This is a joint course for students in Icelandic, General Linguistics and Sign Language Linguistics. It falls into two parts. On the one hand, in Thursday classes, the students receive training in critical thinking, scientific methods and academic writing. Topics include the use of handbooks and other sources, the style and structure of academic papers, research methods in linguistics and literature, conventions regarding citations and bibliographies, etc.

In the second part of the course, taught on Tuesdays, the students are introduced to the various sub-disciplines of Icelandic, General Linguistics and Sign Language Linguistics as academic subjects and their connection to other subject areas. Different teachers and other guests introduce their sub-disciplines and areas of specialization.

The course gives an introduction to linguistics and methods of linguistic analyses. The goal is to acquaint students with the nature of human languages and the main features of Icelandic grammar. 

This course is an introduction to literary theory, its terms and methods. Students are trained in analysing literary texts, poems, prose and drama. 

An overview of Icelandic literary history from the beginning to the end of the 19th century. Novelties and changes in Icelandic literature will be placed in context with contemporary currents in European literature.

The course focuses on the various ways in which medieval texts can be studied, referring to both medieval or modern literary theory. The characteristics of medieval textual culture will be discussed, as well as medieval attitudes to fact and fiction, entertainment and edification. Texts representing all of the most important genres of Icelandic medieval literature will be read.

An introductory course in Icelandic phonetics, phonology, and morphology. The basics of acoustic phonetics and Icelandic articulatory phonetics will be introduced, accompanied by training in phonetic transcription. The main concepts of phonology will be presented, followed by an overview of sound alternations in Icelandic and their conditions. Basic concepts in morphology will be presented and the main word formation processes in Icelandic and their productivity will be dealt with. Grammatical categories in Icelandic will be outlined, the inflection of the main parts of speech will be described, and an overview given of inflectional classes and variations.

Historical overview of the development of literary theory. The main emphasis is on twentieth and twenty-first century trends and methods. In addition to lectures there are small group discussion periods.

This course aims at explaining the connection between diachronic language change and synchronic language variation, as it is generally assumed that language changes generate variants that coexist for a time and that all synchronic variants are caused by a language change of some kind. The course will, on the one hand, discuss the nature of language change and the main types of changes, and on the other hand, the nature of synchronic variation. We will focus on the development of Icelandic; hence, examples will primarily be taken from the history of Icelandic and from present-day Icelandic, but we will also look at parallels in other languages.

This course covers the basic issues in Icelandic syntax, including parts of speech, phrasal categories, the syntactic classification of verbs, movements of various kinds and grammatical functions. The ways in which language use, semantics, and pragmatics relate to syntax will also be discussed.

The meaning of words and sentences is often determined by the context, for instance in irony. How do listeners understand us if we don‘t always say what we mean? What do conversations in different cultures and languages have in common? In this course we will examine language in interaction from different perspectives. Key concepts in linguistic pragmatics will be introduced, including the contribution of context to meaning. The methodology and key topics of conversation analysis will be described along with recent comparative studies on language in interaction around the world. We will also briefly discuss interdisciplinary psycholinguistic research on pragmatics. Students will get hands-on experience with recording conversations, the conceptual analysis of talk, and use of relevant software (including Praat for analyzing and processing sound files and ELAN for annotation of conversation).

Kings’ sagas and Family sagas are two major types of medieval Icelandic literature. Scholarship on the Kings’ sagas started in the 17^th century, but in the 20^th century, scholars were focusing the Family sagas in particular. A core question at the time was whether these sagas were built upon some sort of oral tradition, or whether they were first and foremost written literature. These questions were not least dependent on currents from other field of research, for example sociology and anthropology. Today, the scholarly landscape has changed yet again, and many scholars now have their focus on either the developments and revolutions in Europe from the 12^th to the 14^th century, or on topics that are relevant to us today, for example, the dealing of man with nature, or human emotions in the light of growing uncertainty and insecurity in daily life. In this class, we want to dive deeper into the history and development of this research, and we also want to read several Kings’ sagas and Family sagas to come to our own scholarly conclusions.

A course on Icelandic lyrics and popular culture from the mid-20th century to the present. The approaches of Cultural Studies will be used in order to throw light on the position and development of these lyrics during a period of social changes, rock culture and multimedia.

This course will introduce concepts and methods in Historical Linguistics, i.e., the field of Linguistics that studies language change. The various kinds of language change will be discussed, their causes and characteristics. We will study examples of language changes from different periods, from Germanic and other Indo-European languages, in particular, but also from other language families. The development of ideas about the nature of language change will be discussed along the way.

The course provides students with an overview of speech pathologists' main subject areas within an Icelandic setting. This is a vast and diverse domain, ranging from the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia and aphasia in adults, to language impairment and speech sound disorders in children. The course will intertwine essential terms and knowledge with more practical approaches to the material. Furthermore, students should gain the skills necessary to acquaint themselves with relevant research and peer-reviewed articles within the field of speech-language pathology.

This course is primarily intended for undergraduate student in the humanities at the University of Iceland who wish to be able to use programming in their work. In the course, we go through the foundations of programming using the programming language Python and an emphasis is placed on the analysis of textual data. The course is therefore appropriate for those who would like to get to know language technology at the undergraduate level, especially those who are interested in pursuing the language technology program at the MA-level. The course is taught alongside MLT701F Programming in language technology at the MA-level and all students attend the same lectures but BA students get shorter assignments than MA students. When solving various programming tasks involving the analysis of text it is beneficial for students to be at least somewhat familiar with important concepts in the grammatical analysis of natural languages but if a student is unsure whether they have the appropriate background for the course, they should feel free to contact the instructor for further information. 

