I am by no means a full-blown expert in the field, but I am a native speaker of Swedish (and I do know Standard Swedish perfectly well, no matter what impression you may have gotten of me, and I won't give you any odd words or grammar without explicitly stating that it is not very standard, or standard at all), I know both Danish, Norwegian (both Bokmål and Nynorsk, when it comes to writing it) and Icelandic well, and I'm getting the hang of Faroese. I will make sure not to state any facts that I'm not sure of, to make sure not to teach you anything that's false.
I read up on languages a lot, and I really appreciate the way people who carry the knowledge take their time to write the information down for others to read, so I feel like giving something back, using the knowledge of the field that I am the most competent in. This will be a beginner's course, but the pace will be a fairly swift one, even though I will often have a lot more to say about every little word, than most tutorials perhaps would, as I want this to be an etymological journey. I do expect the knowledge of IPA and the grammatical terms used. Let's get going.
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1. An introduction
Not everything may be obvious to everyone, and that fact calls for a little introduction before we begin. Happily reading this, you probably know that the Northern Germanic languages Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese are five closely related languages within a subfamily of the Germanic family, called Northern Germanic. These are mainly spoken in Norway, Denmark, Sweden (as well as parts of Finland, as for Swedish), Iceland and The Faroe Islands, respectively, all of which are countries of Northern Europe, but the areas sometimes blend together, and there are speakers of each language in every one of these five countries, as well as elsewhere in the world. The Faroe Islands partially belong to Denmark, but they now enjoy a strong position as a country almost in its own right, and the inhabitants speak a language of their own, called Faroese, complete with an orthography, radio channels and much more, and they do, for example, print their own post stamps.
Norway, much like Sweden, but to an even greater extent, is a land of a great variety of dialects. During the time that Norway was occupied by the Danes, the language of Norway around the metropolitan areas grew increasingly close to that of Denmark in many aspects, and many words, terms and pieces of grammar were taken up by the Norwegian inhabitants. On the countryside, though, less of this influence reached the local dialects, and great variation today exists. Because of this, Norwegian has more than one official orthography, and the two that have survived into major use today are called Bokmål (literally 'book language') and Nynorsk ('new Norwegian').
Bokmål more closely resembles the dialects that received a lot of Danish influence, and is close to the dialect of Oslo, the capital of the country, and is often very close to modern Danish orthography, although it's straying further from it in modern days, because of changes in both languages. This variety is used to write Norwegian by as much as 85 - 90 % of the people. Nynorsk was created in order to get a fitting orthography for the more conservative dialects around the country, and stays more true to the roots and heritage of the Norwegian language. Today, both varieties allow optional forms for many words and inflections to cover more of the dialectal varieties that occur.
Both of the two are merely written languages, and none of them corresponds exactly to any certain dialect, but, once again, Bokmål is close to the Oslo dialect. Native speakers usually cannot be said to speak Bokmål, or to speak Nynorsk, but in some kind of dialect or idiolect, but some people of course are close to doing so.
Swedish, Danish, Icelandic and Faroese all have but a single orthography each, which may be considered less fair, as Sweden, too, is a country holding great variation in dialects, but with a restrictive orthography in this regard. Icelandic and Danish are in less need of this, and do well with unified orthographies. Faroese, even though the speakers may be few, still shows a wide range of dialects, and the orthography usually permits optional spellings and forms for words differing the most, such as Thursday being <hósdagur>, as this represents most dialects, but with <tórsdagur> still being permitted, as this is how some people say it.
1.1. The alphabets and orthographies
All of the languages are written using the Latin alphabet, with a few modifications.
The Danish and Norwegian (both Bokmål and Nynorsk) alphabet looks like this:
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz Ææ Øø Åå
This is the Swedish alphabet:
Aa Bb Cc Dd Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Pp Qq Rr Ss Tt Uu Vv Ww Xx Yy Zz Åå Ää Öö
<ä> and <ö> correspond to <æ> and <ø> in Danish and Norwegian, but in the Swedish alphabet, the letter <å> is older, and comes before these two in the alphabet; in Danish and Norwegian, it hasn't been around for as long, and comes last. These are all seen as separate letters, unlike German <ä ö ü>.
