How Many, & What Languages Did The Norse Vikings Speak?

The Vikings spoke Old Norse, a North Germanic language they themselves called dǫnsk tunga, the "Danish tongue." Used from roughly the 8th to the 14th century, it split into three dialects (Old West Norse, Old East Norse and Old Gutnish), was written in runes, and is the direct ancestor of Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Faroese.

How did one people manage to trade, raid and settle everywhere from Newfoundland to the rivers of Russia? Largely because they carried a common language with them. This article looks at where that language came from, how its dialects differed, who could understand whom, and how much of it is hiding in the English you speak today.

If you want to meet the language itself, try our free Old Norse translator: real dictionary words with gender and grammar notes and Viking-Age runes, every entry verified against Zoëga's classic 1910 dictionary.

Old Norse

Old Norse was the common tongue of Scandinavia and the Norse settlements abroad. It grew out of Proto-Norse, the earlier stage of the language preserved in the oldest runic inscriptions, and had taken its classic shape by roughly the 8th century. Medieval speakers didn't call it Old Norse, by the way. They called it dǫnsk tunga, the Danish tongue, even in Norway and Iceland.

Within that shared language there were three main dialects: Old West Norse, Old East Norse and Old Gutnish. Between them, they're the source of every modern Scandinavian language.

Old West Norse

Old West Norse was spoken in Norway and in the lands settled from it: Iceland, the Faroe Islands, and the Norse colonies in Scotland, Ireland and the Isle of Man. It's the dialect we know best, because nearly all the great saga and Edda manuscripts were written in it.

Old East Norse

Old East Norse was spoken in Denmark and Sweden, and it traveled: west with Danish settlers into eastern England, and east with Swedish traders along the rivers toward Kievan Rus'. The Danelaw, the Danish-settled part of England, is where most of the Norse loanwords in English were picked up.

Old Gutnish

Old Gutnish was the speech of Gotland, the large island off Sweden's east coast. It's North Germanic like its siblings, though it preserves archaic features and shows curious similarities to Gothic, the extinct East Germanic language, which once led scholars to connect the two. Today it's treated as a third branch of Old Norse, not a Gothic descendant.

The Runic Language

Runes were the written form of Old Norse: an alphabet, not a separate language. The oldest known runic inscriptions, cut in the earlier Elder Futhark script, date to around the 2nd century AD, back in the Proto-Norse period. By the Viking Age the alphabet had been trimmed down to the 16-rune Younger Futhark, scratched into wood, bone, metal and stone.

Most of what survives is carved on the famous runestones: memorials naming dead kinsmen, records of voyages, sometimes a boast about who raised the stone. Runic inscriptions turn up from Greenland to Istanbul, and you can see where those runestones actually stand (from Jelling to the Hagia Sophia graffiti) on our interactive Viking World Map.

Icelandic Language

Icelandic began as the Old West Norse carried to Iceland by settlers from about 874 onward. Of all the descendants, it has changed the least. With modern standardized spelling and a little patience, Icelanders can still read the medieval sagas in the original, which is more than any English speaker can say about Beowulf.

Old Norse as a Lingua Franca

Old Norse worked as a lingua franca across the Norse world during the Viking era: a Norwegian in Dublin, a Dane in York and a Swede in Novgorod could all make themselves understood. That didn't make Vikings monolingual. As they raided, traded and settled, many picked up Old English, Gaelic, Slavic and other local tongues, and left Norse words behind in each of them.

Five modern languages descend directly from Old Norse:

Danish: the descendant of Old East Norse spoken in Denmark. The Danes supplied many of the Vikings who settled England.

Norwegian: descends from Old West Norse, though centuries of Danish rule left a heavy mark on its written form.

Swedish: the largest of the five, spoken by some 10 million people in Sweden and parts of Finland.

Icelandic: the closest living relative of Old Norse, covered above.

Faroese: spoken in the Faroe Islands and closely related to Icelandic; after Icelandic, it's the most conservative descendant.

From the 11th century, Christianity brought the Latin alphabet to Scandinavia. Runes and Latin letters were then used side by side into the 14th and 15th centuries, before the runic script finally faded from everyday use.

