Unit IIC - A Sample
In the year 874 a Norwegian called Ingólfr Arnarson arrived off the coast of Iceland. He settled in a bay behind which rose steam from hot springs and he called it Smokey Bay: Reykjavík. Had the place been named by a Scot we might now know it as Reekwick. But it wasn’t and it was the speech of Norway that was taken to Iceland.

Over 1,100 years later a Norwegian would find it very difficult to understand an Icelander. This is principally because Norwegian has changed much more than Icelandic has. Indeed much of the fascination of Icelandic for a linguist is its archaic nature.

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Icelandic has, for example, been reluctant to adopt foreign words. Our words family, electricity, kitchen, photograph and bus have their roots in Greek or Latin and they have cognates in many languages – but not in Icelandic. Instead Icelandic uses its own elements when it needs a label for something:

The word for a computer, tölva, is supposed to be formed from tala meaning number and völva meaning prophetess. If I tell you that the verb fara means to go, what do you think a fartölva might be?