Skírnir - 01.09.2004, Page 33
Sum mary
When Iceland was settled in the ninth and tenth cent uries, most ly by people of
Nor dic orig in, Old Nor se was the langu age gener ally spo ken in the Nor dic coun-
tries. Thus the ear ly in habit ants of Iceland had few difficulties in comm un icat ing
with their kins men on the continent, a situ ation which la sted through sever al cen -
t u ries, alt hough Old Nor se gradu ally developed into differ ent langu ages. In the
sixteenth cent ury, however, the mutu al und er stand ing between Iceland ers and the
other Nor dic peop les seems to have reached a point where Iceland ers had to resort
to other langu ages than their own. In the middle of that cent ury the Luther an
church was esta bl is hed in Iceland, in trod ucing a Lat in school sy stem of the same
sort as that of most countries in Northern Europe. Accor ding to this sy stem La tin
and to a much less er degree Greek were stu died by the le ar ned class in Iceland. At
the same time Dan ish and Germ an became inevita ble in many fields of learn ing,
ad ministration and tra de. Few people, on the other hand, seem to have had any
knowled ge of Eng lish and still fewer occupied themselv es with Dutch or possi bly
French and Span ish. A few examp les may be found of an unusu al fla ir for lan -
guages of remote orig in, such as Basque, Hebr ew, Arabic and even Tamil. A sur vey
of the differ ent ways in which knowled ge of for eign langu age was acquired in
Iceland in the sixteenth and seventeenth cent uries gives the im pression that al -
though org an ized lingu ist ic stu dies were more or less res er ved for the le ar ned
class, Iceland ic soci ety was neverthel ess flex ible en ough to give indi vi du als from
other soci al groups access to the world of for eign langu ages.
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