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing. Students who subsequently enroll in the MA-program in language technology will build on skills acquired in this course in other courses about natural language processing.

Later

This course covers the basics of phonetics and phonology. The first half of the course will focus on phonetics. The speech articulators and sound production will be described. Students will receive training in phonetic transcription. The main acoustic methods will be introduced and the relationship between phonetics and phonology will be discussed. In the second part of the course, concepts and methods in the analysis of phonological systems will be introduced and students will be trained in their use. Different theories in phonology will be examined in relation to language in general and Icelandic phonology in particular.

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

Can literature play a part in the fight against global warming? How do volcanic eruptions and natural disasters feature in Icelandic literature? The course searches answers to these and many more questions regarding the connection between literature and nature or the environment. This connection is what concerns ecocriticism, which will be introduced in the course, along with other research fields within environmental humanities. Works from various periods of the history of Icelandic literature will be read and analysed in view of critical theories within environmental humanities. These include the connection of literature with the ocean, natural disasters, climate, parts of the land, aesthetic sense and the future of life on planet Earth.

This is a basic composition course. Writing skills will be honed through weekly assignments, lectures, class discussions and workshops.Approaches to writing research papers will be addressed, such as choosing and narrowing a topic, structure, and sources. Register, style, spelling, punctuation, and resources for writers will be discussed. Students write essays and papers of various kinds and get regular feedback from peers and teachers. Course assessment is based on written assignments and class participation. The course can only be passed if all assignments are turned in.

This course provides an introduction to the study of folk narrative as a particular genre within the overall field of folkloristics. Students will be introduced to the main theories concerning the origins, features and distribution of folk tales, their role in society, their collection, methods of classification and means of preservation. Among others, students will be introduced to the work of Antti Aarne, Inger M. Boberg, Bruno Bettleheim, Linda Dégh, Stith Thompson, Timothy Tangherlini and Alan Dundes. Particular attention will be laid to the main forms of oral narrative, particular attention being paid to the form and analysis of legends and fairy tales from the viewpoint of the main arguments concerning these aspects of study, among others the work of Algirdas Greimas, Bengt Holbek, Max Lüthi, Axel Olrik and Vladimir Propp.

The aim of this survey course is to sample the literary history of the last four millennia by reading a number of world masterpieces from Africa, Asia and Europe. All texts will be read in Icelandic translations. 

The major aspects of the history of linguistics traced from the antiquity through the middle ages till the beginning of the 19th Century. The Old Icelandic grammatical treatises. The major aspects of the history of linguistics in the 19th and 20th century. Emphasis is placed on the theories and discoveries that have been most influential in the development of ideas and methods in linguistics.

The course gives an overview of the phonological system of Old Icelandic and its prehistory. We will read the First Grammatical Treatise and discuss its importance as source of evidence of Old Icelandic phonology and its contribution to the history of linguistics. The morphological structure of Old Icelandic will be treated in detail.

The teaching consists of lectures and special tutorial classes that will discuss homework assignments.

This module focuses on Icelandic literary history of the 20th and 21st century. Literary fiction of various kinds is read and discussed in a cultural historical context, both locally and internationally.

In this course the position of women in popular narrative genres in the Icelandic Middle Ages will be discussed. We will look for clues about the fate of women in poems and sagas, especially based on how violence is addressed in many of them, not least sexual violence. The reaction of women and society in general to the violence will also be examined. The genres that will be investigated span a long period of time; the Icelandic, legendary and chivalric sagas, poetic genres such as the heroic poems of Edda, rímur, sagnakvæði (a narrative genre), and finally ballads, but their role in women's culture will also be discussed.

In this course, love will be explored in Icelandic literature and films, set in the context of Western cultural history, from the courtly love of the Middle Ages to mass-produced contemporary love stories. Discussions will revolve around the main themes of love, the differences in its representation in high literature versus popular culture. Poems, plays, and novels will be read, and well-known films, either connected to the literary works or standing independently, will be analyzed. Among the authors to be studied are Elín Thorarensen, Halldór Laxness, Guðrún frá Lundi, Snjólaug Bragadóttir, Guðbergur Bergsson, and Bergsveinn Birgisson. Translated love stories and films within the genre will also be included.

The course offers a survey of Irish literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course focuses on plays, poetry, and novels of seminal authors as well as examining the main literary trends of the period. The course is based on lectures, discussions and group work.

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

This course is taught in Icelandic and is intended for graduate students and BA students in their final year. It presents the main theories of psychoanalysis in light of philosophy and literary and cultural studies. It also concentrates on the contribution of psychoanalysis to further our understanding of culture and cultural achievements such as literature and cinema. It is taught twice a week, students give presentations and write a final essay.

This course provides an overview of Icelandic manuscript culture. Students will get practical training in reading Icelandic manuscripts from different periods, from the earliest extant Icelandic vellums dating to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries down to the paper manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The origins of the Icelandic script will be discussed as well as its development over time, and students will get practical training in reading different types of script from different periods. The orthography of medieval manuscripts differs considerably from the modern orthography. It includes a system of abbreviations that is partly inherited from a much earlier Latin tradition. Students will get practical training in interpreting these abbreviations. The Icelandic language has also changed over time, and different manifestations of these language changes appear when reading and examining Icelandic texts from different periods. A selection of these changes will be discussed. Changes in script, orthography, and language provide valuable indications of the date of the manuscript, and students will get practical training in dating medieval Icelandic manuscripts based on script, orthography, and language.

