Old Norse
| Old Norse | |
|---|---|
| Old Nordic, Old Scandinavian | |
| dǫnsk tunga 'Danish tongue' norrǿnt mál 'Northern speech' | |
| Native to | Scandinavia, Iceland, Faroe Islands, Greenland and other Norse settlements |
| Region | Nordic countries, Great Britain, Ireland, Isle of Man, Normandy, Newfoundland, the Volga and places in-between |
| Ethnicity | Norsemen and their descendants |
| Era | Evolved from Proto-Norse in the 8th century, developed into the various North Germanic languages by the 15th century |
Indo-European
| |
Early form | Proto-Norse (attested)
|
| Runic, later Latin (Old Norse alphabet) | |
| Language codes | |
| ISO 639-2 | non |
| ISO 639-3 | non |
| Glottolog | oldn1244 |
protoname, ancestor.| Part of a series on |
| Old Norse |
|---|
| WikiProject Norse history and culture |
| Part of a series on the |
| Norsemen |
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| WikiProject Norse history and culture |
Old Norse was a North Germanic language spoken in Scandinavia and in Norse settlements during the Viking Age and the early Middle Ages (approximately the 8th–14th centuries). It is the conventional term for the medieval West and East Scandinavian dialects (often labelled Old West Norse and Old East Norse) that developed from Proto-Norse and later evolved into the modern North Germanic languages, including Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish, and Swedish.
Old Norse is attested in runic inscriptions (written in the Younger Futhark) and in numerous medieval manuscripts written with the Latin alphabet; its literary corpus includes the Poetic Edda, the Prose Edda, the Icelandic sagas, skaldic verse, law codes, and religious texts. Contact between Old Norse speakers and other languages — particularly Old English and the Celtic languages — left a substantial legacy of loanwords and toponyms; many common English words such as egg, knife, sky, and window derive from Old Norse.
Scholarly usage of the term Old Norse typically covers texts from the 11th to the 14th centuries, though periodization varies within academia based on the theoretical focus and tradition of the particular source.