History of Icelandic

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The history of the Icelandic language began in the 9th century when the settlement of Iceland, mostly by Norwegians, brought a dialect of Old Norse to the island.

The oldest preserved texts in Icelandic were written around 1100, the oldest single text being

The language of the era of the sagas is called Old Icelandic, a dialect of (Western) Old Norse, the common Scandinavian language of the Viking Age. The Danish rule of Iceland from 1380 to 1918 had little effect on the evolution of Icelandic, which remained in daily use among the general population: Danish was not used for official communications.

Though Icelandic is considered more

The period from 550 to 1050 is called the Scandinavian or "Common Nordic" period. During this time, a notably unified common language was spoken throughout Scandinavia. The key position of Denmark as the focal point of the whole area meant that the language was often simply called "Danish" (dǫnsk tunga).^[1] Even though the first hints of individual future developments were already identifiable in different parts of the vast region, there were no problems with mutual intelligibility.

With regard to the dǫnsk tunga spoken in Iceland, there are no written documents from this period. Ancient Scandinavian runes were certainly widely known but were never used to write on papyrus (except Codex Runicus) or skin. Few runic inscriptions have been found and nearly all are dated after 1200.

Ancient Scandinavian or Norse (1050–1350)

The period from 1050 to 1350 is known as Old Scandinavian, Old Nordic, or Norse. There are numerous manuscripts and documents dating from this period, which allows researchers to characterize Icelandic from this period accurately.

All of the documents use the Latin alphabet, which was introduced to Iceland in the 12th century. Laws were transcribed onto vellum for the first time in 1117–1118. The first manuscripts among those still in our possession date back to the second half of the 12th century. Sometime in the latter half of the 12th century the First Grammatical Treatise (Fyrsta Málfrœðiritgerðin) was composed, a highly original description of the language unique in Europe at the time. The treatise was concerned with the sounds of the language; it described the internal workings of the phonological system in much the same way as modern linguistic methodology. The manuscript, today kept in Reykjavík at the Handritastofnun Íslands ('Manuscript Institute of Iceland') is a later copy of the original text. Three other grammatical treaties were composed in the following decades.

Although the oldest manuscripts date back to around 1150, they show structures that were in use from around 900. This is particularly true of the ancient

Around 1300, the Danish language saw a very rapid evolution in both its phonology and its morphology. Given that changes to a spoken language are often only recorded later in the written language, it is probable that in spoken Danish these changes occurred around 1250 and perhaps even earlier. The rapid evolution of Danish (a simplification comparable to that seen between Old English and Middle English) gave rise to a marked difference between the north and south of Scandinavia. In 1350 Danish assumed characteristics that are still seen in the language today.

Norwegian and Swedish developed more slowly, but show equally notable differences from Icelandic, which is always more conservative and has maintained even to this day many common Scandinavian features.

In Norwegian a kind of vocalic harmony developed, in which a syllable after a stressed syllable with a

With regard to consonants, Continental Scandinavian languages and most other Germanic languages lost the series of fricatives /θ, ð/, which were retained only in Icelandic and English (which shows here a notably archaic phonological trait). They were replaced with the corresponding dentals /t, d/ (Norwegian, Swedish tung "heavy" smed "smith", cf Icelandic þungr, smiðr (modern Icelandic þungur, smiður).

Icelandic is the only Germanic language to have conserved the word-initial consonant sequences ⟨hl, hr, hn⟩, at least from a graphic point of view (their pronunciation is in part modified by the desonorization of the second consonantal element): Icelandic hljóð, hrafn, hneta, cf English loud, raven, nut, Swedish ljud, ramn (toponymic only), nöt, German Laut, Rabe, Nuss.

Again along with English, Icelandic is unusual among Germanic languages to have conserved, if only at a local level, the pronunciation [xw] of the word-initial consonantal cluster ⟨hv⟩: Icelandic hvað, hvalur [ˈxwaːð, ˈxwaːlʏr], more commonly [ˈkʰvað, ˈkʰvaːlʏr]. In English what, whale, the ⟨wh⟩ represents /ʍ/ only in certain dialects. The other Germanic languages have consonantized the cluster: German was, Wal-fisch [v-], Dutch wat, wal-vis, Swedish vad, val[fisk]. Until the early years of the 20th century Swedish maintained the orthography in words such as hvad, hvalfisk, which is purely historical. In Danish one writes but does not pronounce [hv-]: hvad, hval-fisk [ˈvæːð, ˈvælfisɡ̊], while in Nynorsk, in some cases, one writes and pronounces [kv-] (kva), exactly as is usual in modern Icelandic (southern dialect and literary). There are also indications that ⟨h⟩ was originally pronounced [x].

An important vocalic development, also from a morphological standpoint, was the disappearance of word-final -r with the addition of epenthetic /ʏ/, written as ⟨u⟩: Old Icelandic akr, gestr, merkr, þú gefr became Modern Icelandic akur, gestur, merkur, þú gefur.

In the old language the verbs forming past tense with the dental suffix (corresponding to -d in English) were apart in the first and third person, ending with -a in the first person but -i in the third person. The first person took the form of the third person and are now identical. This is the only alteration in person inflection from the old language, here in stark contrast to the other Scandinavian languages where they vanished completely and halved in Faroese.