Various aspects of medieval book production will be discussed, including the making of parchment and ink, and book binding. Scribes and scribal schools will be discussed as well as probable centres of book production in medieval Iceland. The works of some prolific scribes in the fourteenth century will be examined. What did they write? How did they write? Did they change their practice over a long scribal career? The texts contained by the manuscripts will also be examined and the basics of textual criticism introduced. Njáls saga, for instance, has survived in over sixty manuscripts with considerable textual variation. Which manuscript should then constitute the basis for a printed edition of Njáls saga? Different types of printed editions will be discussed, and students try their hand at editing a medieval text. The electronic editing of pre-modern texts will be introduced, and students will get practical training in mark-up with XML according to the guidelines of the Medieval Nordic Text Archive (MENOTA) and the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI).

The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops with considerable student engagement. Many of the lectures will be pre-recorded allowing more time in the classroom for discussion and student contributions.

The course is run in cooperation with the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies which has the custody of the largest single collection of Icelandic medieval manuscripts. Students will visit the institute to learn about its collections and facilities and to examine manuscripts.

Course synopsis

Week 1
(1) Introduction
The course: format, readings, requirements and assessment.
The subject matter: Medieval Icelandic manuscripts.

(2) The earliest Icelandic manuscripts
A sketch of the history of the Latin script and the earliest writings in Icelandic. Where did Icelanders learn to use the Latin alphabet? Which orthography did they employ? Some main characteristics of medieval orthography and the use of abbreviations.

Week 2
(3) Electronic editing of medieval texts
How can medieval texts be presented electronically? The XML mark-up language, TEI, MENOTA, MUFI, and related matters. We will try our hand at electronic editing.

(4) The earliest Icelandic orthography and the First Grammatical Treatise
The use of the Latin alphabet for writing Icelandic: challenges — and the solutions proposed by the author of the First Grammatical Treatise in the middle of the twelfth century.

Week 3
(5) Icelandic script and orthography in the thirteenth century
The difference between Icelandic and Norwegian orthography in the twelfth century. What changed in the course of the thirteenth century?

(6) Different types of print editions: scholarly editions
How accurate should printed editions be? Should every little detail in the manuscript be reproduced? What is “Classical Old Icelandic Normalized Orthography”? What are the needs of the readers? What is the role of the editor?

Week 4
(7) Norwegian influence on script, orthography, and language in Icelandic manuscripts
What is the manifestation of this Norwegian influence? How deep-rooted was it? How long did it last?

(8) The dating of manuscripts: script, orthography, and language
How can medieval Icelandic manuscripts be dated? Features of script, orthography, and language that can be helpful for dating.

Week 5
(9) Icelandic script and orthography in the fourteenth century
Main characteristics and their development.

(10) One scribal hand or many?
Distinguishing different scribal hands: some criteria. The Icelandic Homily Book from around 1200: One scribe or fourteen?

Week 6
(11) Book production: parchment, ink, binding — and conservation
From animal skin to parchment. How was the ink produced? Book design and book binding. The care and conservation of medieval manuscripts.

(12) Book production: parchment, ink, binding — and conservation
A visit to the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

— STUDY WEEK —

Week 7
(13) Scribes, scribal milieus, the export of books
On prolific scribes, scribal collaboration, and extensive production of books. Were books produced in Iceland for export in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries?

(14) Icelandic script and orthography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
Main characteristics and their development.

Week 8
(15) Textual criticism
On the transmission of texts through copying. Textual variation, manuscript classification, and stemmatology.

(16) Textual criticism
Comparing manuscripts and collecting variants.

Week 9
(17) Manuscript illumination
On illuminated manuscripts, historiated initials, artists and their models.

(18) Manuscript catalogues and cataloguing
We will familiarize ourselves with the most important manuscript catalogues and learn about the principles of manuscript cataloguing.

Week 10
(19) Icelandic script and orthography in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Main characteristics and their development.

(20) The transmission of the text: a relic or a living text?
How did the language change when a scribe copied from an old exemplar? Njáls saga is believed to have been written towards the end of the thirteenth century. What is the language of Njáls saga in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscripts?

Week 11
(21) Antiquarianism, manuscript collectors, and copyists
The sixteenth century saw the rise of interest in antiquities, old manuscripts were collected and copied.

(22) Different types of print editions: popular editions
How is a pre-modern text best presented to the modern reader? Should archaic features of language and orthography be retained or should they be updated? On the allegiance to the manuscript and allegiance to the reader.

Week 12
(23) Manuscript collections and manuscript collectors
The life and work of Árni Magnússon.

(24) The manuscript dispute and the return of the manuscripts to Iceland
The search for Codex Scardensis and a nerve-racking auction in London. The custody dispute with Denmark and the return of the manuscripts to Iceland 1971–1997.

— This synopsis may be subject to change. —

Readings

The reading list is on the course website on Canvas. It consists of readings in several languages, including English, Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, German, and French. The reading list is (often) divided into three main sections:

(a) Required readings: Texts that everyone is required to read. These are all in English.

(b) Optional supplementary readings: These are optional readings for those who want a more in-depth discussion. Most of these readings are in English, but not all.

(c) For those who still want more: A variety of optional readings in several languages, not least in Icelandic, for those who still want more. This section is mostly for reference purposes and as a tool for further research.

Many of the required readings (and some of the optional readings) are found on the Canvas course website. Other reading materials are available in the institute library in the Árni Magnússon Institute in Edda and the University Library (Háskólabókasafn) in the Þjóðarbókhlaða.

Prerequisites
Some skills in Icelandic are essential to fully benefit from the course, as emphasis will be placed on practical training in reading and transcribing text from medieval Icelandic manuscripts. MIS105F Old Icelandic 1 or equivalent study of Old Icelandic is sufficient or some skills in Modern Icelandic. Please, consult the instructor if in doubt.

