Member of the North Germanic group of the
Indo-European language family, spoken in
Denmark and Greenland and related to
Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, and Swedish.
As one of the languages of the Vikings, who
invaded and settled in parts of Britain
during the 9th to 11th centuries, Old Danish
had a strong influence on English. They,
their, and them, as well as such sk- words as
sky, skill, skin, scrape, and scrub, are of
Danish origin. Danish place-name endings
include by (a farm or town), as in Derby,
Grimsby, and Whitby.