 In the 8th century , the common Germanic language of Scandinavia , Proto @-@ Norse , had undergone some changes and evolved into Old Norse . This language began to undergo new changes that did not spread to all of Scandinavia , which resulted in the appearance of two similar dialects , Old West Norse ( Norway and Iceland ) and Old East Norse ( Denmark and Sweden ) . The dialects of Old East Norse that were spoken in Sweden are called Runic Swedish while the dialects of Denmark are referred to as Runic Danish . The dialects are described as " runic " because the main body of text appears in the runic alphabet . Unlike Proto @-@ Norse , which was written with the Elder Futhark alphabet , Old Norse was written with the Younger Futhark alphabet , which had only 16 letters . Because the number of runes was limited , some runes were used for a range of phonemes , such as the rune for the vowel u which was also used for the vowels o , ø and y , and the rune for i which was also used for e . 