Course format
The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops with considerable student engagement. Many of the lectures will be prerecorded allowing more time in the classroom for discussion and student contributions (flipped classroom).

Working language: This course is open to students with different linguistic backgrounds, and there are two working languages, English and Icelandic. Pre-recorded lectures are in both English and Icelandic (except for guest lecturers who will present in English), written assignments are in both English and Icelandic, and reading materials are in English, Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages, but for those who cannot read Icelandic or the Scan-dinavian languages, all required readings are in English. English is the main working language in the classroom, but questions and contributions to class discussion may also be in Icelandic. — See a separate note on the working languages and the classroom arrangement.

Course requirements and assessment
The final grade for the course will be based on:

(1) Transcription assignments: 30%
(2) Manuscript catalogue assignment: 10%
(3) Manuscript dating assignment: 10%
(4) Presentation: manuscript of the day: 10%
(5) Research paper: 30%
(6) Class participation: 10%

All written assignments will be submitted through Canvas. More detailed instructions and information on deadlines is found on Canvas.

This course is an introduction into some of the basic ideas and topics in theoretical syntax. The topics include phrase structure, X-bar theory, functional projections, verb raising, argument structure, case marking, binding principles and locality principles. The discussion will be based on examples from Icelandic, English and many other languages.

This is an advanced morphology course that is taught every other year. The aim of the course is introduce to students various theories and topics in morphology, using examples from Icelandic and other languages, and to train students to work on morphology on their own.

This course focuses on  short stories in Icelandic, old and new, original and translated. Main theories about the genre or genres will be presented as well as its origin and development. Texts discussed are very diverse, we will be reading and working with heterogeneous texts from Romantic and Realist short stories of the 19^th Century to short prose and short messages of our days and age. Certain genres will also be considered, such as horror stories, crime stories and fantasies. The cource will approach the chosen texts from different point of view and different theoretical perspectives, connect the stories to their predecessors and show how their themes are still around us.

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

This course is a survey of linguistic research on first language acquisition, in particular, although we will also look at bilingualism and the acquisition of second and foreign languages. We will be concerned with the question of how young children acquire their native language. The primary focus is on (1) the biological foundations of language and the effects of the language environment on young children's language acquisition, and (2) grammatical development in language acquisition, i.e. how children develop the system of rules - syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological - which comprise the grammar of their language, and acquire its vocabulary. In the course, we will concentrate on Icelandic language development, although we also look at language development in English and other languages.

The class is taught in Icelandic.  In this course, students get a chance to hone their writing skills. Students will hand in regular writing assignments where they practise different ways of presenting scholarly work in a creative manner, such as op-eds and creative nonfiction. Students will also write creative texts, such as short stories. Students can use material from their field of study but will also have to face new challenges. Classes will be in the form of lectures, discussions, and workshops. Assessment will be based on regular assignments, self-assessment, a midterm assignment, a final assignment, a portfolio, and attendance and participation. Attendance and participation make up 15% of the grade and is partly mandatory (8 out of 12 workshops). The course is open to all undergraduate students at the University of Iceland but students must themselves make sure that the course can be used for credit in their particular studies.

Online learning:

The course is organized as face-to-face learning but all lectures from teachers will be recorded. This is done to assure better access to the course. Students who do not attend class will listen to the lectures and write short reports. They also turn in assignments otherwise done in class.

An examination will be made of the religious beliefs and practices of people in Scandinavia from the earliest of times until the conversion, material ranging from burial practices to rock carvings, to the written evidence given in the works of Tacitus, Adam of Bremen and Saxo Grammaticus, as well as in early Icelandic works like the Eddic poems and the Kings' sagas. Alongside this discussion of the development and key features of Old Norse religion, some attention will be paid to the concepts of seid and shamanism, especially in connection to their role in early religions. Finally, an examination will be made of the conversion of Scandinavia and how Christian concepts and practices both fitted and contrasted with the previously dominant Old Norse worldview.

Teaching form:
The teaching takes place in the form of lectures and discussion on the material of the lectures.

The meaning of words and sentences is often determined by the context, for instance in irony. How do listeners understand us if we don‘t always say what we mean? What do conversations in different cultures and languages have in common? In this course we will examine language in interaction from different perspectives. Key concepts in linguistic pragmatics will be introduced, including the contribution of context to meaning. The methodology and key topics of conversation analysis will be described along with recent comparative studies on language in interaction around the world. We will also briefly discuss interdisciplinary psycholinguistic research on pragmatics. Students will get hands-on experience with recording conversations, the conceptual analysis of talk, and use of relevant software (including Praat for analyzing and processing sound files and ELAN for annotation of conversation).

Kings’ sagas and Family sagas are two major types of medieval Icelandic literature. Scholarship on the Kings’ sagas started in the 17^th century, but in the 20^th century, scholars were focusing the Family sagas in particular. A core question at the time was whether these sagas were built upon some sort of oral tradition, or whether they were first and foremost written literature. These questions were not least dependent on currents from other field of research, for example sociology and anthropology. Today, the scholarly landscape has changed yet again, and many scholars now have their focus on either the developments and revolutions in Europe from the 12^th to the 14^th century, or on topics that are relevant to us today, for example, the dealing of man with nature, or human emotions in the light of growing uncertainty and insecurity in daily life. In this class, we want to dive deeper into the history and development of this research, and we also want to read several Kings’ sagas and Family sagas to come to our own scholarly conclusions.

A course on Icelandic lyrics and popular culture from the mid-20th century to the present. The approaches of Cultural Studies will be used in order to throw light on the position and development of these lyrics during a period of social changes, rock culture and multimedia.