Old Norse Words Still Used in English

English is full of Old Norse. When Danish and Norwegian settlers filled the Danelaw in the 9th and 10th centuries, Old Norse and Old English were close enough that neighbors could half-understand each other, and the two vocabularies blended. What's striking is how ordinary the borrowed words are. These aren't exotic terms for foreign things. They're the words of daily life:

• they, them, their (þeir): English even replaced its own native pronouns, one of the deepest borrowings a language can make
• sky (ský, which originally meant "cloud")
• egg (egg)
• knife (knífr; the word surfaces only in late Old English, very likely a Norse arrival)
• window (vindauga, literally "wind-eye")
• husband (húsbóndi, "master of the house")
• law (lǫg)
• anger (angr, originally "grief")
• cake (kaka)
• skin (skinn)
• ransack (rannsaka, "to search a house," which says something about how the word arrived)
• berserk (berserkr, the frenzied berserker warriors of the sagas)

Here's a quick test you can run on your own vocabulary. Words beginning with a hard "sk" sound, like sky, skin and skill, are often Norse, because the native English "sk" had softened to "sh" by the Viking Age. That's why English has both shirt (Old English) and skirt (Old Norse) from the very same Germanic root.

Old Norse Evolution And Scandinavian Influence

So if everyone spoke Old Norse, could a Dane, a Norwegian and a Swede actually understand each other? Broadly, yes, and their modern descendants still can, up to a point. Grágás, the medieval Icelandic law collection known as the Gray Goose Laws, still calls the shared language dǫnsk tunga, the Danish tongue, long after the dialects had begun to drift apart.

Abroad, the language faded as Norse settlers were absorbed into the people around them: into French in Normandy, into English and Gaelic in the British Isles, into Slavic along the eastern rivers. Only where the settlers had the land largely to themselves, in Iceland and the Faroes, did the language survive unbroken.

It held on longest in Orkney and Shetland, where a descendant dialect called Norn was spoken for centuries. After the islands passed from Denmark-Norway to Scotland in the 15th century, Scots gradually replaced it. Norn's last reputed speaker, Walter Sutherland of Shetland, died around 1850.

Can We Still Learn Language Of The Vikings Today?

Yes. It is possible to learn the Viking language today. There are a few ways one can understand this ancient language, including language guides, videos, or taking classes with the help of an instructor. The standard beginner's path runs through Jesse Byock's Viking Language course and Zoëga's A Concise Dictionary of Old Icelandic, and the easiest first step is simply looking words up.

Our free English to Old Norse dictionary tool searches all 29,951 entries of Zoëga's dictionary in both directions, and our collection of real Old Norse quotes and sayings gives you attested lines from Hávamál and the sagas to start reading the language the Vikings actually spoke.

Keep exploring: Norse mythology names and what they mean, or shop authentic Viking jewelry inspired by the sagas.

What Language Did the Vikings Speak? FAQ

What language did the Vikings speak?

The Vikings spoke Old Norse, a North Germanic language they called dǫnsk tunga, the Danish tongue. It was used from roughly the 8th to the 14th century, had three dialects (Old West Norse, Old East Norse and Old Gutnish), and is the ancestor of Icelandic, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish and Faroese.

What language is closest to Old Norse?

Icelandic is the closest living language to Old Norse. It descends from Old West Norse and has changed so little that Icelanders can still read the medieval sagas with modernized spelling. Faroese is the next closest, while Norwegian, Danish and Swedish have drifted much further from the old language.

Can anyone still speak Old Norse?

No one speaks Old Norse as a native language today. Scholars and enthusiasts learn to read it, and some speak it aloud using reconstructed pronunciation, but since no recordings exist, any spoken Old Norse is an educated reconstruction. Modern Icelandic is the nearest living thing to hearing it.

What English words come from Old Norse?

Hundreds, including sky, egg, knife, window, husband, law, anger, cake, skin, ransack, berserk and even the pronouns they, them and their. English absorbed them during the Viking settlement of England, when Old Norse and Old English blended in the Danelaw.

How many languages did the Vikings speak?

Old Norse was their common tongue, but many Vikings were polyglots. As they raided, traded and settled, they picked up local languages such as Gaelic, Old English and Slavic tongues, and left Norse loanwords behind in each.

Can you still learn Old Norse?

Yes. The usual route is Jesse Byock's Viking Language course and Geir Zoëga's public-domain dictionary. The easiest first step is looking words up in a dictionary-based tool such as our free Old Norse translator.