While the above alphabets allow accents and circumflexes in certain loanwords or contractions (for example, weather in Nynorsk is <vêr> [a contraction of *<veder>, as reflected by Swedish <väder> and Icelandic and Faroese <veður>, but not by Bokmål <vær> and Danish <vejr>]), these letters are not considered separate ones in the alphabet. The Icelandic and Faroese alphabets, on the other hand, use acute accents to signify additional vowels in their own right, and so the accented vowels belong, as separate letters, to the alphabet.
The Icelandic alphabet:
Aa Áá Bb Dd Ðð Ee Ée Ff Gg Hh Ii Íí Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Óó Pp Rr Ss Tt Uu Úú Vv Xx Yy Ýý Þþ Ææ Öö
Finally, the Faroese one:
Aa Áá Bb Dd Ðð Ee Ff Gg Hh Ii Íí Jj Kk Ll Mm Nn Oo Óó Pp Rr Ss Tt Úú Vv Yy Ýý Ææ Øø
While Icelandic has an accented version of every vowel, Faroese lacks <é>, and the sound represented by <é> in Icelandic (pronounced /jɛ/) usually corresponds to <æ> in Faroese (pronounced as the diphthong /ˈɛa/); for example, Icelandic has <tré> /tʰrjɛː/ ('tree', 'wood') and <mér> /mjɛːr/ ('me', dative form), where Faroese has <træ> /ˈtʰɹɛa/ and <mær> /ˈmɛaɹ/.
The Faroese <ø> of course corresponds to the Icelandic <ö>, and <ö> is sometimes used in decoratively written Faroese. Faroese lacks two more letters, that Icelandic has; <x> and <þ>. The first one, representing /ks/ in Icelandic, is simply spelled <ks> in Faroese, which is usually also the case with Danish and Norwegian, but not Swedish, which also prefers to use <x> ('grow'; Icelandic <vaxa>, Faroese <vaksa>, Swedish <växa>, Bokmål and Danish <vokse>, Nynorsk <veksa> or <vekse>). The second one represents /θ/; a sound that Faroese lacks. This has usually turned into /t/ or /h/ in these days, while it has generally become /d/ in the Scandinavian languages ('thou'; Icelandic <þú>, Faroese <tú>, Scandinavian <du>, and 'there'; Icelandic <þar>, <þarna>, Faroese <har>, Swedish <där>, Danish and Norwegian <der>, optional Nynorsk <dar>).
1.2. Telling the languages apart
To someone who is not a native speaker of any of the languages, it may not always be easy to know which is which when seeing one of them written, and sometimes not even native speakers are able to tell any of the other four apart; some of them haven't even heard of Faroese. While there are indeed many similarities, there are also many differences that can be looked at in order to be able to figure out what language one is looking at.
For example, Swedish is the only of the five that uses the letter <ä>. Along with Icelandic, it is also the only one to use <ö>, although this can be seen in Faroese texts, but it's not common. Swedish is the only one to use <ck>, like English and German; all of the others use <kk>. Danish and Norwegian are the only ones to allow <dt> in non-compounds, where Swedish uses <tt> or <t>. There is no risk of this cluster appearing in an Icelandic or Faroese non-compound. Swedish and Nynorsk are the only ones not to allow <hv>; Nynorsk uses <kv>, and Swedish just uses <v>. The removal of <dt> and <hv> is only about a century old, and these may still be encountered in some texts, but are not official spellings anymore, and are not used in many modern publications.
Icelandic is the only one using the letter <þ>, and Nynorsk is the only one using circumflexes in native words. Of course, if most words contain acute accents, one can be confident that it is either Icelandic or Faroese. The same goes for the letter <ð>, which these two are the only ones to use. If you have recognised a text as being either Icelandic or Faroese, you can be quite sure that it is Icelandic if you see <é> or <x>.