This course will introduce concepts and methods in Historical Linguistics, i.e., the field of Linguistics that studies language change. The various kinds of language change will be discussed, their causes and characteristics. We will study examples of language changes from different periods, from Germanic and other Indo-European languages, in particular, but also from other language families. The development of ideas about the nature of language change will be discussed along the way.

The course provides students with an overview of speech pathologists' main subject areas within an Icelandic setting. This is a vast and diverse domain, ranging from the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia and aphasia in adults, to language impairment and speech sound disorders in children. The course will intertwine essential terms and knowledge with more practical approaches to the material. Furthermore, students should gain the skills necessary to acquaint themselves with relevant research and peer-reviewed articles within the field of speech-language pathology.

This course is primarily intended for undergraduate student in the humanities at the University of Iceland who wish to be able to use programming in their work. In the course, we go through the foundations of programming using the programming language Python and an emphasis is placed on the analysis of textual data. The course is therefore appropriate for those who would like to get to know language technology at the undergraduate level, especially those who are interested in pursuing the language technology program at the MA-level. The course is taught alongside MLT701F Programming in language technology at the MA-level and all students attend the same lectures but BA students get shorter assignments than MA students. When solving various programming tasks involving the analysis of text it is beneficial for students to be at least somewhat familiar with important concepts in the grammatical analysis of natural languages but if a student is unsure whether they have the appropriate background for the course, they should feel free to contact the instructor for further information. 

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing. Students who subsequently enroll in the MA-program in language technology will build on skills acquired in this course in other courses about natural language processing.

Later

This course covers the basics of phonetics and phonology. The first half of the course will focus on phonetics. The speech articulators and sound production will be described. Students will receive training in phonetic transcription. The main acoustic methods will be introduced and the relationship between phonetics and phonology will be discussed. In the second part of the course, concepts and methods in the analysis of phonological systems will be introduced and students will be trained in their use. Different theories in phonology will be examined in relation to language in general and Icelandic phonology in particular.

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

Can literature play a part in the fight against global warming? How do volcanic eruptions and natural disasters feature in Icelandic literature? The course searches answers to these and many more questions regarding the connection between literature and nature or the environment. This connection is what concerns ecocriticism, which will be introduced in the course, along with other research fields within environmental humanities. Works from various periods of the history of Icelandic literature will be read and analysed in view of critical theories within environmental humanities. These include the connection of literature with the ocean, natural disasters, climate, parts of the land, aesthetic sense and the future of life on planet Earth.

This is a basic composition course. Writing skills will be honed through weekly assignments, lectures, class discussions and workshops.Approaches to writing research papers will be addressed, such as choosing and narrowing a topic, structure, and sources. Register, style, spelling, punctuation, and resources for writers will be discussed. Students write essays and papers of various kinds and get regular feedback from peers and teachers. Course assessment is based on written assignments and class participation. The course can only be passed if all assignments are turned in.

This course provides an introduction to the study of folk narrative as a particular genre within the overall field of folkloristics. Students will be introduced to the main theories concerning the origins, features and distribution of folk tales, their role in society, their collection, methods of classification and means of preservation. Among others, students will be introduced to the work of Antti Aarne, Inger M. Boberg, Bruno Bettleheim, Linda Dégh, Stith Thompson, Timothy Tangherlini and Alan Dundes. Particular attention will be laid to the main forms of oral narrative, particular attention being paid to the form and analysis of legends and fairy tales from the viewpoint of the main arguments concerning these aspects of study, among others the work of Algirdas Greimas, Bengt Holbek, Max Lüthi, Axel Olrik and Vladimir Propp.

BA-thesis in Icelandic

The aim of this survey course is to sample the literary history of the last four millennia by reading a number of world masterpieces from Africa, Asia and Europe. All texts will be read in Icelandic translations. 

The major aspects of the history of linguistics traced from the antiquity through the middle ages till the beginning of the 19th Century. The Old Icelandic grammatical treatises. The major aspects of the history of linguistics in the 19th and 20th century. Emphasis is placed on the theories and discoveries that have been most influential in the development of ideas and methods in linguistics.

In this course the position of women in popular narrative genres in the Icelandic Middle Ages will be discussed. We will look for clues about the fate of women in poems and sagas, especially based on how violence is addressed in many of them, not least sexual violence. The reaction of women and society in general to the violence will also be examined. The genres that will be investigated span a long period of time; the Icelandic, legendary and chivalric sagas, poetic genres such as the heroic poems of Edda, rímur, sagnakvæði (a narrative genre), and finally ballads, but their role in women's culture will also be discussed.

In this course, love will be explored in Icelandic literature and films, set in the context of Western cultural history, from the courtly love of the Middle Ages to mass-produced contemporary love stories. Discussions will revolve around the main themes of love, the differences in its representation in high literature versus popular culture. Poems, plays, and novels will be read, and well-known films, either connected to the literary works or standing independently, will be analyzed. Among the authors to be studied are Elín Thorarensen, Halldór Laxness, Guðrún frá Lundi, Snjólaug Bragadóttir, Guðbergur Bergsson, and Bergsveinn Birgisson. Translated love stories and films within the genre will also be included.

The course offers a survey of Irish literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course focuses on plays, poetry, and novels of seminal authors as well as examining the main literary trends of the period. The course is based on lectures, discussions and group work.

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

This course is taught in Icelandic and is intended for graduate students and BA students in their final year. It presents the main theories of psychoanalysis in light of philosophy and literary and cultural studies. It also concentrates on the contribution of psychoanalysis to further our understanding of culture and cultural achievements such as literature and cinema. It is taught twice a week, students give presentations and write a final essay.

