The Icelandic Language

Icelandic is the language called which the Icelanders user as their national languange.  This language branches off the North Germanic languages (Scandinavian), which in turn branches off the Indo-European branch.  The Icelandic language roots come from the Old Norse, which was the language of the Vikings during the 9th century A.D.  Due to Iceland's geographic isolation and strong literary culture, the language has managed to stay relatively un-changed.  Icelanders today can still take the old manuscripts written during the Viking period and read them. 

The spelling and pronunciation has changed throughout the years, but of all the Scandinavian languages, Icelandic is still the closest to the Old Norse.  Even with the introduction of the roman alphabet, Icelanders still retained some of the older Viking characters. 

Still today, Icelanders strive to maintain their language to the degree whereby they create new Icelandic words for all new concepts and technology items.  Icelanders tend to create the new words using older rarely used Viking words or by combining other common words.  As an example:

Telephone Icelanders use the word "Sími" which is an old Viking word that means "thin tread"
Computer Here the Icelanders use the word "Tölva" which is a combination of two words "Tölur" meaning numbers and "Völva" meaning Oracle.
Lögregla This means Police and comes from other two words, "Lög" meaning Law and "Regla" meaning Order.

This method of creating new names has enabled Icelanders to keep the language almost slang free. 

The Icelandic alphabet consists of 34 letters, counting the acute characters as well:

Aa - Áá - Bb - Cc - Dd - Ðð - Ee -Éé - Ff - Gg - Hh - Ii -Íí - Jj - Kk - Ll - Mm - Nn - Oo - Óó - Pp - Rr - Ss - Tt - Uu- Úú - Vv - Xx - Yy - Ýý - Zz - Þþ - Ææ - Öö

See here for more information on the alphabet.

For more resources on the Icelandic language see here.