Danish does not allow double consonants at the end of a word. If you spot this, it is probably not Danish. Icelandic is the only language to allow <nn> and <mm> to appear in front of plosives in non-compounds. Faroese doesn't allow double consonants to appear in front of other consonants at all. Icelandic is the only one to allow initial <hl> ('laugh' is <hlæja>; Faroese <læa>, Scandinavian <le> [or 'smile' in Swedish]), <hr> ('raven' is <hrafn>; Faroese <ravnur>, Danish and Bokmål <ravn>, Swedish and Nynorsk <ramn> [<korp> is the common word in Standard Swedish, and is used in Norwegian too]) and <hn> ('nape' [all cognates to 'neck'] is <hnakki>; Faroese <nakki>, Danish and Norwegian <nakke>, Swedish <nacke>).
Swedish and Danish prefer to use <j> after vowels to form diphthongs (such as <nej>, meaning no), while the other three prefer <i y> (<nei>, or Norwegian <høy>, meaning hay, reflected by Icelandic <hey> and Faroese <hoyggj> [this word contains no diphthong in Swedish or Danish, but Danish has <høj>, meaning high or tall, and Swedish has <höja>, meaning to raise]).
Icelandic and Norwegian are the only ones to use the diphthong <au> in native words. In Faroese, this has turned into <ey>, which is another diphthong in Icelandic, and in Danish and Swedish, and in many Norwegian words too, though, it is simply <ö>/<ø>. The Icelandic <ey> usually corresponds to <oy> in Faroese, and Faroese is the only one to have this diphthong (for example, for the word 'island', Icelandic has <ey>, where Faroese has <oyggj> (or the older <oy>, still remaining in place names, such as <Føroyar>, meaning 'The Faroe Islands' or <Streymoy>, which is the name of one of the islands of which The Faroe Islands consist), and Danish and Swedish simply have <ø>/<ö>, while Norwegian has <øy>.
One thing that characterises Faroese is the extensive use of the consonant clusters <ggj> and <gv>. Icelandic has these too (especially <ggj>), but not at all to the same extent as Faroese, and if you see the cluster at the end of a word, you can be pretty confident that the language that you are looking at is Faroese. Where Faroese has <oyggj> (island), <brúgv> (bridge), <síggja> (to see) and <rógva> (to row), Icelandic simply has <ey>, <brú>, <sjá> and <róa>. Icelandic, on the other hand, can be recognised by an extensive use of non-initial <f>, where the other ones would use <v>, such as <hafa>; Faroese <hava>, Bokmål <ha>, Nynorsk <ha>, <have> or <hava>, Danish <ha>, <ha'> or <have> and Swedish <ha>, <hava> or even <ha'> (in the case of the Scandinavian ones, the shortest forms, without the apostrophes, are the most common and standard ones [<ha>]).
Certain common words unmistakably belong to a particular language, such as Faroese <ið> ('which', 'as', 'that') and <tað> ('it', 'that'), Icelandic <svo> (so) and <hún> (she), Danish <I> (ye; plural you) and <sgu> (a word that cannot really be translated to English, but emphasises what is being said), Bokmål <hva> (what), Nynorsk <kva> (also what) and Swedish <skall> ('shall', 'will') and <till> (to) (the Swedish ones are spelled with a single <l> in all of the other ones).
2. Personal pronouns and introducing yourself
The personal pronouns are pretty similar in all of the five languages; it is the second person plural one that is the black sheep differing the most between them, as ye in Standard Danish, as well as Old Swedish and some modern dialects such as Västgötska, is I, sharing its roots with the Modern German ihr. In Standard Swedish, the old verb ending corresponding to this pronoun (-n) has been tacked on to the beginning of the word, and the form used by most Swedes today is ni.
While it seems there might be a dialect or two of Norwegian also using I, the most well-known word is probably dere, as it is written in Bokmål, more closely corresponding to the Western Northern Germanic heritage of the variety, and you get even closer to that heritage with the de of Nynorsk.