This course provides an overview of Icelandic manuscript culture. Students will get practical training in reading Icelandic manuscripts from different periods, from the earliest extant Icelandic vellums dating to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries down to the paper manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The origins of the Icelandic script will be discussed as well as its development over time, and students will get practical training in reading different types of script from different periods. The orthography of medieval manuscripts differs considerably from the modern orthography. It includes a system of abbreviations that is partly inherited from a much earlier Latin tradition. Students will get practical training in interpreting these abbreviations. The Icelandic language has also changed over time, and different manifestations of these language changes appear when reading and examining Icelandic texts from different periods. A selection of these changes will be discussed. Changes in script, orthography, and language provide valuable indications of the date of the manuscript, and students will get practical training in dating medieval Icelandic manuscripts based on script, orthography, and language.

Various aspects of medieval book production will be discussed, including the making of parchment and ink, and book binding. Scribes and scribal schools will be discussed as well as probable centres of book production in medieval Iceland. The works of some prolific scribes in the fourteenth century will be examined. What did they write? How did they write? Did they change their practice over a long scribal career? The texts contained by the manuscripts will also be examined and the basics of textual criticism introduced. Njáls saga, for instance, has survived in over sixty manuscripts with considerable textual variation. Which manuscript should then constitute the basis for a printed edition of Njáls saga? Different types of printed editions will be discussed, and students try their hand at editing a medieval text. The electronic editing of pre-modern texts will be introduced, and students will get practical training in mark-up with XML according to the guidelines of the Medieval Nordic Text Archive (MENOTA) and the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI).

The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops with considerable student engagement. Many of the lectures will be pre-recorded allowing more time in the classroom for discussion and student contributions.

The course is run in cooperation with the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies which has the custody of the largest single collection of Icelandic medieval manuscripts. Students will visit the institute to learn about its collections and facilities and to examine manuscripts.

Course synopsis

Week 1
(1) Introduction
The course: format, readings, requirements and assessment.
The subject matter: Medieval Icelandic manuscripts.

(2) The earliest Icelandic manuscripts
A sketch of the history of the Latin script and the earliest writings in Icelandic. Where did Icelanders learn to use the Latin alphabet? Which orthography did they employ? Some main characteristics of medieval orthography and the use of abbreviations.

Week 2
(3) Electronic editing of medieval texts
How can medieval texts be presented electronically? The XML mark-up language, TEI, MENOTA, MUFI, and related matters. We will try our hand at electronic editing.

(4) The earliest Icelandic orthography and the First Grammatical Treatise
The use of the Latin alphabet for writing Icelandic: challenges — and the solutions proposed by the author of the First Grammatical Treatise in the middle of the twelfth century.

Week 3
(5) Icelandic script and orthography in the thirteenth century
The difference between Icelandic and Norwegian orthography in the twelfth century. What changed in the course of the thirteenth century?

(6) Different types of print editions: scholarly editions
How accurate should printed editions be? Should every little detail in the manuscript be reproduced? What is “Classical Old Icelandic Normalized Orthography”? What are the needs of the readers? What is the role of the editor?

Week 4
(7) Norwegian influence on script, orthography, and language in Icelandic manuscripts
What is the manifestation of this Norwegian influence? How deep-rooted was it? How long did it last?

(8) The dating of manuscripts: script, orthography, and language
How can medieval Icelandic manuscripts be dated? Features of script, orthography, and language that can be helpful for dating.

Week 5
(9) Icelandic script and orthography in the fourteenth century
Main characteristics and their development.

(10) One scribal hand or many?
Distinguishing different scribal hands: some criteria. The Icelandic Homily Book from around 1200: One scribe or fourteen?

Week 6
(11) Book production: parchment, ink, binding — and conservation
From animal skin to parchment. How was the ink produced? Book design and book binding. The care and conservation of medieval manuscripts.

(12) Book production: parchment, ink, binding — and conservation
A visit to the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

— STUDY WEEK —

Week 7
(13) Scribes, scribal milieus, the export of books
On prolific scribes, scribal collaboration, and extensive production of books. Were books produced in Iceland for export in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries?

(14) Icelandic script and orthography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
Main characteristics and their development.

Week 8
(15) Textual criticism
On the transmission of texts through copying. Textual variation, manuscript classification, and stemmatology.

(16) Textual criticism
Comparing manuscripts and collecting variants.

Week 9
(17) Manuscript illumination
On illuminated manuscripts, historiated initials, artists and their models.

(18) Manuscript catalogues and cataloguing
We will familiarize ourselves with the most important manuscript catalogues and learn about the principles of manuscript cataloguing.

Week 10
(19) Icelandic script and orthography in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Main characteristics and their development.

(20) The transmission of the text: a relic or a living text?
How did the language change when a scribe copied from an old exemplar? Njáls saga is believed to have been written towards the end of the thirteenth century. What is the language of Njáls saga in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscripts?

Week 11
(21) Antiquarianism, manuscript collectors, and copyists
The sixteenth century saw the rise of interest in antiquities, old manuscripts were collected and copied.

(22) Different types of print editions: popular editions
How is a pre-modern text best presented to the modern reader? Should archaic features of language and orthography be retained or should they be updated? On the allegiance to the manuscript and allegiance to the reader.

Week 12
(23) Manuscript collections and manuscript collectors
The life and work of Árni Magnússon.

(24) The manuscript dispute and the return of the manuscripts to Iceland
The search for Codex Scardensis and a nerve-racking auction in London. The custody dispute with Denmark and the return of the manuscripts to Iceland 1971–1997.

— This synopsis may be subject to change. —

Readings

The reading list is on the course website on Canvas. It consists of readings in several languages, including English, Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, German, and French. The reading list is (often) divided into three main sections:

(a) Required readings: Texts that everyone is required to read. These are all in English.

