The North Germanic Languages of the Nordic Nations (UPDATED) 

Hello everyone! Are you learning Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, or another language? Check out my review of Innovative Language courses (famous for their "Pod101" and "Class101" brands): ►langfocus.com/pod101/◄. Scroll down to the bottom to find your favorite language. Or go straight there: ►Swedish: bit.ly/Swedishpod101 ►Norwegian: bit.ly/Norwegianclass101 ►Danish: bit.ly/Danishpod101 (Full disclosure: If you upgrade to a paid plan, Langfocus gets a small referral fee that helps support this channel, at no extra cost to you).

Me: *Clears throat* Danish friend: I agree

As a Swede I always have a potato in my pocket, so whenever i run into a Dane I can easily switch to Danish.

Me: clears throat My Danish friend: *wipes tear* this is so beautiful.

7:56 Swedish guy sounds like a stalker over the phone.

How we Swedes look at the different languages: Swedish: *completely normal* Norwegian: *always happy, talk like small elves, chit chat and small giggles, kinda cute* Danish: *Maybe they talk with potatos in their mouths, maybe they have some kind of throat disorder, or maybe they are just very drunk. Nobody knows.* Finnish: *Kinda angry and creepy, sits in their saunas and once in a while say ”perkele”* Icelandic: *Vikings??*

My swedish girlfriend told me Norwegian is how someone would speak after getting a bit tipsy, then when you are actually drunk you sound Danish and when you are totally wasted you sound Finnish

I, as a Dane had once a meeting with swedes, Norwegians, and Swedish speaking Finns. We started talking slowly in our native languages (The Finss using swedish) But the Finns could NOT understand the Danes, although the Danes found it easier to understand them than the native swedes! We then agreed to use 'euro English'. Nobody was fluent in that but we then could meet on equal footings!

I am Icelandic and the easiest languages to understand are: 1:Faroese 2:Faroese 3:Faroese 4:Norwegian and Swedish and written Danish 145: spoken Danish

That Danish speaker was slowing down and breaking up the words too much. Real Danes run words together so that a sentence sounds like one dragged-out syllable with some grunting and choking along the way.

Danish is like a drunk Swedish person trying to talk Norwegian.

Hi, I'm a 65 year old dane. I'm a jute. My generation can understand swedes and norwegians...maybe not nynorsk. We had swedish and norwegian lessons in school in the 60's. We sang songs from other scandinavian countries. And on television we saw films, plays, gameshows from Sweden and Norway. We were used to the rythm and music of other scandinavian languages. There was a cultural collaboration between the Nordic countries. This isn't so today, The elementary schoolsystem are not focusing on norse languages and it is sad to hear swedish and danish teens speak english to one another. Our cultural focus is the US these days.....a closing remark: we, mature danes, look forward to danish subtitles on danish programmes on danish tv....modern danish spoken leaves out most endings in words and sentences...

As a linguist that learnt German and Southern germanic languages, I love seeing the written northern germanic languages! It is like a riddle that I have the clues to crack 😍😍 I love Norwegian sounds the most

Me : ***swallowing and release breath*** A Danish guy : *"Excuse me, what did you say?"*

Norwegian here. And I found myself nodding throughout the video. Your research is nothing less than amazing. Keep up the good work!

As a Finn we must learn Swedish in school. Once I apologize my Norwegian teammates for that I havent spoke Swedish long time and its rusty. They were like "No no, you swedish is perfect... or I dont know but at least your Norwegian is very good!" :DD

> Scandinavians are magical geniuses when it comes to learning English. As an American who’s spoken with 4 scandis (2 Swedes, 1 dane, 1 Norwegian), this is absurdly true. They speak clearer and more proper English than most English speakers do

Norwegians, danes and swedes are all understandable but when a finnish person joins it gets a little wierd. Norwegian- hei Dane- hei/cough Swede- hej Fin- hajjiauukjale!

I'm from Norway Danish is easy to read, but harder to understand when spoken (because of the potato) Swedish is harder to read, but easier to understand when spoken (because they don't have a potato in their mouth)

As a native Dutch speaker speaking who also speaks German, if I pay close attention, I can understand the essence of simple Swedish sentences. My friend moved to Sweden a few years ago and whenever I visit her, after a few days I can flip a switch and read most of the signs and stuff.

