gammelnorrønt

Gammelnorrønt is the earliest attested stage of the Old Norse language, spoken in Scandinavia and its colonies from approximately the 8th to the 14th centuries. It is the ancestor of modern North Germanic languages such as Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish. While often used as a collective term, it is more accurately a collection of closely related dialects. Old Icelandic, spoken in Iceland, is the best-documented and most influential dialect, largely due to the extensive literature produced in the medieval period, particularly the sagas and Eddic poetry.

The Gammelnorrønt language is characterized by a complex inflectional system, with nouns, adjectives, and pronouns having four cases (nominative, accusative, dative, genitive) and three genders (masculine, feminine, neuter), along with singular and plural numbers. Verbs are also highly inflected, showing person, number, tense, mood, and voice. The vocabulary of Gammelnorrønt reflects the Norse culture, religion, and daily life of the period, with many loanwords adopted from Old English and Old High German. The runic alphabet was used for early inscriptions, but the Latin alphabet was adopted with the Christianization of Scandinavia, becoming the standard script for written Gammelnorrønt. The study of Gammelnorrønt is crucial for understanding Norse mythology, history, and literature, as well as the development of modern Scandinavian languages.