(b) Optional supplementary readings: These are optional readings for those who want a more in-depth discussion. Most of these readings are in English, but not all.

(c) For those who still want more: A variety of optional readings in several languages, not least in Icelandic, for those who still want more. This section is mostly for reference purposes and as a tool for further research.

Many of the required readings (and some of the optional readings) are found on the Canvas course website. Other reading materials are available in the institute library in the Árni Magnússon Institute in Edda and the University Library (Háskólabókasafn) in the Þjóðarbókhlaða.

Prerequisites
Some skills in Icelandic are essential to fully benefit from the course, as emphasis will be placed on practical training in reading and transcribing text from medieval Icelandic manuscripts. MIS105F Old Icelandic 1 or equivalent study of Old Icelandic is sufficient or some skills in Modern Icelandic. Please, consult the instructor if in doubt.

Course format
The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops with considerable student engagement. Many of the lectures will be prerecorded allowing more time in the classroom for discussion and student contributions (flipped classroom).

Working language: This course is open to students with different linguistic backgrounds, and there are two working languages, English and Icelandic. Pre-recorded lectures are in both English and Icelandic (except for guest lecturers who will present in English), written assignments are in both English and Icelandic, and reading materials are in English, Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages, but for those who cannot read Icelandic or the Scan-dinavian languages, all required readings are in English. English is the main working language in the classroom, but questions and contributions to class discussion may also be in Icelandic. — See a separate note on the working languages and the classroom arrangement.

Course requirements and assessment
The final grade for the course will be based on:

(1) Transcription assignments: 30%
(2) Manuscript catalogue assignment: 10%
(3) Manuscript dating assignment: 10%
(4) Presentation: manuscript of the day: 10%
(5) Research paper: 30%
(6) Class participation: 10%

All written assignments will be submitted through Canvas. More detailed instructions and information on deadlines is found on Canvas.

This course is an introduction into some of the basic ideas and topics in theoretical syntax. The topics include phrase structure, X-bar theory, functional projections, verb raising, argument structure, case marking, binding principles and locality principles. The discussion will be based on examples from Icelandic, English and many other languages.

This is an advanced morphology course that is taught every other year. The aim of the course is introduce to students various theories and topics in morphology, using examples from Icelandic and other languages, and to train students to work on morphology on their own.

This course focuses on  short stories in Icelandic, old and new, original and translated. Main theories about the genre or genres will be presented as well as its origin and development. Texts discussed are very diverse, we will be reading and working with heterogeneous texts from Romantic and Realist short stories of the 19^th Century to short prose and short messages of our days and age. Certain genres will also be considered, such as horror stories, crime stories and fantasies. The cource will approach the chosen texts from different point of view and different theoretical perspectives, connect the stories to their predecessors and show how their themes are still around us.

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

This course is a survey of linguistic research on first language acquisition, in particular, although we will also look at bilingualism and the acquisition of second and foreign languages. We will be concerned with the question of how young children acquire their native language. The primary focus is on (1) the biological foundations of language and the effects of the language environment on young children's language acquisition, and (2) grammatical development in language acquisition, i.e. how children develop the system of rules - syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological - which comprise the grammar of their language, and acquire its vocabulary. In the course, we will concentrate on Icelandic language development, although we also look at language development in English and other languages.

The class is taught in Icelandic.  In this course, students get a chance to hone their writing skills. Students will hand in regular writing assignments where they practise different ways of presenting scholarly work in a creative manner, such as op-eds and creative nonfiction. Students will also write creative texts, such as short stories. Students can use material from their field of study but will also have to face new challenges. Classes will be in the form of lectures, discussions, and workshops. Assessment will be based on regular assignments, self-assessment, a midterm assignment, a final assignment, a portfolio, and attendance and participation. Attendance and participation make up 15% of the grade and is partly mandatory (8 out of 12 workshops). The course is open to all undergraduate students at the University of Iceland but students must themselves make sure that the course can be used for credit in their particular studies.

Online learning:

The course is organized as face-to-face learning but all lectures from teachers will be recorded. This is done to assure better access to the course. Students who do not attend class will listen to the lectures and write short reports. They also turn in assignments otherwise done in class.

An examination will be made of the religious beliefs and practices of people in Scandinavia from the earliest of times until the conversion, material ranging from burial practices to rock carvings, to the written evidence given in the works of Tacitus, Adam of Bremen and Saxo Grammaticus, as well as in early Icelandic works like the Eddic poems and the Kings' sagas. Alongside this discussion of the development and key features of Old Norse religion, some attention will be paid to the concepts of seid and shamanism, especially in connection to their role in early religions. Finally, an examination will be made of the conversion of Scandinavia and how Christian concepts and practices both fitted and contrasted with the previously dominant Old Norse worldview.

Teaching form:
The teaching takes place in the form of lectures and discussion on the material of the lectures.