A Swedish-speaking Finn here, hi! Like other Swedish-speakers have said, it’s easier for us to understand spoken Norwegian than spoken Danish, although I’ve been told by a Dane that my Swedish is easier to understand than the Swedish spoken in Sweden. Interestingly, I even have a friend whose first language is Finland-Swedish, but she struggles to understand standard Sweden-Swedish! Then again when we visit Sweden and speak our Swedish dialect, many Swedes tend to not realise that we’re speaking Swedish, get confused and switch to English, or state that they didn’t know they understood Finnish (since our dialect is not as melodic and is more monotonous like Finnish). In many of those cases, the underlying reason is that many Swedes don’t know our language minority exists.

the Swedish speaker talks like he is being tortured by tickling and is afraid that he might burst into laughter lol

The danish word you said directly means "could suffer" also means "could like" it has two meanings, depends on the context. From a potatospeaking dane :D

The Swedish audio samples are spoken much more unnaturally than the others, pronouncing letters that would be dropped in normal speech, and generally pronouncing every letter to an extent that is not normal, especially the G's which are pronounced as j. I don't really understand why you would continue to insist on this hard G. Even when the audio says gilla normally, you claim that it can also be pronounced with a hard g. This exaggerates the difference between Swedish and the other two. As for how much I as a swedish speaker can understand the other two: danish is hard due to pronounciation, but norwegian mostly completely understandable. The biggest problem is that some random words are completely different. You can also tell that the languages have diverged over time. For example, the swedish word inte is ikke in norwegian and danish, but icke is a sort of old version of inte in Swedish.

6:10 yeah when I was in Denmark I spoke swedish slowly and as clearly as possible and the danish ppl spoke danish slowly and as clearly as possible, it worked Well and we understood each other.

5:46 I have Swedish roots so I'm also allowed to make fun of Danes.

When I was young, I (a swede) met with some Norwegian guys but I didn't know that they they were Norwegian and we talked (I in Swedish and they in Norwegian), and I just thought they were from a different region in Sweden.

Jag är italiensk och jag studerade svenska språket ensam. En gång läste jag en norsk tidning utan att veta det och kunde jag förstå något lätt. Hälsningar från Italien 🖤

I'm Dutch and I study Swedish, just because I love the language. Also, since I'm fluent in German and English, it's relatively easy, especially reading 😊

8:28 The swedish voice is super scary, we do not talk like that at all

Me, a Swede: So how was the festival? Norwegian friend: It was pretty gøy.

Very interesting analysis of these exciting languages! Keep up the good work! 👍👍 Tack så mycket, bra jobbat! 😊

Easily one of the most interesting and educational channels on RU-vid. 👏

"Gillade" is never pronounced with a hard g-sound.

That Swedish voice sounds absolutely terrifying. No one sounds like that in real life. It's like he/she is drugged or mentally handicapped.

studying danish, i'm pretty happy i could make up all the sentences in my head before they came up :) yay to progress!!

Well made video, you made a good research and it was very informative. Thx for making ;)

scandinavians are "magical geniuses" in english because we see a lot of english speaking television programs that are NOT dubbed to our native language, but subtitled.

Im swedish and the swedish person sounded so weird...

New to the channel and absolutely loving the content I have binged so many videos here the past few days. Was disappointed to see we didn’t get much overview on Icelandic (or Faroese) on this one. Looking forward to a follow up!

You’re doing such a good job with these

it´s really hard to know when a guy from norway are angry….they allways sound happy

In Finnish we have a phrase "puhua norjaa" with literal translation of "to speak Norwegian" but what it actually means is "to puke".

I love that almost every comment is a joke about Danish

Excellent video! Will share!

Today, many Swedes, especially the younger ones, prefer to switch to English when Scandinavians meet. I think that is a pity. When I was a young Dane (40-50 years ago), we Scandinavians always spoke Scandinavian when we were together, but now in the younger generations Swedes mostly claim that they don´t understand Danish. A part of the reason for that is that the Danish language is evolving - the younger Danes have bigger potatoes in their mouth than we have in my generation, and they "swallow the endings of the words", so foreigners cannot hear where one word ends an the next begins. When I speak with people from our neighbouring countries, I try to speak "theater Danish", that is I speak distinctly and slowly. When I do that, Swedes understand me quite well. But many Danes refuse to do that, because if you speak that way, it sounds like you are old and not healthy. Young Danes speak fast and undistinctly in order to appear fit and young; it is best if you speak so indistinctly that your parents have difficulties understanding you - in that way you signal that you are one of the group, and not a nerd still living with his parents. In this way, Danish slowly develops further and further away from the original language. Much of the grammar is different today from what it was in the 19th century, and the language is spoken faster than what you hear in radio recordings from the mid 20th century. On the other hand, dialects are becoming more and more intelligible. When my father went from Copenhagen to West Jutland to visit relatives in the 1930s, it was only after 2-3 days stay that he began to understand what people were saying. Today, West Jutland language is still different from standard Danish in grammar and pronunciation, but not very different. You can understand it immediately. The same is true for all other Danish dialects, except for some dialects from the far south in Jutland, especially the island of Als (but people there switch to standard Danish, when you address them). The language has changed in the same way always. Rune inscriptions from the viking age demonstrate how fast the Danish / Old Nordic language changed - the grammar and spelling changed from generation to generation, especially during the period c. 800 AD to 1000 AD. There was a special r-sound that disappeared out of the language, and the r´s at the end of masculinum nouns disappeared (but they are still there in Faroese and Icelandic). I guess that young viking age persons had the same mentality as today: it was important to speak differently from you parents, and faster, so inconvenient sounds like the r´s at the end of the nouns were eroded away. Danes were swallowing the endings already by then, and they have continued to do so all through the centuries, swallowing more and more. In the end, nothing will be left of any word, and the language will become totally un-intelligible even for the Danes themselves.

A very good video, reflecting the situation in Scandinavia. I come from Stavanger - South West coast of Norway. When I moved to Sweden for a year, they tought I was a German. So I quickly had to try and speak Swedish. Since the R from my area is pronounced as it is in most of France and Germany, they got confused. But if I tried to speak with what we call "rulle-r" (Rolling r), they tought I came from Finland. Even in Oslo, capital of Norway, I asked the waitress back in 1983 in a Coffe shop called "Le petit Paris": Kor møje koste ein kopp me te? She did not understand so I repeated (how much is a cup of tea?). Then she turned around and asked the other staff: Er det noen her som forstår tysk? (Is there anybody here who understand German?) I was upset and said: I am from Stavanger, even I don't understand German! Then I met my cousin from just outside Trondhjem (mid Norway) for the first time when I was 17. It was probably his first trip outside of Trøndelag. I found it almost impossible to understand what he said, so several times I asked him to speak English. At the time I grew up, in the 70's and early 80's we had one TV channel, and one Radio channel. Almost all communication on those media were made in either bokmål or nynorsk. Dialects were not commonly accepted in those channels. So I guess you are right about Norwegian: We have since early age learnt to cope with all those different dialects, so I suppose our genaral understanding of different languages and dialects is better developed than with the Swedes. In Sweden, the system has for decades worked to phase out the dialects, encouraging the pupils to speak standard Swedish: Riks-svenska. However, in SKåne, Southern Sweden, they have kept their typical dialect. So when I speak Swedish, sometimes people think I come from Skåne. Ha ha! Thanks for you good work!

Literally, everything you have said is the perfect explanation of Scandinavian languages!

Good study and useful video. Thank you.

Can you do a video on Celtic languages like Irish, Scots Gaelic and Welsh?

As a Swede I think Norwegian is much easier to understand than Danish. I have to say that Norwegian is such a beautiful language, all Norwegians out there, you’re lucky as hell! I think many Swedes thinks the same

Hei, Norwegian here. Very good video, I did not know about proto Norse. The Norwegian audio is two different people, the first one is from the south and he has a very distinguishable 'skarre-r', whereas the later speaker is eastern and has the bokmål rolling R. Written swedish is really hard to read, but spoken it's way easier than Danish. Sometimes I read Danish and it takes me a while to see that it's not norwegian I'm reading. Islandic surprises me every time, because it sounds like Norwegian only I cant understand a thing. It has the exact same rhythm and tone as us but the language is so different. Swedish and danish are the other way around, their rhythm is way different but I can understand it. I recommend the 'ut i vår hage - kameloso' youtube video for more jokes on Danish behalf.

