Norwegian is a member of the North Germanic branch of the Indo-European language group. It is a descendant of the Old Norse language of the Germanic people of the Viking era.
There are two official and two unofficial languages in Norway. The official languages are Bokmål, which is spoken by about 85-90% of the population, and Nynorsk (new Norwegian). The two unofficial languages are Riksmål, which is somewhere between Bokmål and Danish, and Høgnorsk, which is a form of Nynorsk.