Linguistic purism in Icelandic

Linguistic purism in Icelandic is a sociolinguistic phenomenon with the aim of substituting loanwords with the creation of new words from Old Icelandic and Old Norse roots and preventing new loanwords from entering the language. In Iceland, linguistic purism is archaising, trying to resuscitate the language of a golden age of Icelandic literature. The effort began in the early 19th century, at the dawn of the Icelandic national movement, aiming at replacing older loanwords, especially from Danish, and it continues today, targeting English words. It is widely upheld in Iceland and it is the dominant language ideology. It is fully supported by the Icelandic government through the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, the Icelandic Language Council, the Icelandic Language Fund and an Icelandic Language Day.

The first signs of the Icelanders' pre-occupation with their mother tongue date back to the mid-12th century with the First Grammatical Treatise (Fyrsta málfræðiritgerðin), which undertook to design an alphabet for the language and proposed separate (non-Latin) letters for the distinctive Icelandic phonemes. It was, in a way, an attempt to give the young Icelandic people a language of their own. Also significant was the Icelandic historiography, which started at an early date with Ari Þorgilsson's Íslendingabók and ranged through the Landnámabók (book of colonization) to Snorri Sturluson's Heimskringla. In particular, the prose of the sagas of the Icelanders and Snorri's skaldic poetry are clear signs of appreciation of the native language.

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