Nice, really informative👍👍👍

I’m Norwegian. My family is from all over the country, so I speak several dialects fluently and they’re quite different from each other. I moved to Denmark ten years ago, and I also speak Danish. My poor husband is very confused by all the dialects, especially since they’re often written phonetically on social media

I'm British and I taught myself a bit of Norwegian. The last time I was in Norway, I managed to have a basic conversation with a visiting couple from Denmark who didn't speak English, me speaking Norwegian and they speaking Danish.

I love when you use example sentences to compare the languages!

As a norwegian speaking an old local western dialect and mainly using "new norwegian" when I write, I can confirm that understanding swedish, danish, icelandic and english, and also learning new languages comes very naturally for me. I definitely think it has a big impact on my learning abilities I developed as a child, first of all I had to understand two different writing languages in norwegian, plus understand all the various dialects in Norway, like when watching TV or movies and we also imported many big classic movies for children from Sweden. So it makes sense, that it improves your ability to understand and put together meaning of different words as I had to develop that ability every since I was born. And I am very grateful to have that ability as I have a great interest in languages.

Norwegian speaker here. I have almost no trouble understanding Swedish. The words that are different from Norwegian I somehow know already without ever living in Sweden. Danish is hard to understand. The written language is obviously easy, but understanding spoken Danish is hard. Icelandic and Faroese are out of the question. I can pick out some words in sentences, but that's it. EDIT: Saami languages next? I can volunteer as pronunciator if needed.

I certainly don't want to complain or anything, but the Swedish voice here actually sound totally "pissed of"... especially when she says _husdjuren_. Very few Swedes use that kind of harsh pronunciaton, unless really really mad at you ;-)

Thank you!! It's about time! ;0)

Thank you so much! An amazing video!

10:16 "gillade" is never pronounced with a sharp "g"

This Chanel is incredible.

Thanks for a systematic explanation as usual

Interesting presentation!

Live in the southernmost part of Sweden: Skåne. I have quite an heavy accent, a lot of swedes think I sound a bit danish. Oh boy, they have no idea! No problems with understanding danish, as I grew up with danish television. Problem is, the danes don't understand me. Have hade several conversations in my life when I, a dane and a friend from a different part of sweden has to translate for each other. The dane don't understand me, so the swede has to translate. But the swede don't get the dane, so I have to translate.

In my perspective,if those were romance languages: Swedish-Spanish Norwegian-Italian Danish-Portuguese

Thanks for an interesting video. As Swede I say that I feel that we have always seen our neighbors as brothers and sisters, very much with Finland even we typically communicate there in English. Borders have been open for many years and we could travel and work between the countries like it was one country. Then we respect Icelanders even more as they are the Vikings.🙂

OMG 🤯 Excellent video

My native language is Faroese, and we learn Danish from grade 3 up to grade 10, as well in university preperatory school (probably similar to high school in the US). Our pronounciation of words is more similar to Norwegian, but with a more Icelandic vocabulary. Because of us speaking Danish almost to a native level as well as Faroese, this makes the Faroese people (according to a Nordic Council test) the best at understanding all the continental Scandinavian languages compared to the continental Scandinavians, due to us understanding the languages on the extreme ends of the spectrum. We understand Norwegian almost as well as Danish without ever having been taught it, and understand Swedish better than the Danes, and only slightly less than Norwegians. It's pretty cool, in my opinion. :P

I was hoping for more information about Faroese and Icelandic, but you didn't tell us much about them. I'm looking forward to hear more.

Excellently explained

Since I am from Northern Norway, Danes and Swedes have a harder time understanding my dialect. But by learning trough movies and TV-shows I can communicate by speaking Swedish and Danish, if they don't understand me. I'd also like to add that I think Norway might have the widest varieties of dialects in this region. Even the city closes to mine, has a different dialect.

Norwegian here, most of what you're saying is spot on. I'll just chip in with some opinions: I think Swedish, Danish and Norwegian form one language, they are very much mutually intelligible, and most people would only need a day or two in the other countries to understand people properly. I might be biased because, as you say, Norwegians tend to be the best at understanding the other two languages. As for why that is, I think it's not because we use our dialects in our everyday speech as you speculate. I don't really think Norwegian dialects are that diverse compared with most other languages so understanding our dialects isn't really that hard. My belief is that the reason we understand both Swedish and Danish so well is because Norwegian speech is quite similar to Swedish, compared with Danish, but our primary written language, Bokmål, used by the vast majority of Norwegians is very close to written Danish. Also, we've been in union with both countries, so we have been exposed to both languages quite a lot.

