Norse Online by Todd B. Krause and Jonathan Slocum, free online lessons at the Linguistics Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin
 Video: Old Norse text read with a reconstructed pronunciation and a Modern Icelandic pronunciation, for comparison. With subtitles
 Old Norse sound samples for early Old Norse and 13th century Norwegian Old Norse by Arne Torp
  Old Norse sound sample by Haukur Þorgeirsson (archived from the original) 
 Old Norse loans in Old and Middle English, and their legacy in the dialects of England and modern standard English
 Old Norse basic lexicon at the Global Lexicostatistical Database

Category:North Germanic languages
Category:13th-century disestablishments