Monday 16 November 2020

dagur íslenskrar tungu

Celebrated annually since 1996 with accolades presented to the individual or group that has significantly contributed to the language, the Day of the Icelandic Language was picked for this date in honour of the poet, naturalist and independence activist Jónas Hallgrímsson (*1807 – †1845). Clerk to the sherrif of Reykjavík and studying for the bar, Jónas later went to metropolitan Copenhagen to complete his law degree but instead found himself far more enamoured with literature and natural sciences and so switched his focus of study, writing poems and founding a patrotic newsletter, Fjölnir, that argued for autonomy and promoted the native language of the island, based on Old Norse with little outside influence. Dividing his time between Denmark and Iceland, Jónas died of blood poisoning, aged thirty-seven, having slipped on a flight of stairs going up to his apartment. Let’s lighten the mood and build your vocabulary with the way the language forms new terms at the link here, cutely illustrated by Eunsan Huh.