Introduction

Abstract Norwegian is the branch of North-Germanic spoken in Norway. The other members of the North-Gennanic branch are Swedish, Danish, Icelandic and Farnese. Norwegian is not spoken as a mother tongue outside of Norway, except that it may still be found among older speakers in some Scandinavian settlements in the United States. Among the North-Germanic languages, Swedish, Danish and Norwegian are particularly close. They are to a large degree mutually intelligible, although amount of previous exposure, education and the accents of the interlocutors wi11 play a certain role. Modem Icelandic and Farnese, which descend from the tongue of the settlers from Norway who came to Iceland and the Farnese islands during the medieval period, are generally not understood by Norwegians.