Search results
Icelandic is the language spoken by the people of Iceland. It is a Germanic language. It comes from the Old Norse language, the language spoken by the Vikings. Because Iceland is far away from other countries, the language has not changed much. Icelandic people can still read words from hundreds of years ago.
Icelandic is a Northern Germanic language spoken mainly in Iceland ( Ísland ), and also in Canada ( Kanada) and the USA ( Bandaríki Norður-Ameríku ). In 2017 the population of Icelandic was 338,349 [ source ], the vast majority of whom speak Icelandic.
Today Old Norse has developed into the modern North Germanic languages Icelandic, Faroese, Norwegian, Danish, Swedish, and other North Germanic varieties of which Norwegian, Danish and Swedish retain considerable mutual intelligibility while Icelandic remains the closest to Old Norse.
Old Icelandic, usually called Old Norse, is the language in which the Edda s, 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.
The Icelandic language is a dialect of Old Norse: the pan-Scandinavian language at the time of Iceland's settlement 1,150 years ago. But this common Norse tongue evolved into Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish over the centuries as local Kings tightened their grip – or lost an invasion. The Icelanders, meanwhile, kept the language alive by ...
Table of Contents show. The Iceland National Language is Icelandic. It has been used in the country since its settlement in the 9th century and has changed only a little. The Icelandic language became official in 2011, and according to statistics from 2015, Icelandic is spoken by around 314.000 people (native speakers).
It was a North Germanic language, spoken in Norway, Denmark, Sweden and, of course, Iceland until the 14th century. Many of today's Nordic languages, with the notable exceptions of languages such as Finnish and Sami, can trace their origins back to Old Norse. So, how do we get from Old Norse to modern Icelandic?
