The High Icelandic Language movement has its origin in the Icelandic hyperpuristic circles of the nineties. Its members were inspired by the puristic extremities of the nineteenth-century Fjölnismen and the fanatic translation of Goethe’s Faust by Bjarni Jónsson frá Vogi. Towards the end of the millennium the movement was nothing more than a few individuals who were unsatisfied with the ‘in their opinion’ moderately puristic endeavours of the Icelandic word-commissions. These men went further where the Fjölnismen had stopped. Lists of purely Icelandic geographical names, Icelandicized proper names and names of chemicals were collected. All these efforts culminated in the foundation of the ‘Language Laundry’ (Nýyrðasmiðja Málþvottahús), which brought hyperpurism into the spotlight. The notion that word-building has to be regarded as an art and that those who practise it should be regarded as scalds (nýyrðaskáld), inspired a lot of people and a fanatic circle of enthusiasts emerged. Nevertheless, the hyperpuristic attitude aroused a lot of destructive criticism from the side of the more moderate purists and the radical anti-puristic militants. The discussions were often heated and not particularily friendly. Hyperpurists were presented as a bunch of clowns who had lost all touch with the situation of the language within the framework of the Icelandic society. Some of the criticism went to the nerves of some wordscalds and some of them lost their temper. This, unfortunately, had a negative impact on the popularity of the movement and some members refused to cooperate any further. A year of silence followed and it was reflected upon what kind of strategy should be adopted in the future. The fear that none of their neologisms would ever gain acceptance by the general public combined with the constant rejection of the concept of linguistic purism forced the movement into adopting a different strategy: ‘linguistic separartism’. Criticizing puristic endeavours in an artificial tongue is meaningless since there’s no imposition on the population and every man has the right to create an artificial language and choose its vocabulary. Inspired by the very conservative variant of New Norwegian (Nynorsk), High Norwegian (Høgnorsk), the hyperpurists started the construction of the loan-word-lacking, metaphor-dense Hypericelandic language (Háfrónska).
The bulk of High Icelandic vocabulary is identical with that of present-day Icelandic. When word-frequency is taken into account, both languages differ only a 3%. It has exactly the same grammar, pronounciation, and spelling. The only difference lies in the fact that as much loan-words as possible are replaced by neologisms based upon the Icelandic vocabulary: gíraffi (gnæfingi), páskar (vorjól), etc.. Concepts like ‘málvöndun’ are unexistent in High Icelandic. The language is already as clean as possible from the start. The well-known generalization of the dative at the expense of accusative, the so-called ‘dative-sickness’ is also inexistent in High Icelandic. If one doesn’t master the cases, one simply can’t speak High Icelandic. Yet another characteristic is the strong tendency to replace words by metaphoric or kenning-like neologisms: e.g. ‘meitilskáld’ (myndhöggvari), eldblóm (skoteldur), málferjumaður (túlkur), stálhákarl (kafbátur), málmörn (orrustuflugvél), blökustorkur (flugeðla).
It goes without saying that the achievements by the word-commitees during the last decades spares us from a lot of work. We can fully concentrate on the part of the Icelandic vocabulary that has been left unpurified: geographical names, proper names, names of chemicals, minerals, ect.
Languages free of foreignisms don’t exist. From a linguistic point of view, there is no such thing as a ”pure” language. All languages (even High Icelandic) have borrowings. But there is a difference between purity and originality. A word like ‘sinkbróðir’ for ‘cadmium’ contains a loan-word, but the compound as a whole is unique in the world. In a way, this kind of genuineness could be interpreted as a form of purity. Still the High Icelandics aim at reducing as much as possible the foreign words in Icelandic that were borrowed after the first written texts. The exclusion of many words won’t necessarily lead to language impoverishment. In order to avoid that, a large part of obsolete Old Norse vocabulary will be resurrected. The result will be a hyperpure variant of modern Icelandic.
It goes without saying that the achievements by the word-commitees during the last decades spares us from a lot of work. We can fully concentrate on the part of the Icelandic vocabulary that has been left unpurified: geographical names, proper names, names of chemicals, minerals, ect.
Languages free of foreignisms don’t exist. From a linguistic point of view, there is no such thing as a ”pure” language. All languages (even High Icelandic) have borrowings. But there is a difference between purity and originality. A word like ‘sinkbróðir’ for ‘cadmium’ contains a loan-word, but the compound as a whole is unique in the world. In a way, this kind of genuineness could be interpreted as a form of purity. Still the High Icelandics aim at reducing as much as possible the foreign words in Icelandic that were borrowed after the first written texts. The exclusion of many words won’t necessarily lead to language impoverishment. In order to avoid that, a large part of obsolete Old Norse vocabulary will be resurrected. The result will be a hyperpure variant of modern Icelandic.
The similarity between Icelandic and its extreme twin-sister is reflected in the design of their flags. Both are characterized by a sky-blue background-colour with in the middle a fiery-red symbol outlined in snow-white. Since speakers of High Icelandic lay special emphasis on language archaization, the representive symbol dates from the prechristian era. The thunderhammer, widely accepted as thé symbol of the Old Norse culture, was an obvious choice. The symbol is stylized in the same way as the cross in the existing flag. Every vexillologist should immediately recognize the Icelandic nature of the flag.
It is, however, unfortunate that present-day use use of ancient pagan symbols is immediately linked up with the fascistic world of thought. In this respect, the Old Norse hammer-symbol would excellently fit Scandinavian neo-nazism, which is regrettably already an afterstatement. The maculation of beautiful ancient symbols by totalitarian regimes is a disgrace and people should continue to appreciate this cultural inheritance for what it really signified before it was abused. A healthy form of nationalism that does NOT require contempt of other cultures DOES exist and there’s no reason why these symbols couldn’t be part of it.
We emphasize that we are completely neutral as regards politics and religion. We have not in the least anything against the christian faith or whatever religious faith or political ideology. The High Icelandic language movement is merely a linguistic one and devoted to the creation of a puristic stronghold within the Icelandic speaking community.
The future speakers of hypericelandic won’t necessarily be Icelandic. Every speaker of a Scandinavian language and last but not least every human being on this planet who is interested in Old Scandinavian culture is a potential student of Háfrónska. Geographical dispersion is no obstacle anymore in this era of mass media. It is uncertain whether we will equal the popularity of Nynorsk, but the phenomenon will be noticed.
Although many Icelandic scholars doubt the future success of High Icelandic, their will be a small community of speakers well before the end of this decade. A famous software engineer stated that 99 percent of the Icelanders would be uninterested. If we have to take his words literally, they sound very encouraging. It means that 2750 people would be willing to make the effort to learn Hypericelandic. If you compare this number with those of some endangered linguistic communities, the situation of High Icelandic isn’t that lamentable. We would be a considerable minority. More numerous than the Icelandic Ásatrú.
For now, we are still but a handful of enthusiastic icelanders who are working hard to give shape to our new language. We call upon every compatriot who is interested to join us and to help us in our neologistic endeavours. Search your dictionaries and target every unicelandic word you find. Many times you will be disappointed and unable to find a good native replacement. However, if you don’t succeed at first, try again later. Search the web for information about the term you want to translate. You will find many interesting links on this web-site that will spare you a lot of time. If anyone has original ideas or can provide us with interesting links, please don’t hesitate to inform us. Every neologism will be listed along with the name of the author, if she or he asks for it.
To end up with, we want to thank all those people who have made this possible who morally supported us.
Nýyrðaskáldin
Háfrónska (High Icelandic): An Ultra Pure Version of the Icelandic Language
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Originally Posted by Weg
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