| About the Icelandic language |
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Stran 1 od 4 Introduction Andragoški zavod Maribor - Ljudska univerza is the author and the coordinator of the Language Festival project. Together with the partners from the Netherlands, Germany, Check Republic, Slovakia and Hungary we applied for financing with EU programme Socrates - Lingua 1. The project received positive feedback and was accepted by European Commission to be implemented between October 2003 and October 2005. In the project we prepared and organised the Language Festival in Maribor from 29th September to 2nd October 2004, held book exhibition of minor European languages, produced a web site and books on chosen languages. The Festival hosted many experts who introduced 24 European languages to general public in 4 days not only at AZM-LU but also at many schools and other institutions. In April 2005 we held book exhibition where we presented books and other materials on 17 minor European languages at Maribor Faculty of Education. We finalised the activities by producing the web site you're using at the moments. Here you can find some information regarding language connected culture, basic characteristics of relevant languages and language survival kits. Website language is Slovenian. Also German and English versions are available. In time we hope to achieve English, German and Esperanto descriptions for all languages. This website is still very much alive and constantly expanding. We plan to add new languages as well. Promotionally the project enjoyed great success. In cooperation with Mediamix we created an innovative way of attracting the public and received many awards at advertising festivals. Socrates Lingua declared the Language Festival project one of 50 best examples of promoting languages. Info regarding promotion of the Festival is available on: http://www.mediamix.si/slo/News/2005junij02.html Melita Cimerman and Zlatko Tišljar. Author: Baldur Ragnarson A short survey of the language, its history and characteristics The country and its history: a few basic facts Iceland is an island in the North Atlantic, whose extreme northerly point is touched by the Arctic circle. It has an area of about 103.000 sq.km. The population is a little short of 300.000 inhabitants. About 60% of the population live in the capital, Reykjavík. Iceland was settled mainly from Norway during the latter half of 9th century and the first three decades of the 10th century. A kind of local government soon evolved in some districts under the leadership of the most important or influential men; those leaders or chiefs also functioned as pagan priests. Their authority thus rested both on secular and spiritual power. The old Icelandic commonwealth was established by the foundation of the General Assembly, Althing, in 930. Its location was in Þingvellir, Assembly Fields, a unique place of nature, in south-western Iceland. There a great number of people assembled for two weeks every summer from every part of the country. The local chiefs became rulers of the country and together constituted the legislature of the General Assembly. They administered justice in their own districts and matters not settled there were referred to the General Assembly. In this way they held both the legislative and the judicial power. There was no national executive power, but on the chiefs fell the duty of seeing that men under their leadership received their rights, and to this extent they held the executive power. The power of the chiefs was not fixed to regional boundaries, those who were dissatisfied with their chief could attach themselves to another chief. As a result rivalry arose between the chiefs as can be clearly seen from the Icelandic sagas. This led to a struggle for power and was the chief reason for the ending of the old commonwealth and for the country's submission to the king of Norway en 1262. In the year 1000 Icelanders were converted to Christianity by legal decision at the General Assembly. Half a century later bishopric was established. The writing of the laws began in 1119, before that the laws were committed to memory. Writing of literature began a little later. The flowering time of the writing of the famous Icelandic sagas was the 13th century. In 1380, Iceland became a part of the State of Denmark where it remained until 1918 when it got independence, but the King of Denmark was still sovereign until the foundation of the Republic of Iceland en 1944. The national language in Iceland is Icelandic, a Germanic language spoken all through the country. In order to understand the origin of the language some words are necessary about the settlement of Iceland. The settlement of Iceland For thousands of years of human history Iceland remained unknown, a lonely uninhabited island in the North-Atlantic. There is some indication that a Greek seafarer, Pytheas by name, had seen the island on his exploring voyage to the north in the 3rd century B.C. but it is unclear, it might have been the islands north of Scotland or even Norway. In any case the island still remained unknown for centuries until it was discovered by Scandinavian seafarers in la 9th century. In the latter half of that century the first settlers came to the island. A unique source about the settlement of Iceland is Landnámabók, the Book of Settlement, from the first half of the 12th century. According to it the settlers came mostly from West-Norway, some from the Viking settlements in Scotland and Ireland, a few from Sweden. There is a legend in old Icelandic books that some Irish hermits had set up their dwellings in a few places in the country before the Norwegians and that they went away when the pagan settlers began to arrive. Nothing is known for certain about these men and some scholars have doubts about the veracity of that legend. |
