Are All Scandinavian Languages Basically the Same?

While the Scandinavian languages share some features with their West Germanic relatives, the influence of Old Norse on their evolution means that from around the Middle Ages, the languages started becoming more distinct from the West Germanic ones. During that time period, the speakers of the various languages in Scandinavia could really understand each other to a high degree, and the spoken dialects were sometimes considered to be a part of one single language – the “Danish tongue”.