Here's an Övdalian song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2pxZJ6uFvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2pxZJ6uFvg You can hear the 'w' sound here, in a couple u

Here's an Övdalian song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2pxZJ6uFvg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O2pxZJ6uFvg You can hear the 'w' sound here, in a couple uses of the copula. Compare Övdalian 'werið' with Swedish 'varit' and Icelandic/Faroese 'verið', Övdalian 'war' with Swedish, Icelandic, and Faroese 'var' (also English 'were', 'was', derives from the same Proto-Germanic root). There are actually two Old Norses. By AD 1000 or so, proto-Norse had diverged into Old West Norse and Old East Norse (probably still mutually intelligible dialects at this time). The former's descendents would become Norwegian, Icelandic, Faroese, and a couple of dead variants in e.g. the Shetland Isles and Greenland. The latter's descendents would become Swedish, Danish, and Övdalian. We have far more records of OWN than OEN, but one thing we do know is that unlike OWN, OEN preserved the 'w' sound, which was eventually lost in Swedish and Danish. Övdalian also preserves some grammatical aspects of Old Norse. Modern standard Swedish has no case system, but Övdalian has a three-case system (nom, acc, dat; compare Icelandic and Faroese which have those and gen). Modern standard Swedish has two genders, common and neuter, but Övdalian retains the three gender system that's present in Icelandic, Faroese, and some dialects of Norwegian. At the same time, it's clearly quite different from Old Norse, unlike Icelandic which is famously conservative (n.b. that Icelandic has had sound changes that are not reflected in the written language, though, so even it isn't the same as Old Norse a thousand years ago). There is some Swedish influence here, the word for boy is 'påyk', cognate with 'pojke' which is not of Norse origin, but Finnish 'poika' (the Old Norse word was 'drengr' which is used in Icelandic, Faroese, and Danish; Norwegian uses 'gutt').