Middle Icelandic (1350–1550)

The current spelling of the language is unchanged from about 1300. In discussing the development of the language it is usually most convenient to divide it into two sections where the changes prior to the current spelling are outlined in the former and later changes in another. In the period from 1350 to 1550, coinciding with the total loss of independence and Danish rule, the difference between Norwegian and Icelandic grew even larger. Norway also fell to the Danish Crown, and Danish became its

• In the vowel system the long vowels /aː, eː, ɛː, oː/ became diphthongs, and the
  short vowels became less tense: they are now very lax.^{[clarification needed}
  ] Orthography changed: the letters ⟨œ⟩ and ⟨ǫ⟩ were replaced by ⟨æ⟩ and ⟨ö⟩: Old Icelandic bøkr, lǫndom became Modern Icelandic bækur, löndum. The vowel letter ⟨o⟩ in many morphemes (probably already pronounced [ʏ] in the early period) changed to ⟨u⟩: londom, vér gefom, þeir ero > löndum, við gefum, þeir eru. However the pronunciation of unaccented vowels remained very clear, compared to what happened in the other Scandinavian and Germanic languages, a factor that played an important role in the conservation of some forms.
• The digraph ⟨au⟩, which in Old Icelandic signified the same thing as it does in Spanish or German ([au], similar to the ⟨ow⟩ in English "how"), changed to [œy], which is similar to German ⟨eu⟩ ([ɔʏ]), but starting with [œ] (i.e. Icelandic ⟨ö⟩) instead of [ɔ] (i.e. Icelandic ⟨o⟩).
• The consonant system underwent even more profound transformations. Phenomena such as
  aspirated, while voiced consonants lost their vibration while retaining their articulation. Another very notable phenomenon is preaspiration, in which certain consonant clusters are preceded by a complete closure of the vocal cords followed a light aspiration. Other consonant clusters developed an unvoiced dental element (prestopping). Neither phenomenon is written, which reflects the fact that they are (still) merely phonetic (i. e., are not used to distinguish meanings) and have not (yet) become phonological (but this is a common phenomenon in many languages of cultures like English, French
  and Danish). Morphophonetic phenomena have also developed, some of them denoted by the graphemes (gef þú > gefðu etc.)

Around 1550, with the

The modern Icelandic alphabet has developed from a standard established in the 19th century primarily by the Danish linguist Rasmus Rask. It is ultimately based heavily on an orthographic standard created in the early 12th century in a mysterious document known as The First Grammatical Treatise by an anonymous author who has later been referred to as the 'First Grammarian'. The later Rasmus Rask standard was basically a re-enactment of the old treatise, with some changes to fit concurrent Germanic conventions, such as the exclusive use of k rather than c. Various old features, like ð, had actually not seen much use in the later centuries, so Rask's standard constituted a major change in practice. Later 20th century changes include most notably the adoption of é, which had previously been written as je (reflecting the modern pronunciation), and the abolition of z in 1973.

Linguistic purism

During the 18th century, the Icelandic authorities implemented a stringent policy of linguistic purism. Under this policy, some writers and terminologists were put in charge of the creation of new vocabulary to adapt the Icelandic language to the evolution of new concepts, without resorting to borrowed neologisms as in many other languages. A few old words that had fallen into disuse were updated to fit in with the modern language, and neologisms were created from Old Norse roots. For example, the word rafmagn ("electricity") literally means "amber power" – a calque of the Greek elektron ("amber"); similarly the word sími ("telephone") originally meant "wire", and tölva ("computer") combines tala ("digit"; "number") and völva ("female fortuneteller").

Foreign influences on Icelandic

Toponyms

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Even though the vast majority of Icelandic

The efforts of the government in Copenhagen to make Danish the official language of Iceland have left in their wake many Danish terms in official documents, but they have little lasting success. The rural population remained faithful to their own ancestral language, while Danish borrowings were used only by a restricted class of ageing educated people who were heavily influenced by Danish culture and lived only in Reykjavík. So when the battle for the purification of Icelandic from all Danicisms began in the 19th century, the groundwork had already been laid. The purification campaign was such a success that Danish borrowings were almost completely eliminated. Only a few terms by now stable in the spoken and administrative language survive, like ske "happen" (cf. Danish ske, corresponding to German ge-schehen), fordæma "pass sentence", (cf. Danish fordømme), the adverbs kannske (more commonly kannski) and máske "perhaps, maybe" (cf. Danish kanske, måske, lit. "can happen") and some nouns like blýantur "pencil, crayon", fangelsi "prison" and frímerki "postage stamp" (cf. Danish blyant, fængsel, frimærke).

Gaelic influences

These influences are very slight and most notable in simple Gaelic names that have been more common in Iceland than elsewhere in Scandinavia over the centuries, Njáll – Niall, Brjánn – Brian, Kaðlín – Caitlín, Patrekur – Padraig, Konall – Conall, Trostan – Triostan, Kormákur – Cormac.

Influences of other languages

Influences of other languages are relatively insignificant. Certainly, many terms of

Latin borrowings dating back to the introduction of Christianity include kredda "creed, dogma" (< Latin credo) and predika "prophesy, preach" (< Latin prædicare; cf. German predigen); more recently the very common náttúra "nature", persóna "person" (originally Etruscan, one of the few remaining words in use of that language) and partur "part". With regard to modern languages, Icelandic has been influenced (in recent times quite heavily) only by English, particularly in the technical lexis and by the younger generation. In languages such as Italian, English words are simply borrowed just as they are; in contrast, in Icelandic they are adapted to the local phonetic and morphological system. For example, pönkarar and rokkarar ("punk rockers" and just plain "rockers") who play á parketi diskótekanna "on the parquet of the discothèques".

See also

• Icelandic phonology
• Greenlandic Norse
• Old Norse
• Old Norwegian
• Vowel shift

References