The short answer is yes. Danish and Norwegian are mutually intelligible, meaning that Danish people can understand Norwegian (particularly in its written form) and vice versa. This mutual intelligibility between Danish and Norwegian is stronger for the written forms of the languages and weaker for the spoken forms.
Mutual intelligibility
Danish and Norwegian are especially comprehensible to one another. In general, Danish and Norwegian speakers will be able to understand the other's language after only a little instruction or exposure.
So if everyone spoke Old Norse, does that mean everyone in Scandinavia can still understand each other? Well, to some extent yes: Norwegians, Danes and Swedes do! And that's because of their shared linguistic heritage.
Danes and Norwegians like each other. They care about each other. They sometimes even cheer for each other's soccer teams. But like any family, there's envy involved.
Standard varieties of Danish, Norwegian and Swedish are mutually intelligible, though the extent of understanding will depend on factors such as education, experience and background noise. Studies have shown that Norwegians by and large find it easier than Danes and Swedes to understand their Scandinavian neighbours.
When it comes to Danish vs Norwegian, Norwegian is easier to understand. Their writing is the same, and there's not a lot of difference between vocabulary and grammar either. And for Swedish vs Norwegian, Norwegian wins again. It's a slight bit closer to English in terms of vocabulary and pronunciation.
With a little effort Danes, Norwegians and Swedes can communicate with each other speaking their own language. However, Danes, Norwegians and Swedes do not normally understand Icelandic and Faroese even though some Norwegian dialects share similarities to Icelandic.
There is a common understanding outside the Nordic countries that Nordic people can all understand one another's languages, or at least the Scandinavians (the Danes, Swedes and Norwegians) can.
Danish and Norwegian are very similar, or indeed almost identical when it comes to vocabulary, but they sound very different from one another. Norwegian and Swedish are closer in terms of pronunciation, but the words differ.
Denmark had been forced to support Napoleon during the Napoleonic Wars and when Napoleon lost the war, Denmark had to surrender Norway to Sweden. The Norwegians didn't want this and rebelled. They authored their own constitution and proclaimed Norway an independent state with the Danish crown prince as their king.
Thor and Odin are still going strong 1000 years after the Viking Age. Many think that the old Nordic religion - the belief in the Norse gods – disappeared with the introduction of Christianity. However, it did not, but was instead practised secretly or under a Christian cloak.
From the three main Scandinavian languages such as Danish, Swedish and Norwegian – Danish is claimed to be the hardest Scandinavian language to study due to its speaking standard. The manner of speaking in Danish is quicker, compared to the other Scandinavian languages.
Norwegian is closer to English than either Danish or Swedish. In fact, it's often described as the easiest of the three languages to learn.
Recent research shows that Norwegian is the easiest of the Nordic languages for other Nordic citizens to understand. 62% of young people from other Nordic countries find it “easy” to understand Norwegian, compared with just 26% for Danish.
From 1536/1537 until 1814, Danish was the standard written language of Norway due to the union of crowns with Denmark, in which time the Danish Empire was founded.
According to a study conducted by the Foreign Service Institute, Danish, Swedish and Norwegian are among the easiest languages to learn for English native speakers. With only 575 to 600 hours of study, you can achieve fluency in these Scandinavian languages.
Icelandic
It's a North Germanic language that is spoken by around 300,000 people. Icelandic is also different from the other Scandinavian languages in that it uses a lot of old Norse words. Icelandic is considered a very difficult language to learn, but it's also one of the most beautiful languages in the world.
Swedish is said to be the most useful Scandinavian language as it is the most widely spoken in the Nordic countries, not just Scandinavia.
Contemporary Icelandic-speakers can read Old Norse, which varies slightly in spelling as well as semantics and word order. However, pronunciation, particularly of the vowel phonemes, has changed at least as much in Icelandic as in the other North Germanic languages.
Most Icelanders have a vague understanding of written Danish but not when spoken. Danish remains a compulsory subject in schools for ages 11–18, and has been since (probably) the 19th century.
Danish is spoken by about 6 million people around the world. Most live in Denmark, but Danish is also an official language in Greenland and the Faroe Islands – both autonomous constituent countries under the Kingdom of Denmark – as well as in the northern parts of neighbouring Germany, where Danish has minority status.
Old Norse: the Viking language
By the 8th century, Proto-Norse (which was spoken in Scandinavia and its Nordic settlements) developed into Old Norse – also known as Old Nordic or Old Scandinavian.
Norwegian
This may come as a surprise, but we have ranked Norwegian as the easiest language to learn for English speakers. Norwegian is a member of the Germanic family of languages — just like English!
All the Scandinavian languages are mutually understandable, their official languages such as; Danish, Swedish and Norwegian. German isn't mutually intelligible with that of the Low German, so it definitely even difficult to understand the Scandinavian languages.
Dutch, German, English, Swedish and Danish are all Germanic languages but the degree of mutual intelligibility between these languages differs. Danish and Swedish are the most mutually comprehensible, but German and Dutch are also mutually intelligible.