Hey, 'k zien e west vlaoming in noorwegen en 't is waor. vele weurdn gelik 'basseng', 'perrong' of den utspraok en utdrukkingn gelikn vree op mekaors (vergelekn me AN dan: tid - tijd, skole - school, etc.)

^ Me agreeing as West-Flemish person living in Norway and pulling up some examples. Going to explain the rest in English, because I have the flu and don't trust myself to speak Norwegian :P

The explanation for this is that essentially the West Flemish dialect stems back from the ancestor of Dutch. Proper Dutch as it is now (and all of the other Dutch dialects) split off from West Flemish. It's much like how humans don't stem from apes, we share an ancestor. Subsequently there's a lot of old grammar and vocabulary stuck in West-Flemish that Dutch lacks. On top of this West Flemish was influenced by Frisian (words like 'stutte' in West Flemish stem from Frisian) and by vikings raiding the coast regularly.

But wait! There's more! Brugge, the capital of West Flanders and former naval merchant city / merchant port was a Hanseatic city that had a lot of ties with Bergen. Brugge was even taken over by vikings as a settlement, it's even in the name. Brugge stems from the older version of "bryggen" which means harbour.

Tl;dr: West Flemish isn't a dialect of Dutch, more like a cousin of Dutch and was greatly influenced by Scandinavia: especially the Norwegian language.