Danish is a North Germanic language that emerged from Old Norse dialects spoken across Scandinavia, and became the dominant written language of medieval Denmark and Norway following the Kalmar Union. During the 16th and 17th centuries, Danish served as the prestige written language for both Denmark and Norway, deeply shaping the development of modern Norwegian. The standardisation of Danish was heavily influenced by the translation of the Bible into Danish in 1550, which fixed a central dialect as the literary norm. Danish is notable among the Scandinavian languages for its distinctive 'stød', a type of laryngealisation or creaky voice on certain syllables that has no equivalent in Norwegian or Swedish. Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish form a dialect continuum with high mutual intelligibility, particularly in written form.
