ABSTRACT
The Scandinavian languages belong to the Germanic branch of the Indo-European language family. They are closely related to Dutch, Frisian, German, English and the extinct Gothic, and more distantly to most other European and some Asian tongues (for details, see Nielsen 1989). Precisely when Indo-European speech first arrived in what now constitutes Denmark, Norway, Sweden and north-west Germany is unclear, but recent estimates suggest a time around, or a little earlier, than 2000 bc. Germanic is thought to have begun evolving as a separate language branch soon after this, in part because of the gradual attenuation of contacts with speakers of other forms of Indo-European, but also due to influence from neighbouring tongues. A gradual expansion, dated by many between 1000 and 500 bc, saw the frontiers of Germanic pushed as far south as the present-day Netherlands and central Germany and as far east as the Wisła (Vistula). It is reckoned that at this period all Germanic speakers shared a common language, though probably with some dialectal differentiation. However, further migrations around the beginning of the Christian era led to a split into an East and North-West branch of Germanic. The latter, probably from the start a dialect continuum, was itself by the sixth century splitting into two recognisably different branches, North and West Germanic. It is from North Germanic that the Scandinavian languages are descended.
