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Languages in Scandinavia

Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese are all North-Germanic languages developed from the Old Norse spoken in Viking age Scandinavia. (Also English is classified as a Germanic language.)

A Swede, a Dane and a Norwegian can understand each other with varying degrees of difficulties, but none of them will fully understand Icelandic or Faroese without studying the languages.

A Swede, a Dane and a Norwegian can understand each other with varying degrees of difficulties.


Finnish is an entirely different case, it's a Finno-Ugric language related to Estonian and Hungarian. There is, however, a Swedish-speaking minority in Finland, which ties it linguistically to Scandinavia. Also, Finnish is related to the Sámi languages spoken in Norway, Sweden and Finland by the Sámi or Lapps, the aborigines of northern Scandinavia (and the Kola peninsula and adjacent lands).



Berlitz Scandinavian Phrase Book


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This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Lysator article "Introduction: What is Norden? - Language".


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