NorseProtoNorse

NorseProtoNorse is a nonstandard term that some authors use to refer to the early stage of the Norse language lineage. In established linguistics, the standard label is Proto-Norse, the reconstructed ancestor of the North Germanic languages that gave rise to Old Norse and its dialects. The use of NorseProtoNorse is generally avoided in formal scholarship, but it appears in some overview discussions as a convenient descriptor.

Proto-Norse is believed to have been spoken in Scandinavia and parts of the Jutland peninsula from roughly the 2nd to the 8th centuries CE. It is known chiefly through the comparative method, drawing on later Old Norse varieties and related North Germanic languages, as well as a corpus of early runic inscriptions. These inscriptions, though limited, provide the earliest documentary evidence for the stage that preceded Old Norse.

Linguistically, Proto-Norse is reconstructed to share core features with Proto-Germanic while exhibiting changes that differentiated the North Germanic branch. It likely had a three-gender noun system, four cases, and inflectional patterns for adjectives and verbs characteristic of early North Germanic languages. Its phonology is inferred from later Norse varieties and related languages, including consonant shifts and vowel changes that set the stage for the distinct sound systems of Old Norse.

From Proto-Norse, regional varieties developed into Old Norse, which subsequently diversified into Old Icelandic, Old Norwegian, and Old Danish (and, later, other Norse dialects). The historical record is richer for Icelandic due to later written texts, while other regions show early runic and literary evidence.

See also Proto-Germanic, Old Norse, Norse languages, Younger Futhark, runology.