How can we make learning Icelandic easier? 🇮🇸 Eiríkur Rögnvaldsson is known both as a fervent defender of the language who advocates for its protection, as well as someone ready, willing, and able to shut down conversations about the language’s survival when they turn xenophobic. Although he is now retired from his post of teaching Icelandic at the University of Iceland, he is more active than ever in public discourse around the Icelandic language. This is his take on what can be done to make

Teaching Icelandic PART 2

Yesterday we marked Icelandic Language Day - a moment to celebrate a language that’s been spoken on this island since the Viking Age. Icelandic has changed so little over the centuries that many people can still read the old sagas without much trouble. It’s the language you hear everywhere in daily life, from morning news to school lessons to the way we name new things that arrive in the modern world. Letters like Þ, Ð, Á, and É might look a bit mysterious at first, but each one is tied to our h