Both Icelandic and Faroese have done something interesting in this regard; they've thrown away the old plural forms, which are today very archaic. In Icelandic, the common word used to be þér, and in Faroese, it was probably tær. Today, though, both languages have taken the old dual forms into plural use, and the dual forms have thus been lost, in favour of replacing the old plural forms. These days, Icelandic uses þið, and Faroese uses tit, both from Old Norse þit.
For a better overview, let us put this into a table:
/ˈdeːrə/, /deː/, /iː/, /niː/, /θɪːð/ and /tiːt/
We will move back to this pronoun later on, to take a look at the object and genitive forms as well, but for now, let us move on to something a bit more familiar-looking between the languages, which you will use to introduce yourself; the first person singular. Here is another table:
/ˈjɛj/~/ˈja(j)/, /ɛː(g)/, /ˈja(j)/, /ˈjɑː(g)/, /jɛː(ɣ)/ and /ɛː/
Note that jeg does appear in Faroese, too, in some dialects.
The one most striking as different from the others, is the Swedish one, but the relationship is still clear, and there are Swedish dialects in which the word can be realised along the lines of eg and jeg as well. The Old Norse word was ek, with a long Indo-European history, related not only to the English I and the Dutch ik, but also to Spanish yo, Greek εγώ, and many others, all sharing the same meaning. Note that the Icelandic letter <é> stands for /jɛ/, which makes ég closer to jeg, than to eg, which is probably not obvious to the one unfamiliar with the Icelandic orthography.
Let us leave it at the nominative form for now, and go back to the other inflections later. For now, we need a verb in order for you to properly be able to introduce yourself; in the Northern Germanic languages, as well as most other Germanic varieties, with English being the odd exception, a certain verb, meaning to be called, is used. For example, the German form is heißen, and in Dutch, one would say heten. Using this verb is the common way to introduce yourself, even though the less common way of phrasing it like the English 'my name is [...]' still is correct.
The Old Norse cognate of the German and Dutch words mentioned above was heita, which has given rise to Icelandic heita, Faroese eita, Swedish heta, Danish hedde, Norwegian Bokmål hete or heite, and Norwegian Nynorsk heita or heite. The obvious oddity here is of course the Faroese word, which has lost the initial /h/, which is odd for the language in itself, as this is not a regular sound change; Faroese does not lack this sound in general. Then there is also Danish, which has softened the /t/, which is reflected by the spelling with <d>; something that has also happened with many southern dialects of Sweden, as well as the variety spoken in the archipelago not far from Gothenburg, among others. Lists read better than sentences in this regard, so I will repeat myself:
Bokmål: hete; heite
Nynorsk: heita; heite
Danish: hedde
Swedish: heta
Icelandic: heita
Faroese: eita
These are the infinitive forms, and one thing that's clear, is that Swedish, Icelandic and Faroese along with optional Nynorsk, use -a as the infinitive suffix, while Danish, Bokmål and optional Nynorsk use -e. Note that there are also lots of Swedish dialects using -e, but -a is the standard form. One thing that is also clear, is that Norwegian, not only by having several official ways of writing, but also by having optional forms for many words in each system, is much more friendly to dialectal variation than Swedish, which also has a wide range of often very differing dialects, but only one standard way of writing, and usually only one accepted form of each word, and most of the times that an optional form is allowed, the purpose is to bring the spelling closer to the standard pronunciation, rather than that of dialects.
In order to introduce yourself, the verb needs to be properly conjugated. The present tense is used. In Icelandic and Faroese, the process of conjugating verbs by person and number is still very much alive, and for these two, we need to make sure to pick the conjugation that corresponds to the first person in the singular number. Standard Swedish, Danish and Norwegian have all merged all of the forms with the old third person singular form for most verbs, even though dialects exist that have not.
