Old Norwegian (Norwegian:gammelnorsk andgam(m)alnorsk), also calledNorwegian Norse, is an early form of theNorwegian language that was spoken between the 11th and 14th century; it is a transitional stage betweenOld West Norse andMiddle Norwegian.

Its distinction from Old West Norse is mostly a matter of convention, but it is also the period when the language begun to develop its immense diversity.^[2] Old Norwegian is typically divided into the following dialect areas:^[3]

• Western Norway:
  • Trøndelag
  • Northwest Norway (Romsdal,Sunnmøre,Nordfjord and the coast ofSogn)
  • Southwest Norway:
    • Outer Southwest (Rogaland andHordaland)
    • Inner Southwest (Agder, westernTelemark,Setesdal, continental Sogn, Hordaland and Rogaland, includingIceland and theFaroe Islands)
• Eastern Norway:
  • Southeast Norway
  • East Norway Proper

No sources appear to exist from which the dialectal variation of the rest of Norway might be discerned. There do, however, seem to be reasons to believe the region ofOppland constituted its own dialect area, though it is unclear whether this would fall within the Western or Eastern dialect group, as well as that Greenlandic Old Norse had begun to develop its own linguistic variety.^[3]

One of the most important early differences between Old Norwegian andOld Icelandic is thath in theconsonant combinationshl-,hn- andhr- was lost in Old Norwegian around the 11th century, while being preserved in Old Icelandic. Thus, one has e.g. Old Icelandichlíð 'slope',hníga 'curtsey' andhringr 'ring' and Old Norwegianlíð,níga andringr, respectively.^[3][4]

Many Old Norwegian dialects feature a height based system ofvowel harmony: Following stressed high vowels (/i/,/iː/,/y/,/yː/,/u/,/uː/) and diphthongs (/ei/,/ey/,/au/), the unstressed vowels/i/ and/u/ appear asi,u, while they are represented ase,o following long non-high vowels (/eː/,/øː/,/oː/,/æː/,/aː/). The situation following stressed short non-high vowels (/e/,/æ/,/ø/,/a/,/o/,/ɔ/) is much debated and was apparently different in the individual dialects.^[5]

Theu-umlaut of short/a/ (writtenǫ in normalized Old Norse) is not as consistently graphically distinguished from non-umlauted/a/ as in Old Icelandic, especially in writings from the Eastern dialect areas.^[3][6][7] It is still a matter of academic debate whether this is to be interpreted phonologically as a lack of umlaut or merely as a lack of its graphical representation.^[7]

Old Norwegian had alternative dual and plural first person pronouns,mit,mér, to the Common Norsevit,vér.^[8]

Norn is an extinct language derived from theNorth Germanic language family that died out in the late 19th or early 20th century. It was primarily spoken in theNorthern Isles, orOrkney (Orkneyjar) andShetland (Hjaltland), andCaithness on the northern tip ofScotland. Little remains of Norn other than a fewliterary works in Orkney Norn and Shetland Norn, while Caithness Norn is expected to have died out in the 15th century, replaced by Scots.

Sources from the 17th and 18th century report that Norn, often misidentified asDanish,Norse orNorwegian, was in a rapid decline, although prevailing in Shetland more than Orkney.Walter Sutherland is generally considered the last native speaker of the language, dying in 1850, though many claims describe the language, probably in verses and songs, spoken in the islands ofFoula andUnst as late as the 20th century.

TheBlack Death struck Norway in 1349, killing over 60% of the population.^[9] This significantly affected the development of Norwegian down the line.^[10] The language in Norway after 1350 up to about 1550 is generally referred to as Middle Norwegian. The language went through several changes: morphological paradigms were simplified, including the loss ofgrammatical cases and the levelling of personal inflection on verbs. Avowel reduction also took place, in some dialects, including in parts of Norway, reducing many final unstressed vowels in a word to a common "e".

Thephonemic inventory also underwent changes. Thedental fricatives represented by the lettersþ andð disappeared from the Norwegian language, either merging with their equivalentstop consonants, represented byt andd, respectively, or being lost altogether.

• Norwegian language
• Icelandic language
• Faroese language
• Norn language

• «Kulturformidlingen norrøne tekster og kvad» Norway.
• «Medieval Nordic Text Archive» Organization working with Medieval Nordic texts.
• «Dokumentasjonsprosjektet» Includes old Norse dictionary and includes Diplomatarium Norvegicum which is a collection of texts from before 1570 (originally 22 books with 19 000 documents) and Regesta Norvegica which contains letters and official documents (it's a more detailed description on "Om Regesta Norvegica") from 822 to 1390. This page is partly available in English. (not Regesta Norvegica)
• Old Norwegian online dictionary