Íslenzk tunga - 01.01.1961, Side 111

ICELANDIC DIALECTOLOGY: METHODS AND RESULTS
107
during the past ages. We know that in the main industries, fishing
and agriculture, there have always been seasonal fluctuations in
employment in the different parts of the country. Therefore, people
travelled from one part to another in search of employment. Further,
we know that commercial centres were few and far between and that
trade routes, consequently, were long. It is also worth noting that,
in the absence of serfdom or personal adscription, people were free
to move, and it was undoubtedly not uncommon for people to do so.
All this, of course, has contribuled towards preventing the isolation
underlying dialect splitling.95
XI
Finally, we shall come back to the questions posed at the beginning,
whether there are dialects in Iceland, and what the reason is for the
unwillingness of many Icelanders, both laymen and specialists, as
opposed to foreign scholars, to speak of Icelandic dialects.
From the preceding exposition it is clear—and about this there
has of course never been any disagreement—that there are in Iceland
geographically distributed variations in speech, or, in other words,
‘dialect’ differences. But, in order to answer the question whether
‘dialect’ is the proper term to use, it is necessary to take into con-
sideration the following two points, which are characteristic for Ice-
landic as opposed to its cognate neighbours:
First, it is to be observed that, although the different dialect
features have been assigned to definite parts of the country and maps
drawn of their distribution, in many cases the features in question
are far from being universal, or even predominant, in their areas.
To take linmœli vs. harðmœli as an example, in the North we find
nowhere entirely pure harðmœli. In the centre of the Northern area
05 On this, see, e. g., Kiihn, “Die spraehliche Einheit Islands,” pp. 21—39;
J. Helgason, “Frán Oddnr Gottskálksson till Fjölnir,” Island; bilder frán
gammal och ny tid (Skrifter utg. av Samfundet Sverige-Island I; Uppsala
1931), pp. 36f.