For this particular verb, both Icelandic and Faroese use the suffix -i for this form, and we get Icelandic heiti and Faroese eiti. On the other hand, while this verb receives the weak suffix -ir for second and third person in Icelandic, Faroese uses the strong suffix -ur. The reason that Faroese uses the weak suffix -i for the first person, rather than a strong null suffix, is that Faroese has standardised the first person singular ending into -i for almost all verbs; even for those that historically had the ending -a, and still do in Icelandic, and where this is the vowel used for the Standard Swedish and optional Nynorsk forms as well. The Scandinavian standard languages all use the ending -er, yielding Norwegian heter/heiter, Danish hedder and Swedish heter. If we use all of these together with the personal pronoun and a name, such as Elsa, we get the following, along with a fairly common pronunciation, even though variations exist:
Bokmål: <jeg heter/heiter Elsa> [jɛj ˈheːtər;ˈhɛɪtər ˈelsɑ]
Nynorsk: <eg heiter Elsa> [ɛː(g) ˈhɛɪtər ˈɛlsɑ]
Danish: <jeg hedder Elsa> [ja(j) ˈheðər ˈelsa]
Swedish: <jag heter Elsa> [jɑː ˈheːtər ˈelsa]
Icelandic: <ég heiti Elsa> [jɛː(ɣ) ˈhɛɪtɪ ˈɛlsa]
Faroese: <eg eiti Elsa> [ɛː ˈaɪtɪ ˈɛlsa]~[ɛː ˈɔɪtɪ ˈɛlsa]
3. Interrogative pronouns, copulæ, rephrasing the introduction, and asking for someone's name
Like I stated, it is not incorrect to put this in the same way as it is generally done in English, using the copula, a possessive pronoun and the noun for a name; 'my name is Elsa'. Let us begin by looking at the Northern Germanic words for name:
Bokmål: <navn> [nɑvn]
Nynorsk: <namn> [nɑmn]
Danish: <navn> [ˈnaun]
Swedish: <namn> [namn]
Icelandic: <nafn> [napn̥]
Faroese: <navn> [ˈnaun]
These are all very similar, both when it comes to pronunciation and spelling, but Swedish and Nynorsk stand out in the crowd of <v>'s (the <f> in Icelandic of course belongs to those) with their <m>'s, which is also reflected in the pronunciation, and by the fact that the most common Old Norse word was also nafn, even though namn also existed. The relationship to the English name, Latin nōmen and even Proto-Indo-European *h₁nḗh₃mn̥ (arguably *néh₃mn̥, *nómn̥ or other similar variations) is not much of a mystery.
Next, a word corresponding to the English my would be needed. A possessive pronoun. Each noun has a gender, and while Danish, Standard Swedish and optional Bokmål have merged the masculine and feminine genders into the common gender, the neuter gender still exists in all of the five major varieties of Northern Germanic, and as navn/nafn/namn is a neuter word in all of them, the pronoun has to be inflected for this gender. Note that many Swedish dialects still tell masculine and feminine words apart, and that most speakers of Norwegian retain the distinction for at least a handful of words, while very many of them still retain the traditional distinction entirely. Bornholmsk is an interesting, insular dialect between Danish, Swedish and Norwegian, still retaining the distinction as one of few Danish dialects. All varieties of Icelandic and Faroese retain a clear distinction.
In this very case, the word is the same in all languages; mitt. In Danish, though, the spelling is <mit>, as Danish orthography doesn't allow double consonants to appear at the end of a word. Faroese displays a small difference here, though; the spelling is <mítt>, implying the pronunciation /ˈmʊɪʰt/, while the pronunciation is along the lines of /mɪt/ in all of the four others.
Another difference is that, in general, Danish and Swedish, both belonging to the Eastern branch of the Northern Germanic continuum, generally would express the possession just like in English, and phrase it like 'my name' (Swedish 'mitt namn', Danish 'mit navn'), while Norwegian, Icelandic and Faroese, belonging to the Western branch, prefer to, literally, put it as 'the name mine' (Bokmål 'navnet mitt', Nynorsk 'namnet mitt', Icelandic 'nafnið mitt', Faroese 'navnið mítt'). This is also the case for some Swedish dialects, and it does work out in Standard Swedish too, but it might have a more artistic or old-fashioned feel to it to the speakers who don't put it in this way. The spelling would be the same as for the Nynorsk example just given.
