[interfixus]

Amazingly, up here north of Germany, in the tiny land of Denmark, Danish dialects manges to be mutually incomprehensible. Or at least they did, up until about a generation ago. Going to the northenmost or westernmost regions, I find no shortage of people I simply do not understand. On the other hand, a lot of Norwegian - officially a different language - appears to me like a distinct, but unproblematic dialect.

Interestingly, in this small, flat, homogenous country, linguistic faultlines can still be persistent and razor sharp, clearly reflecting population boundaries from way, way back - the viking age and earlier. Travel some thirty kilometers between some neighbouring major towns, and hear the tone of spoken language change abruptly about midway.

[jacobush]

This IS interesting. Some thoughts:

Norway was ruled from Denmark, so the danish ruling class in Norway probably spoke a similar dialect to yours. (See bokmål, basically danish style Norwegian.)

Norway has dialects VERY different from each other - these were used as stock for an attempt at standardization of non-danish-inspired language, which they call "nynorsk". Which is confusing, because it's basically a mix of OLDER norse dialects. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivar_Aasen

In Norway, the very distinct local dialects makes sense, because people were separated by high mountain ridges. (The same story goes for Greek dialects, but I digress.)

So it IS indeed interesting that Denmark, which is very flat, still has these sharp boundaries. :)

[interfixus]

Everything you said. And yes, obviously I'm thinking primarily of Norwegian bokmål. Although I do comprehend at least som spoken fjeldnorsk. Having had a Faroese girlfriend, and some exposure to Icelandic does help :)

Rhythm and intonation of spoken Danish shifts markedly down towards the southern islands. No difficulty of compehension whatsoever, but it's clearly a dialectal belt with a history quite different from neighbouring parts of Sjælland (or "Zealand"). I'd love to see a genetic mapping of the local communities. I'm almost certain that lots of corresponding patterns would turn up.