Norwegian belongs to the northern branch of Germanic language along with Swedish, Danish, Icelandic and Faroese. Except for small communities of migrants, the language is not spoken outside Norway. Norwegian is particularly close to Swedish and Danish. In general, speakers of the three languages are easily able to understand each other, even though this ability has been deteriorating during the last generation.
By acquiring Danish, Swedish or Norwegian, the speaker can communicate with about 20 million speakers. Today Icelandic and Faeroese are relatively distant from Norwegian and not understandable for Norwegian speakers.
No spoken standard
There is no spoken standard Norwegian. In the teaching of Norwegian as a second language for adult, teachers usually adapt their way of speaking to Bokmål, which is used in text books. This spoken form is quite close to the dialects around the capital Oslo, but the intonation might be different. Thus students may come to speak a form of Norwegian that is different from the dialect where they are living.
Learn more reasons why you should speak Norwegian here
The information above has been sourced from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology