National language of Iceland, one of the Germanic languages .
It developed from the Norse speech brought to Iceland by settlers from western Norway in the 9th10th centuries. Old Icelandic (see Old Norse ) is the language of the saga s and other medieval poems. In grammar, vocabulary, and spelling, modern Icelandic is the most conservative of the Scandinavian languages; modern Icelanders can still read Old Norse sagas. Icelandic once borrowed words from Danish, Latin, and the Celtic and Romance languages, but a purist movement that began in the early 19th century has replaced most of these loanwords with words formed only from Icelandic elements.