Oudnordisch

Oudnordisch, or Old Norse, is the North Germanic language spoken by the Norse peoples in Scandinavia and their settlements from roughly the 8th to the 14th century. It is the ancestor of the modern North Germanic languages, including Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and Faroese. The language is traditionally subdivided into Old West Norse, which gave rise to Icelandic and Norwegian, and Old East Norse, which produced Danish and Swedish.

Old Norse was written in runic script—initially the Elder and then the Younger Futhark—before the adoption of the Latin alphabet after Christianization. The surviving literature consists of mythological and heroic poetry in the Poetic Edda, prose narratives in the Prose Edda, and a rich corpus of sagas and historical works such as Heimskringla and various Icelandic annals. These texts provide the main evidence for the phonology, grammar, and vocabulary of the language.

Linguistically, Old Norse featured a highly inflected grammar with gendered nouns, multiple noun classes, and strong and weak verb conjugations. It preserves many archaic features still visible in Icelandic today, while Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish diverged more rapidly. The language influenced English and other languages through contact and settlement, leaving loanwords and place names, and contributing to Norse-centered myth terms that entered European literature.

Today, Old Norse is studied in philology, linguistics, and medieval studies. Its manuscript tradition, runic inscriptions, and sagas are central to understanding Norse history, culture, and law. Modern editions and online corpora continue to illuminate the linguistic development from Proto-Norse to the modern North Germanic languages.