Similarities Between Norwegian and Icelandic

Can Norwegians understand Icelandic? Norwegian and Icelandic are both descendants of Old Norse, which was spoken by the Germanic people living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age. As two North Germanic languages, Norwegian and Icelandic have a lot in common, and at one point in history, they were practically the same language, but over the course of time, they have diverged from one another.

In this video, Henning (Norwegian speaker) and Gabriel (Icelandic speaker) will start by reading a few short sentences which are all structured using similar words that share the same root. They will then move on to the more challenging part by reading a longer statement without the use of preselected common terms. Since Gabriel speaks Norwegian as well, he will translate the Norwegian portions directly into Icelandic to showcase the similarities between them.

Old Norse (Old Nordic / Old Scandinavian) was spoken by inhabitants of Scandinavia before it developed into separate Nordic languages, the modern North Germanic languages Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish, of which Icelandic remains the closest to Old Norse.

Please follow and contact us on Instagram if you'd like to participate in a future video:   / bahadoralast  

Norwegian (norsk) is the official language of Norway. It is classified as a North Germanic language and the descendant of Old Norse, the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Age. Norwegian is more or less mutually intelligible with Swedish, and Danish, which are also North Germanic languages. Other living North Germanic languages include Faroese and Icelandic which are also close to Norwegian, but not mutually intelligible.

The arrival of Christianity to Scandinavia in the 11the century, brought with it many loanwords from Latin, with much of it relating to the Church an its traditions, along with other cultural words. Starting in the 13th century, Scandinavian languages began to be greatly influenced by Low German, as a result of the Hanseatic League, a medieval confederation in central and northern Europe that originated from north German towns and used Middle Low German as its lingua franca.

Icelandic (íslenska) is a North Germanic language and the official language of Iceland. It is a conservative language compared to most other Germanic languages, as it retains many of the phonological and grammatical features of Old Norse and its written form has not changed much, making it possible for Icelanders to read classic Old Norse literature. Icelandic is closely related to Faroese; and to a lesser extent the continental Scandinavian languages, Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, though not mutually intelligible. Due to its isolation, Icelandic has also preserved many of its own terms that originate from Old Norse. As a result, Icelandic resembles Old Norwegian before much of its fusional inflection was lost.

Due to being well-preserved over the course of history, the Icelandic Minister of Education, Science and Culture, Björn Bjarnason, proposed a day to celebrate the Icelandic language. This day, known as the Icelandic Language Day is set on November 16th, which is the birthday of Icelandic poet Jónas Hallgrímsson, to celebrate the Icelandic language.

All Germanic languages share a common ancestor, known as Proto-Germanic, which was a single language spoken in Iron Age Scandinavia. As one of the main branches of the Indo-European language family, Germanic languages are further split into 3 subdivisions:

- West Germanic languages: English, German, Dutch, Afrikaans, Yiddish, Scots, Luxembourgish, Limburgish varieties, and the Frisian languages.

- North Germanic languages: Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic, and Faroese.

- East Germanic languages: Gothic, Burgundian, and Vandalic, all of which are now extinct.

Despite the differences, these languages still share a lot in common, and have a large number of cognates with the same roots.