Do native speakers of Icelandic understand Old Norse?
Hello everyone. The other day, I watched an episode of the History Channel's "Vikings" and they had some dialogue in what I suppose would be Old Norse (and Old English as well). I managed to understand maybe 50% of it (native speaker of German, more or less fluent in English, knowledge of Norwegian and Swedish). This made me wonder what the situation is like for native speakers of Icelandic - can you actually read and understand texts in Old Icelandic like the Edda or other sagas? Just curious. Thank you for your time.
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Thank you very much, very helpful indeed!
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We study Old Norse in school starting at 16 years old. It might be a stretch to say we "understand" it but most icelanders could get the gist of what was being conveyed.
The texts I remember being taught (just from the top of my head, I hope other icelanders can add to this list): Gylfaginning, Völuspá, Brennu-Njáls Saga, og Egils-saga.
Since old germanic influenced old norse and then old norse influenced old english highly I'm not surprised you were able to understand a sizable portion of it. But I know from my girlfriend that there are many 'old' german words not in common usage that she was able to use to help with her icelandic.
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