 Swedish ( svenska [ ² svɛnːska ] ) is a North Germanic language , spoken natively by about 9 million people predominantly in Sweden and parts of Finland , where it has equal legal standing with Finnish . It is largely mutually intelligible with Norwegian and Danish ( see the section " Classification " ) . Along with the other North Germanic languages , Swedish is a descendant of Old Norse , the common language of the Germanic peoples living in Scandinavia during the Viking Era . It is currently the largest of the North Germanic languages by number of speakers . 