Finally, we need the word corresponding to the is in the English sentence. In the third person singular, the word is pretty much the same regarding pronunciation in all of them, pronounced along the lines of /ɛː(r)/ (or /e:/ in some Scandinavian variations) in all of them, with the realisation (or omission) of the rhotic being the main difference, as we are going to see when we finally put the entire sentence together in just a moment. There are also some Scandinavian dialects and minority languages in which the word is pronounced something like /jɛː(r)/, but this isn't reflected in the orthography or any of the standard forms of any of these five variations. In this case, Swedish is the abomination using the spelling <är>, while all of the others go with <er>. The word is derived from the Old Norse er, or es, which is a cognate to the English equivalent is.
All of the languages have SVO word order, just like English, and putting everything together, we get the following:
Bokmål: <navnet mitt er Elsa> [ˈnɑvnə mɪt æː(r) ˈelsa]
Nynorsk: <namnet mitt er Elsa> [ˈnɑmnə mɪt æː(r) ˈɛlsa]
Danish: <mit navn er Elsa> [mɪd̥ ˈnaun ˈæɐ ˈelsa]
Swedish: <mitt namn är Elsa> [mɪt namn ɛː(r) ˈelsa]~[mɪt namn eː ˈelsa] or <namnet mitt är Elsa> [ˈnamnə(t) mɪt ɛː(r) ˈelsa]~[namnə(t) mɪt eː ˈelsa]
Icelandic: <nafnið mitt er Elsa> [ˈnapn̥ɪð mɪʰt ɛːr ˈɛlsa]
Faroese: <navnið mítt er Elsa> [ˈnaunɪ ˈmʊɪʰt ˈɛːɹ ˈɛlsa]
Note that the Swedish and Norwegian rhotics come with lots of dialectal variation, including realisations such as [r], [ʁ], [ʀ], [ɣ] and more. In addition, the Stockholm dialect of Swedish has the characteristic [ɹ] realisation, just like most Faroese varieties, although there are also Faroese dialects using [r]. Danish and Icelandic are quite consistent regarding rhotic consonants, and Danish is close to German in this regard.
The infinitive form of the verb (to be) used to be vesa in older Old Norse, which then turned into vera, yielding Icelandic, Faroese and optional Nynorsk vera /vɛːra/, optional Nynorsk vere /ˈvɛːrə/, Danish and Bokmål være (Danish /ˈvɛːɐ/, Norwegian /ˈvɛːrə/~/ˈvæːrə/) and Swedish vara /ˈvɑːra/. There are also Norwegian dialects, such as Jærsk, using vara, like Standard Swedish, just like there are Swedish dialects realising it with /ɛ/. Many Swedes will often shorten the verb to va' /vɑː/.
3.1. Asking about someone's name
In English, this would be phrased as 'what is your name?', and the keyword here is the interrogative what, which we can use, along with the change of word order from SVO into VSO, and this is actually also exactly the case with the Northern Germanic varieties (with one puny exception, which will be shown in just a moment). The Nordic words for what are all cognates with the English one, and what is curious about them, is that no single variety uses the exact same spelling. Let us have a look:
Bokmål: <hva> /vɑː/
Nynorsk: <kva> /kvɑː/, /kɑː/
Danish: <hvad> /vɛːð/
Swedish: <vad> /vɑː(d)/
Icelandic: <hvað> /kʰvaːð/
Faroese: <hvat> /ˈkvɛat/
Faroese is the only one to have retained the same spelling and final consonant as Old Norse. Both Norwegian varieties have dropped it completely, and in Swedish, it is generally not pronounced either. Another interesting thing is how most of these begin with <hv>. Nynorsk does not, but its spelling reflects how the pronunciation of the initial part of the word is the same as in Icelandic and Faroese. In Bokmål, Danish and Swedish, the <h> does nothing for the pronunciation, which is just /v/, but Swedish is the only one of the three to have dropped this spelling from its orthography, just like English has retained the spelling (originally <hw>, but now spelled <wh>), as seen in <what>, while German and Dutch both have dropped the <h>, spelling it <was> and <wat>, respectively, showing us that the spelling differs even between each of all of the major Germanic varieties.
