Classification
Norn is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic branch of the Germanic languages. Together with Faroese, Icelandic and Norwegian it belongs to the West Scandinavian group, separating it from the East Scandinavian group consisting of Swedish, Danish and Gutnish. While this classification is based on the differences between the North Germanic languages at the time they split, their present-day characteristics justify another classification, dividing them into an Insular Scandinavian and Mainland Scandinavian language groups, based on mutual intelligibility. Under this system, Norwegian is grouped together with the neighbouring languages Danish and Swedish, because the last millennium has seen all three undergo important changes, especially in grammar and lexis, which have set them apart from Faroese and Icelandic. Norn is generally considered to have been fairly similar to Faroese, sharing many phonological and grammatical traits with this language, and might even have been mutually intelligible with it; thus, it can be considered an Insular Scandinavian language.
Few written texts remain. It is to be distinguished from the present day 'dialect', termed by linguists Shetlandic.
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