Learn Icelandic at home or in the classroom with this complete course, featuring 14 lessons complete with exercise key, glossaries, and audio CDs with dialogues by native speakers!

lceland is a place of fierce natural beauty and warmly hospitable people, and has seen surge in tourism in recent years. The nation’s language is unique as the glaciers, fjords, and hot springs that make up the island. The Icelandic literary tradition is a large part of the nation’s culture and understanding the language is a necessity to learning more about Iceland.

Ideal for students and travelers, Beginner's Icelandic with 2 Audio CDs contains 14 lessons honed from years of Prof. Helmisdóttir’s experience teaching Icelandic at universities in Finland, Iceland, and Canada. It includes:

• 14 lessons with dialogues, vocabulary and grammar instruction
• Review exercises with answer key
• Icelandic-English and English-Icelandic glossaries
• Glossary of unique words and colloquialisms
• Two audio CDs of dialogue and vocabulary with correct pronunciation by native speakers

A North Germanic language related to Norwegian and Danish, Icelandic is actually grammatically comparable to Latin or Ancient Greek. Due in large part to Iceland’s remote location, the linguistic changes that occurred in other Scandinavian languages are not seen in Icelandic, which still has complicated grammar systems. In fact, the Icelandic Sagas in Old Norse can be read by Icelanders today with little difficulty as the written language is largely unchanged in over 800 years! Students can supplement the Beginner’s guide with the Icelandic Practical Dictionary, also by Helga Helmisdóttir.

Helga Hilmisdóttir has a Ph.D. in Scandinavian languages from the University of Helsinki, where she also taught Icelandic for eight years. She is co-author of Beginner's Icelandic with 2 Audio CDs, also published by Hippocrene Books. Helga currently teaches at the University of Iceland in Reyjavik.

Helga Hilmisdóttir's profile page

Jacek Kozlowski has a degree in English Literature from the University of Manitoba. A native English speaker, he has learned to speak Icelandic fluently. He is the founder of Artoffact Records based in Toronto, Canada.

Jacek Kozlowski's profile page