ABSTRACT

Iceland has often been presented as being the only country within Europe which is monolingual because it has no indigenous minorities, nor has it had any sizeable immigrant communities. However, the number of immigrants has increased greatly in recent years, making the country less linguistically and ethnically homogenous now than at any other time in its 1000-year history. Iceland has a small population of about 320,000. It has a strong literary tradition and a conservative and protectionist language policy, which is supported by the majority of the population. It is isolated geographically, a factor which has assured its language greater protection from outside influence in the past, relative to the other Nordic countries. Icelanders are pragmatic, however, and understand that, in order to communicate with other people outside its borders, they need to learn other languages. Hence, there is a great emphasis on foreign language learning, which means that most Icelanders can communicate in more than one language.