Lecture 1 Introduction

Old Danish – later it developed into Danish (now the national language of Denmark);

Old Swedish - later it developed into Swedish (now the national language of Sweden and a part of Finland);

Old Norwegian – was the last to develop, later transformed into Norwegian (now the national language of Norway).

In the 8^th c. A.D. sea-rovers and merchants founded numerous colonies on the islands in the North Sea and in the Atlantic Ocean (the Shetland Islands, the Orkneys, the Faroe Islands) and reached even Iceland and Greenland. Thus two more North Germanic languages appeared:

• 
  Faroese (In the Faroe Islands the writing was done in Danish for centuries. The first written records in Faroese appeared only in the 18^th c.);
  
• 
  Icelandic (9^th c. A.D.)
  

The Icelandic Language was THE MOST IMPORTANT OF ALL NORTH GERMANIC LANGUAGES because:

1. 
   The isolation of Iceland caused the preservation of archaic vocabulary and grammatical system.
   
2. 
   The preservation of archaic vocabulary and grammatical system makes this language very close to Old Norse and helps to reconstruct this ancient common Germanic language.
   
3. 
   Icelandic has the largest body of written texts (12^th – 13^th c.), e.g.:
   

– “The Elder Edda” (12^th c.) – a collection of heroic songs;

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  “The Younger Edda” (13^th c.) – a text-book forpoets;
  
• 
  Old Icelandic Sagas.
  

3. West Germanic Languages
The West Germanic tribes lived between the Oder and the Elbe and they never left the mainland. They were:

• 
  the Franconians (Low, Middle and High Franconians) – settled the lower basin of the Rhine and with time began to speak the language of the Romanised Celts, apart from Low Franconians who spoke Old Low Franconian that later developed into  Dutch;
  
•