Forse-seminar: Stephen Leonard

Forse-seminar: Norm-establishment and identity in early Iceland

Tid: 11.6.2009 14.15 – 16.00

Sted: Seminarrom F på Sydneshaugen skole

Kontakt: Gjert Kristoffersen

Stephen Leonard, University of Oxford

The language of a speech community can only act as an identity marker for all of its speakers if linguistic norms are widely shared and if a minimal number of language varieties are spoken. This study examines how a linguistic norm came to serve the whole of Iceland, what role language and social structures played in the construction of the settlers’ identity and how language reflected the Icelanders’ new identity.

Sociolinguistic theory tells us that the language community that we can reconstruct for early Iceland should lead to the establishment and maintenance of local norms. Iceland was, however, arguably mono-dialectal, was certainly characterised by long-term linguistic homogeneity and remained a society where nucleated settlements barely formed over a thousand-year period. Scholars have argued that a mixture of dialects levelled in Iceland shortly after the settlement. Studies show that dialect levelling requires the convergence of people on one place and sustained linguistic contact between the speakers. The settlement pattern of Iceland is indicative of population divergence (not convergence) and there is limited evidence of sustained contact. It is therefore proposed that the dialect levelling might be linked instead with significant population movements and social upheaval in mainland Scandinavia in the immediate pre-Viking period.

Although the identity projected in many of the early Iceland texts is actually a Norse one, the Icelanders presented their new identity conspicuously through the establishment of new (and to an extent original) social structures and their incipient literary culture. There was an indigenous concern for the Icelandic language from the outset; the Icelandic language and its rich literature became subsequently the single most important factor for the identity of the Icelanders. The foundations for this identity and linguistic culture were laid very early on and were rooted in the development of the language itself.