ICELANDIC LANGUAGE

Icelandic Islensk national language of Iceland. It belongs (with Norwegian and Faeroese) to the West Scandinavian group of North Germanic languages and developed from the Norse speech brought by settlers from western Norway in the 9th and 10th centuries. Old Icelandic, usually called Old Norse, is the language in which the Eddas, sagas, and skaldic poems were written in the Middle Ages. By the time these works were written, several dialectal characteristics that differentiate Icelandic from Norwegian had emerged. In grammar, vocabulary, and orthography, modern Icelandic is the most conservative of the Scandinavian languages. It still has three genders (masculine, feminine, and neuter), four cases for nouns (nominative, genitive, dative, accusative), several declensions, and complicated pronoun and verb systems that have changed little since the classical period. For this reason, Icelanders today can still read the Old Icelandic sagas without difficulty. A great deal of change has taken place, however, in the pronunciation since Old Norse times. Although Icelandic borrowed words from Celtic, Danish, Latin, and Romance languages, most of these words have been replaced with totally Icelandic forms since the beginning of the 19th century, when a purist movement developed; now, all technical and abstract terms are formed only from Icelandic elements. See also Old Norse language.