ICELANDIC LANGUAGE. The Ice landic language is a member of the Scandina vian branch of Germanic languages. Together with Old Norwegian as spoken in Norway and in her Western colonies, the modern Norwe gian dialects, and Faroish it forms the Western Scandinavian group, while Swedish and Danish form the Eastern. (See DANISH LANGUAGE). The original settlers in Iceland came from Nor way direct or from the Norwegian colonies on the islands north of Scotland. The majority were from southwestern Norway, and with the dialect of this section of Norway the Icelandic language remained most closely related till the 14th century, from which time Icelandic is a language separate from Norwegian. Owing to the island's isolated location, the Icelanders have for a longer time than other countries preserved old habits and customs, and partic ularly has the ancient language been retained with comparatively few changes. The popula tion has at no time exceeded 100,000, while about 25,000 have in recent years found new homes on the North American continent, about equally divided between Canada and the United States. But the language and literature of this people, so insignificant in number, are of the greatest interest and value.
The history of the Icelandic language may be divided into two periods: Old Icelandic (874 to the time of the Reformation) and Modern Icelandic. In the so-called classical period, from the latter half of the 12th century to 1350, the language of Iceland and Norway was often called °Norront mil° (Norse tongue). The °Nom° language is still used about what re mains of the Norwegian language on the Shet land Islands (cf. Jakob Jakobsen's gisk Ordbog over det norrane Sprog paa Shet land)). While changes common to the lan guage of Norway and Iceland are developed in this period, there are also certain characteris tics in Icelandic distinguished from Norwegian (see NORWEGIAN LANGUAGE), but as by far the most important literature was either produced or preserved in manuscript in Iceland,.the Ice
landic form became the standard, and even in Norway Old Norwegian is taught in the schools in the Icelandic form. Some differences be tween Norwegian and Icelandic are: u-niuta tion of a is found in Norwegian only when u is dropped in the following syllable, in Ice landic both when it is dropped and when it is retained (Icelandic forum, Norwegian farum); original h has been retained in Icelandic (even till this day) before 1, n and r. while in Norwe gian h was dropped (Icelandic hlutr, Norwe gian lutr; Icelandic hniga, Norwegian niga) ; o (ce) becomes (13th century) in Icelandic (ae) (narrow, Icelandic norrena); later, e be fore ng is changed to ei in Icelandic. The classical Icelandic was practically uniform throughout the island, with very few dialectic differences. This was owing to the lively in tercourse between the different settlements of the island and between these and the mother country, to the annual Althing gatherings and to the flourishing literature. As a literary lan guage it takes the highest rank among the old Scandinavian languages not only on account of its wealth of literary treasures, but also on account of its pliancy, its expressive and ele gant style. Both the valuable literary produc tions and the retention, on the whole, of the more ancient forms give it a fundamental im portance for the study of Scandinavian lan guages and literatures in all their branches. Even at an early date their language became to the Icelanders an object of scientific study, as seen, e.g., in the so-called 'First Grammati cal Treatise' in Snorre's 'Edda,' written by an unknown scholar in the 12th century. From the 14th century, Middle Icelandic falls far below the Classical in power and grace. From the orthography, often inconsistent and a mix ture of old and new, is seen the transition to the pronunciation which is characteristic of Modern Icelandic. A considerable number of foreign words make their appearance, borrowed from French, German and Danish.