Milli mála - 2020, Blaðsíða 192
192 Milli mála 12/2020
MULTILINGUAL WRITING IN ICELAND
10.33112/millimala.12.7
notion of linguistic purism and that this approach is still a character-
istic of language policies in Iceland today.1 In her assessment of lan-
guage policy in the context of globalization, multicultural and inter-
national education scholar Halla B. Hólmarsdóttir asserts that “Ice-
land’s language policy is not only a governmental policy, it is a poli-
cy that comes from the grassroots…. Icelanders are very proud of
their language and are extremely determined to continually develop
and preserve the language for future generations”.2
Despite the size og the language community, the national commit-
ment to and interest in the Icelandic publishing industry is robust. In
2011, Reykjavík was one of the first of five cities globally to receive
the status of UNESCO City of Literature, and the first city in a non-
English speaking country to receive the appointment (Reykjavík UN-
ESCO City of Literature, 2020). In 2011, Iceland was the guest of
honor at the Frankfurt Book Fair, with a “substantial promotional
program and translation fund provided by the Icelandic project team
‘Sagenhaftes Island’ (Fabulous Iceland) and financial support of the
Icelandic government”.3 That year was also the most successful year for
translations of Scandinavian literature into German, and according to
Elisabeth Böker, Iceland’s promotional efforts “proved so successful
that other Scandinavian countries are now also eager to apply”.4
Icelandic literature has, for the most part, been understood as
literature written by Icelanders in Icelandic. Icelandic literature is
often presented as being part of a long-standing tradition going back
to the Medieval Period. This notion is, for example, reinforced in the
1 See for example Hilmarsson-Dunn, Amanda, “Protectionist Language Policies in the Face of the
Forces of English”, The Case of Iceland. Language Policy, 5/2006, pp. 295–314. doi: 10.1007/s10993-
006-9027-2; Hilmarsson-Dunn, Amanda, Kristinsson, Ari Páll, “The Language Situation in
Iceland”, Current Issues in Language Planning, 11/2010, pp. 207–276. doi: 10.1080/
14664208.2010.538008; Kristinsson, Ari Páll, “National Language Policy and Planning in Iceland
– Aims and Institutional Activities”, National Language Institutions and National Languages.
Contributions to the EFNIL Conference 2017 in Mannheim, ed. Gerhard Stickel, Budapest:
Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 2018, pp. 243–249.
2 Hólmarsdóttir, Halla, “Icelandic: A Lesser-Used Language in the Global Community”,
International Review of Education, 3–4/ 2001, pp. 379–394, https://www.jstor.org/stable/
3445351?seq=1 [accessed April 28, 2020], here p. 391.
3 Böker, Elisabeth, “The Incredible Success Story of Scandinavian Best Sellers on the German Book
Market”, Scandinavian Studies, 4/2019, pp. 582–589, https://www.muse.jhu.edu/article/738251
[accessed April 29, 2020], here p. 586.
4 Ibid.