Is this Danish?

[CKyle22]

Týr is a viking metal band, and they just came out with a new CD two weeks ago. One song is called "Konning Hans" and the lyrics are here:

http://www.lyricsmode.com/lyrics/t/tyr/ ... _hans.html

Is that Danish? I know it's missing æ, ø and å, but even if it had them, I still don't know if that's Danish or not. Denmark in Danish isn't Dannemark, and konning isn't king in Danish either.

Which language are they singing in here? It seems to be close to Danish, but I don't know if it is.

[Brikken]

It looks pretty Danish, but some sort of old Danish. It's easy for me to understand, anyway.

[gfl87]

It may me (old) Danish or Gøtudanskt. It's possible that the guy who put the lyrics on the web couldn't put å, ø, æ; take care that _aa_ should be a kind of old fashioned spelling for _å_.

[CKyle22]

It may me (old) Danish or Gøtudanskt. It's possible that the guy who put the lyrics on the web couldn't put å, ø, æ; take care that _aa_ should be a kind of old fashioned spelling for _å_.

Gøtudanskt makes sense! The band is from the Faroe Islands! Thank you!

[ILuvEire]

It's not Gøtudanskt, it looks like old-fashioned/poetic Danish.

[hashi]

It looks like regular Danish to me (not that I know the difference) only they (like many sites) refuse to allow anything but the 26 letters of the English alphabet. Or are simply lazy and don't realise that a is not the same as å and o is not the same as ø.

[ILuvEire]

One of the things that stood out to me was the use of "ej" for "ikke" which is practically Viking it's so old

[hashi]

One of the things that stood out to me was the use of "ej" for "ikke" which is practically Viking it's so old

That's funny because Swedish still uses ej in sometimes, for example (a quick google search gave me this text):
Det fjäskande för ledaren vare sig man gillar denne eller ej är ofta störande.

[Brikken]

That's funny because Swedish still uses ej in sometimes

Yeah, we also use it in current Danish in certain expressions.

A few examples that comes to my mind:
Nej jeg vil da ej!
Jeg ved ikke om jeg skal gøre det eller ej ...
Ej, det kan man da ikke
Giv venligst et svar uanset om du kommer eller ej

Hmm, seems that it's often used in "xxx eller ej". Maybe because it has a good sound to it - better than "xxx eller ikke"

[maikengj]

It seem to be a "folkevise" (old folk song). The language is old poetic Danish, but without æ and ø.

Whether it's an original "folkevise" or the band had written it to seem like that, I don't know.

[Mulder-21]

To answer the topic question: Yes, it is Danish.

It is sung in Gøtudanskt, though, but Gøtudanskt isn't really a dialect anyway... just another way to pronounce Danish.

And yes, the text may see old, poetic, etc., but it's actually really old.

The non-existence of æ and ø is due to the website being English, and aa instead of å is simply the fact, that the text is older than the 1948 spelling reform.

[ILuvEire]

Ooh, so it's both? It's like ancient Gøtudanskt?

[Mulder-21]

There's no language called Gøtudanskt. Gøtudanskt is just a special way of pronouncing Danish used by Faroese people. So therefore, you can't have "written Gøtudanskt", for instance.