Old Gutnish

Old Gutnish was the dialect of Old Norse that was spoken on the Baltic island of Gotland. It shows sufficient differences from the Old East Norse dialect (also called Runic Swedish or Runic Danish) that it is considered to be a separate branch. Gutnish is still spoken in some parts of Gotland and on the adjoining island of Fårö.

The root Gut is identical to Goth, and it is often remarked that the language has similarities with the Gothic language. These similarities have led scholars such as Elias Wessén and Dietrich Hofmann to suggest that it is most closely related to Gothic. The most well-known example of such a similarity is that Gothic and Gutnish called both adult and young sheep lamb.

The Old Norse diphthong au (e.g. auga "eye") remained in Old Gutnish and Old West Norse, while in Old East Norse — except for peripheral dialects — it evolved into the monophthong ǿ, i.e. a long version of ǿ. Likewise the diphthong ai in bain (bone) remained in Old Gutnish while it in Old West Norse became ei as in bein and in Old East Norse it became é (bén). Whereas Old West Norse had the ey diphthong and Old East Norse evolved the monophthong ǿ) Old Gutnish had oy.

Most of the corpus of Old Gutnish is found in the Gutasaga from the 13th century.