We are now able to use this word together with the affirmative sentence that we previously saw, using heita and the corresponding words in the sibling languages, if we change the word order and remove the name from it, and change the personal pronoun, but this holds true only for Norwegian (both varieties), Danish, Swedish and Icelandic. In Faroese, one does not use hvat in this case, but hvussu (pronounced /ˈk(v)ʊsʊ/), meaning how, just like one would express it in German, or even Spanish.
We still haven't changed the personal pronoun, though. Now we are asking someone for their name, and that someone should be referred to using the second person singular personal pronoun, in English you, or, for clarification, thou. This word was listed in the introduction; Icelandic þú, Faroese tú and Scandinavian du. One could be overly polite and use a special pronoun, but this is not a necessity, or even the common thing to do, in any of the languages, so that is not something that we will look further into.
/dʉː/, /dʉː/, /duː/, /dʉː/, /θuː/ and /ˈtʉu/
Now, we need to conjugate the verb differently for Icelandic and Faroese, and as stated before, Icelandic in this particular case uses the suffix -ir, while Faroese uses -ur, and we end up with heitir and eitur, respectively, and putting these forms together, one would get, for Icelandic, '[...] heitir þú?', and, for Faroese, '[...] eitur tú?'. Nothing wrong with the Faroese one, and actually nothing wrong with the Icelandic one either, but this is not how the Icelander would generally write or say it.
Icelandic, being the only variety doing so, in the case of the second person singular pronoun coming right after the verb, generally prefers to put the two words together, changing þú into either -ðu, -du or -tu, depending on the preceding sound (note how the <ú> changes into <u>), unless one specifically wishes to put stress on who the actor is. In short, we might end up with '[...] heitirðu?', instead. Which one to pick in this case depends on the tone with which one wishes to ask to question, or if the asker has already been asked for his name by the one whose name he now wishes to know, and if previous questions have been asked.
Bokmål: <hva heter/heiter du?>
Nynorsk: <kva heiter du?>
Danish: <hvad hedder du?>
Swedish: <vad heter du?>
Icelandic: <hvað heitir þú?> or <hvað heitirðu?>
Faroese: <hvussu eitur tú?>
All of them very similar, with the exception of Faroese, using a different interrogative pronoun, and having lost the initial /h/ of the verb, although still being comprehensible to the speakers of the rest of the languages.
Let us finally also do this with the phrase using the noun for a name, putting it in the same way as English would do. In this case, the verb is still inflected for the third person (the name) so no change occurs for Icelandic or Faroese in this regard. This time, Faroese will be using hvat. This requires a change of possessive pronoun, though, as the possessor now is the second person singular. The shape of the pronoun is the same as that of the first person one, but with the initial consonant changed into <þ> /θ/ for Icelandic, <t> /t/ for Faroese, and <d> /d/ for Scandinavian:
Bokmål: <hva er navnet ditt?>
Nynorsk: <kva er namnet ditt?>
Danish: <hvad er dit navn?>
Swedish: <vad är ditt namn?> or <vad är namnet ditt?>
Icelandic: <hvað er nafnið þitt?>
Faroese: <hvat er navnið títt?>
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More to come. We could say this is a 'demo', for you to see if you like this kind of layout, because at least I, personally, love to read things like these, with a bunch of interesting information on the side, just to get to know, even though it's not necessary to learn the actual language(s). I mean, the above 'lesson' could have been just a paragraph or two. What do you think?
. Usually word initially.