old icelandic

Thân thiện

An open book on a wooden table displays a page of Old Icelandic text.

Definition

1. Noun:
   • A historical North Germanic language: Old Icelandic refers to the extinct dialect of Old Norse that was spoken in Iceland until approximately the 16th or 17th century. It is the language in which the medieval Icelandic sagas, Eddic poetry, and other important Norse literature were written.

Examples of Usage

• Noun:
  • The Prose Edda was written in Old Icelandic.
  • Scholars study Old Icelandic to read the original sagas.
  • Old Icelandic began to evolve into Modern Icelandic around the 16th century.

Advanced Usage

• In linguistic classification: The term is used to specify the Icelandic variant of Old West Norse, distinguishing it from Old Norwegian, with which it was largely mutually intelligible.
  • The phonology of Old Icelandic is particularly well-documented through poetic texts.

Variants and Related Words

• Old Norse (n): The broader parent language from which Old Icelandic descended.
• Classical Old Icelandic (n): Sometimes used to refer to the language of the 12th and 13th centuries, its literary golden age.

Synonyms

• None direct: As a proper noun for a specific historical language, it has no true synonyms. It can be described as the medieval language of Iceland.

Related Phrases

• The Old Icelandic corpus: Refers to the entire body of surviving literature written in this language.
  • The Old Icelandic corpus is a treasure trove of Viking Age history and mythology.

Học thuật

Noun

1. the extinct dialect of Old Norse that was spoken in Iceland up until about 1600

Từ đồng nghĩa

• old icelandic