9:42 - As a german it sounds like those 3 people are saying completely different things. The swedish sounds like the party was cool for him. the norwegian sounds like the party was gay for him and the danish is pretty neutral about the party wtf

Very well put, and thank you for being funny!

I love ur introductions!!!

Modern icelandic has changed so little that it is said that people from Iceland can still read the old viking sagas.

Swedish "gillade" is not pronounced with a hard g in any dialect.

Excellent video that explains difference of pronunciation between these 3 languages. This guy knows his stuff! 6 ******

I posted a similar comment on the Langfocus Norwegian video about the influence of Low German on Danish and Norwegian, and probably Swedish, too. With some knowledge of German, I found I could frequently recognize Danish (and Norwegian Bokmål) words simply by reversing the High German sound shift in standard German words, and also that many Danish/Bokmål compound words such as prefixed verbs are calqued on German compounds. For me this was a big help in acquiring Danish vocabulary in studying written Danish ten years ago. The historical reason for this is that in the late middle ages, the Baltic was economically dominated by the Hanseatic League, the merchant cities on the south littoral of the Baltic, which spoke Low German (at least, the middle and upper classes did), and Low German was the language of trade and commerce, and a lingua franca, in the Baltic region.

The swedish woman that helped you with those sentences totally ruined the video. No swede talks like that unless they're helping a child learn to read /Swede

I'm Norwegian and i can perfectly understand Swedish, Danish and some Icelandic. edit: I have also learned german

This got an upvote from me, as you actually got stuff correct in the first minute(separation of Scandinavia and Nordics, separation of the Finnish and Germanic, just overall great job). Edit: Also want to point out, as you touch on dialect understanding. Norwegians also tend to have an easier time understanding different English accents, compared to native English speakers(for example, british vs american vs Scottish are both about equally intelligble to the average Norwegian, while an American will struggle with some British or Scotish dialects). As we're used to having to understand things based on the context, rather than relying entierly on what individual words mean(as they often can change drastically between dialects). Also the sentence examples, "hunder", he has a dialect that omits it. The west\south of Norway would have a soft 'd', thereby pronounciating each letter. As for 'kjæledyr', should be noted that 'husdyr' is still used in both Danish and Norwegian, but it means domesticated animals, rather than 'pets'. Pets are family(hence "kjæle"), where as domesticated animals are not(hence, "house animal"). Edit2: As for the end question: As a Norwegian, Swedish is mostly fine\easy(it's impossible to read, however), it helps that Norwegians tend to have a lot of exposure to Swedish through media(like pippi longstockings, which is just in Swedish here as well). Danish however, is impossible to understand, and it's a serious head scratcher. Had a Danish doctor, and the default way to bridge the gap, is for them to write down the Danish word that is causing the head scratching\hold up(as it's readable, just not possible to understand when they attempt to speak it!).

I am danish and this video is very precisely describing reality. Very well done!

Even as a Dane, when meeting Swedes, I sometimes try to use all-Swedish words, sentences and expressions, preferrably pronounced correctly of course, all because it's fun. It boils down to having a childhood watching Emil i Lönneberga and Pippi Långströmp. Apart from that, I do as you correctly state, use Danish while listening to Swedish or Norwegian, but will avoid using any English, because that would be a sell-out. If we can't understand each other, we need to pull ourselves together. it's just too core-rotted if we speak English amongst ourselves. It really is. I hate arogant laziness from the bottom of my heart.

The person reading the swedish examples is pronouncing those words way more than normal swedes. I have never heard anyone talk like that but it would be fun to know which dialect that person has so i can look it up, maybe i've just not been there :)

Your videos are spot on.

Hey Paul I love your channel and I've seen most of your videos, but I've noticed you still don't have a video dedicated only to the Icelandic language which is and that language is so beautiful, I wanna see its structure and complexity, please if you have time in the future I really would like to know more about this fascinating language. and thank you for your work, it's great what you do.

