Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1961, Síða 75

ICELANDIC ÐIALECTOLOGY: METHODS AN D RESULTS
73
the other hand, several scholars, mostly non-Icelanders, have main-
tained the existence of dialects in Iceland. E. g., as early as 1910, the
Norwegian philologist Marius Hægstad in a short article raised the
question: ‘Are there dialects in Iceland?’, only to answer it in the
affirmative.2 In 1924, Marius Kristensen gave a list of dialect fea-
tures in Icelandic speech,3 and other examples might be quoted.4
Of course, the difference between Icelanders and foreign scholars
in this matter is not as sharp as I may seem to have indicated. Thus,
the German philologist Hans Kuhn wrote that ‘Iceland is not only
actually, but it is also fundamentally without dialects’.5 And, on
the other hand, numerous Icelandic scholars have—with more or
less explicit reservations—acknowledged the existence of dialects in
Iceland.6 Nevertheless, the difference in view is conspicuous: By Ice-
landers the existence of dialects is very often denied, whereas thc
great majority of foreign scholars who have expressed an opinion on
the matter maintain their existence. I shall come back later to this
peculiar difference of opinion.
II
It is clear that the answer to the question whether there are dialects
in Iceland will, in part, be a terminological matter and depend on the
próf. dr. phil. Alexanders ]óhannessonar háskólarektors 15. júlí 1953 frá sam-
starfsmönnum og nemendum (Reykjavík 1953), pp. 139f.
2 M. Hægstad, “Er der bygdemaal paa Island?” Kringsjaa XVIII (1910), pp.
41—43.
3 M. Kristensen, “Oplysninger om islandske dialektforskelle,” Festskrift lill-
ágnad Hugo Pipping pá hans sextioársdag den 5 november 1924 (Skrifter utg.
av Svenska Litteratursallskapet i Finland 175; Helsingfors 1924), pp. 295—302.
4 Most recently, Dahlstedt, “íslenzk mállýzkulandafræði,” pp. 29—31.
5 H. Kuhn, “Die sprachliche Einheit Islands,” Zeitschrift fur Mundartfor-
schung XI (1935), p. 24:
Island ist nicht nur tatsachlich, sondern cs ist auch grundsátzlich ohne
Mundarten.
6 Among the earliest discussions is H. Hermannsson, Modern Icelandic (Is-
landica XII; Ithaca, N. Y., 1919), p. 50.