Are Scandinavian dialects over-played?

Scandinavians, particularly Norwegians often go on about the massive amount of regional dialects in their countries, and often talk about how some are mutually unintelligible, and in some cases consider them different languages.

Are Scandinavian dialects really any further apart than say English dialects present in the UK, or American dialects, Spanish dialects, Italian, etc?

Are the dialectal differences really any more significant than elsewhere, or is it simply a result of strong regionalism?

Cheers

<< Are the dialectal differences really any more significant than elsewhere? >>

-- Yes. Norway is made of regions poorly connected to each other (unlike highly centralized Sweden or Denmark).

Furthermore, each of those regions has been submitted to various foreign influences. For instance Danish influence was predominant in Oslo (Christiana), which made Bokmål so similar to Danish. On the other hand Bergen, as a member of the Hanseatic league, had a large German and Dutch component in its population (traditional Bergen dialect used to be deeply influenced by Low-Saxon).

As you probably know, the least Danish influenced dialects were merged under the name "Nynorsk", still used by about 10% of the nation.

<< strong regionalism >> yes, but balanced by an equally strong Norwegian nationalism!

Swedish dialect of Dalarna is hardly intelligible with Standard Swedish.It has some Old East Norse features.

<<Are Scandinavian dialects really any further apart than say English dialects present in the UK, or American dialects, Spanish dialects, Italian, etc? >>


No. It's a manifestation of their spineless character. They are accustomed to "dumbing everything down". For example, maths is too hard for children. So they give free passes and teach about homosexuality instead. Consequently, even simple maths appears to these children as massively difficult. In a similar fashion these people, deprived of mental exercise, consider the relatively simple regional varieties to be too hard and massively different.

Is spoken Icelandic or Faroese intelligible to any dialect speakers in Scandinavia? they're maybe not in the mainland of Scandinavia, but they're populated by Scandinavians.

<<Is spoken Icelandic or Faroese intelligible to any dialect speakers in Scandinavia? they're maybe not in the mainland of Scandinavia, but they're populated by Scandinavians.>>

"The languages now spoken in Scandinavia developed from the Old Norse language, which did not differ greatly between what are now Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish areas. In fact, Viking traders spread the language across Europe and into Russia, making Old Norse one of the most widespread languages for a time. According to tradition, King Harald Fairhair united Norway in 872. Around this time, a runic alphabet was used. According to writings found on stone tablets from this period of history, the language showed remarkably little deviation between different regions. Runes had been in limited use since at least the 3rd century. Around 1030, Christianity came to Norway, bringing with it the Latin alphabet. Norwegian manuscripts in the new alphabet began to appear about a century later. The Norwegian language began to deviate from its neighbors around this time as well.

Viking explorers had begun to settle Iceland in the 9th century, carrying with them the Old Norse language. Over time, Old Norse developed into "Western" and "Eastern" variants. Western Norse covered Norway (including its overseas settlements in Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and the Shetland Islands), while Eastern Norse developed in Denmark and south-central Sweden. The language of Iceland and Norway was practically the same up until the 1300s, when they started to deviate from each other.

The language phase traditionally dated to 1350–1525 is known as Middle Norwegian and is seen by many as a transitional period from Old Norse to Modern Norwegian. The reason for this is that although most languages are in a state of constant change, Norwegian phonology, morphology and syntax changed considerably during this time.[6] The use of grammatical case, and a great portion of the conjugation of verbs was lost and replaced by a more fixed syntax, use of prepositions and a greater use of auxiliary based verb forms. During the late Old Norse period and this period there was also a considerable adoption of Middle Low German vocabulary. Similar development in grammar and phonology happened in Swedish and Danish, keeping the dialect continuum in continental Scandinavia intact, but with greater dialectal variation. This process did not, however, occur in the same way in Faroese and Icelandic. These languages remain conservative to this day, when it comes to grammar and vocabulary, so mutual intelligibility with continental Scandinavia was lost.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_language