I grew up in Iceland (16y), lived in Denmark (10y), worked on a Norwegian ship (5 summers) and lived in Sweden (5y). While I did learn Danish as a second language in Iceland (1), it turns out I was much better equipped to speak/understand Norwegian as a result (2). I barely understood anything during the first 1/2 - 1 year going to school in Denmark (and it took 3 years before people stopped asking where I was from), despite having learned "Danish" in Iceland. The first couple of months in Denmark, I was mentally pummeled after class, and slept 10-12 hours per day. This is because parsing Danish is extremely hard (3). Like spoken French, spoken Danish leaves out a lot of sounds (the Danish in the video was clearer than how you hear people speak normally "I morgen skal jeg til Tyskland" is normally pronounced "I mor'n ska' je' ti' Tysklan'"). It only took me 3-4 weeks of working on a Norwegian ship for people to stop asking which country I was from. Instead, they would ask where in Norway I was from, because I absorbed the accent from various crew members, who came from all across Norway. You get a really long way towards speaking Norwegian if you speak Danish with Icelandic pronunciation. Swedish was easier to learn to understand, but it took me a while to learn to speak it property, since, while Swedishifying Danish gave me some traction, the vowels are pronounced differently, much to my embarrassment (4). I still haven't quite gotten it right (I worked in an English-speaking environment) ; Swedes tend to ask me if I am from Finland (or Norway). I lived in Göteborg, and there, the dialect is closer to Danish and Norwegian, whereas in the accents further East and North, the sounds are closer to Icelandic. Now I live in Germany, and am realizing how much continental north Germanic languages (especially Danish) are influenced by German. Most/all of the non-Icelandic words appear to "be" German words, in some mangled form. Very rarely, I encounter a Norwegian or Swedish dialect that I find hard to understand. However, Southern-Jutlandese I find still to be difficult to understand, despite living in the region for 3 years. Speaking of language continuums, there is a really fascinating dialect continuum that spans the west coast of Denmark, through Germany, to the Netherlands (see North Frisian). I discovered this when trying to work out why Dutch people pick up Danish so quickly (often in

Greetings from Norway! I do understand Swedish and Danish and even some Dutch words! (and English).

Aah I was hoping that you would talk more about Føroyar/Faroe island 😅 Very interesting, very good👏

As a Swede, I feel like the person pronouncing the swedish words are just overpronouncing words. Like when he says husdjuren he makes some letters way too harsh than they are.

As a native Dane, I think it is a catastrophe not to try to speak the other Nordic languages when there - Mastering the 2 other vocabularies is merely knowing the difference of some 300 word in Norwegian (and some funny ü-sounds), and an additional 100 words in Swedish (mostly "arh"-sounds when a's and pronounced G's) - the rest is history...

What an extremely well researched and accurate video! Great job!

10:18 gillade is never pronounced with a hard G like you said in the video in any swedish dialect, its always with a sort of J sound.

As a foreigner who doesn't speak a word of any of these languages, I have to say that Danish sounds the prettiest to my ears.

When I speak Swedish with my Danish colleagues or friends abroad, people sometimes get curious; they can clearly hear that we speak quite differently, so they wonder what language that is, I usually just call it Scandinavian. And even if some words are different in the standard languages, you might find them in dialects or in other registers ("kväll" being the standard word for "evening", whereas "afton" is a rather formal or archaic synonym in Swedish, the opposite being true for Danish). Besides, composed words as husdjur and kaeledyr are also quite easy to understand: the Swedish "husdjur" literary means "house animal", whereas the Danish "kaeledyr" could be literary translated to "kel(e)djur", meaning "cuddling animal" - thus not very hard to understand, well, it could interpreted as a teaddy bear I suppose, but you also get the meaning from the context). The grammar is rarely, if ever, a problem. The most notorious difference (I reckon) is that Swedish uses "double definites" ("Hundar är de bästa husdjuren", "Dogs are the best animals[the]") whereas Danish and Norwegian don't. So the biggest difference is probably pronounciation and spelling (Norwegian tends to be quite modern and to keep pronounciation and spelling quite close, Danish is the opposite, they even added some incorrect "mute" consonants back in the days because they thought they should be there (hypercorrection), that's why they spell "mand" (instead of "man", as in the other Germanic languages)... - Swedish is somewhere between the two). And of course, vocabulary (but just look at English words for food or car items in English...). I would definitely say that it is one sole language (Scandinavian), but with four different standards and a bunch of dialects.

I am from Gotland and I must say you have done excellent research some people there still speak Gutnish. Though I never heard of a dialect in Sweden using a hard G for gillade.

11:57 As a nothern Norwegian that lives in southern I would say I understand danish and Swedish more or less like Norwegian in normal talk. I really like danish though, Swedish is also pretty cool!