Old Norse was spoken by the ancient Vikings in medieval Scandinavia. It is considered the Latin of the North.
Language
Old Norse (referred to in Old Norse manuscripts as norrænt mál or dǫnskt tunga) was a Germanic language spoken and written between 700 and 1350 in Norway, Iceland, and other places settled by Norse people (Greenland, the Faroe Islands, Shetland, Orkney, parts of the Hebrides, the Isle of Man, Ireland, and Scotland). It later evolved into the modern North Germanic languages: Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Faroese, and Icelandic.
In the 9th century, Old Norse began to split into eastern and western branches. Eastern Old Norse was spoken in what is now Denmark and Sweden—languages known as Old Danish and Old Swedish were essentially identical during this period. Western Old Norse was used in what is now Norway and on the islands settled by its people, particularly written in Iceland.
The Lord's Prayer in Old Norse
Script
The oldest written records are in runic script, which originated on the European continent as the first Germanic writing system. During the period 200–700, the so-called Elder Futhark (an acronym derived from the first letters of the runic "alphabet") with 24 characters was used, and after 700, the Younger Futhark with 16 characters came into use.
Runic characters had an acrophonic system: each rune represented both a word and a character - the letter for the first sound of that word (for example, the rune "ᛊ" represents "sól" – sun, and the letter s). Runes were meant to be carved, so they had sharp edges. Most runic inscriptions have been preserved on stones (on tombstones showing the beginnings of Christianization as well as those from the late Middle Ages). There are also inscriptions on wood or metal objects, and a curiosity is the Scanian Law written on parchment, known as Codex Runicus.
The Latin script came to the North with Christianity and began to be used in Iceland and Norway in the 11th century, although the oldest surviving fragments date back to the mid-12th century. The vast majority of surviving Old Norse texts were recorded in the West Norse region, with Iceland clearly dominating within this context. Researchers attribute this phenomenon to Iceland's contacts with the Anglo-Saxons and Irish, who wrote in vernacular languages, and to the favorable attitude towards the pagan past. In contrast, due to the cultural influence of Germany, the Swedes and Danes have more relics written in Latin.
Old Norse literature is based on values and ideas that are vastly different from our own, and careful reading of it can hold up a mirror in which we see the non-obviousness of our own foundations. Old Norse genres include skaldic poetry, the mythological and heroic poems of the Elder Edda, the earliest historiography and collections of sermons in prose, the Younger Edda written by Snorri Sturluson, the famous Icelandic family sagas, royal sagas culminating in Snorri's Heimskringla, sagas about ancient times, and false sagas or chivalric sagas inspired by European texts.
Literature
Old East Norse stories were mostly common in the form of oral tradition and the language does not have an overflow of preserved literature. However, some literature found from Old East Norse are, of course, the old runestones that have been found all over Denmark and Sweden. The problem with runes is that they are not always easy to interpret and there are not many famous authors since anybody could raise a stone. One example of a famous runestone is Gripsholstenen in Sweden, which is a very good, typical example of a rune inscription. The inscription was written by someone named Tola as a tribute to their son Harald who had gone out on travels. The picture is of the Gripsholm Stone and the runes have been written down in Old East Norse and then translated to modern Swedish and Danish. As we can see from the text, the two current spoken languages still have big similarities between Old East Norse and each other.