BA-thesis in Icelandic

By focusing on folk tales, literature and other relevant sources, the course discusses the manifestations of nature and the supernatural in Icelandic narrative culture throughout the centuries. Students will learn about the significance, interface, and unclear boundaries of these phenomena and how they have shaped society and the environment as well. Students will thus get to know different ideas about the position of people and (other) animals within, above or "outside" of nature. Through diverse lectures and assignments, topics such as humanity vs. animality, the known world vs. other worlds, and materiality vs. the supernatural, will be discussed from critical points of view. The roles and forms of landscape, organisms, bodies, weather, and natural phenomena in the narrative culture will be explored. The latest research in this broad field will be presented, such as on the representation of earthquakes and celestial bodies, bears, whales, seals, and domestic animals, and on the supernatural creatures of nature and other mythological creatures such as fairies, ghosts, trolls, and berserks. Students will learn how story worlds and folklore have left their mark on the perception of nature, folk traditions, folk customs, and social spaces such as enchanted spots, sacred places and hunted places. We also ask how these narratives appear in folk art and visual art, from previous centuries to the present. Finally, we will explore the significance of nature narratives and the supernatural in the context of the Anthropocene, human perspectives, climate change, and the different statuses of social groups and species

This is a joint course for students in Icelandic, General Linguistics and Sign Language Linguistics. It falls into two parts. On the one hand, in Thursday classes, the students receive training in critical thinking, scientific methods and academic writing. Topics include the use of handbooks and other sources, the style and structure of academic papers, research methods in linguistics and literature, conventions regarding citations and bibliographies, etc.

In the second part of the course, taught on Tuesdays, the students are introduced to the various sub-disciplines of Icelandic, General Linguistics and Sign Language Linguistics as academic subjects and their connection to other subject areas. Different teachers and other guests introduce their sub-disciplines and areas of specialization.

The course gives an introduction to linguistics and methods of linguistic analyses. The goal is to acquaint students with the nature of human languages and the main features of Icelandic grammar. 

This course is an introduction to literary theory, its terms and methods. Students are trained in analysing literary texts, poems, prose and drama. 

An overview of Icelandic literary history from the beginning to the end of the 19th century. Novelties and changes in Icelandic literature will be placed in context with contemporary currents in European literature.

The course focuses on the various ways in which medieval texts can be studied, referring to both medieval or modern literary theory. The characteristics of medieval textual culture will be discussed, as well as medieval attitudes to fact and fiction, entertainment and edification. Texts representing all of the most important genres of Icelandic medieval literature will be read.

An introductory course in Icelandic phonetics, phonology, and morphology. The basics of acoustic phonetics and Icelandic articulatory phonetics will be introduced, accompanied by training in phonetic transcription. The main concepts of phonology will be presented, followed by an overview of sound alternations in Icelandic and their conditions. Basic concepts in morphology will be presented and the main word formation processes in Icelandic and their productivity will be dealt with. Grammatical categories in Icelandic will be outlined, the inflection of the main parts of speech will be described, and an overview given of inflectional classes and variations.

Historical overview of the development of literary theory. The main emphasis is on twentieth and twenty-first century trends and methods. In addition to lectures there are small group discussion periods.

This course aims at explaining the connection between diachronic language change and synchronic language variation, as it is generally assumed that language changes generate variants that coexist for a time and that all synchronic variants are caused by a language change of some kind. The course will, on the one hand, discuss the nature of language change and the main types of changes, and on the other hand, the nature of synchronic variation. We will focus on the development of Icelandic; hence, examples will primarily be taken from the history of Icelandic and from present-day Icelandic, but we will also look at parallels in other languages.

This course covers the basic issues in Icelandic syntax, including parts of speech, phrasal categories, the syntactic classification of verbs, movements of various kinds and grammatical functions. The ways in which language use, semantics, and pragmatics relate to syntax will also be discussed.

The meaning of words and sentences is often determined by the context, for instance in irony. How do listeners understand us if we don‘t always say what we mean? What do conversations in different cultures and languages have in common? In this course we will examine language in interaction from different perspectives. Key concepts in linguistic pragmatics will be introduced, including the contribution of context to meaning. The methodology and key topics of conversation analysis will be described along with recent comparative studies on language in interaction around the world. We will also briefly discuss interdisciplinary psycholinguistic research on pragmatics. Students will get hands-on experience with recording conversations, the conceptual analysis of talk, and use of relevant software (including Praat for analyzing and processing sound files and ELAN for annotation of conversation).

Kings’ sagas and Family sagas are two major types of medieval Icelandic literature. Scholarship on the Kings’ sagas started in the 17^th century, but in the 20^th century, scholars were focusing the Family sagas in particular. A core question at the time was whether these sagas were built upon some sort of oral tradition, or whether they were first and foremost written literature. These questions were not least dependent on currents from other field of research, for example sociology and anthropology. Today, the scholarly landscape has changed yet again, and many scholars now have their focus on either the developments and revolutions in Europe from the 12^th to the 14^th century, or on topics that are relevant to us today, for example, the dealing of man with nature, or human emotions in the light of growing uncertainty and insecurity in daily life. In this class, we want to dive deeper into the history and development of this research, and we also want to read several Kings’ sagas and Family sagas to come to our own scholarly conclusions.

A course on Icelandic lyrics and popular culture from the mid-20th century to the present. The approaches of Cultural Studies will be used in order to throw light on the position and development of these lyrics during a period of social changes, rock culture and multimedia.

This course will introduce concepts and methods in Historical Linguistics, i.e., the field of Linguistics that studies language change. The various kinds of language change will be discussed, their causes and characteristics. We will study examples of language changes from different periods, from Germanic and other Indo-European languages, in particular, but also from other language families. The development of ideas about the nature of language change will be discussed along the way.

The course provides students with an overview of speech pathologists' main subject areas within an Icelandic setting. This is a vast and diverse domain, ranging from the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia and aphasia in adults, to language impairment and speech sound disorders in children. The course will intertwine essential terms and knowledge with more practical approaches to the material. Furthermore, students should gain the skills necessary to acquaint themselves with relevant research and peer-reviewed articles within the field of speech-language pathology.

This course is primarily intended for undergraduate student in the humanities at the University of Iceland who wish to be able to use programming in their work. In the course, we go through the foundations of programming using the programming language Python and an emphasis is placed on the analysis of textual data. The course is therefore appropriate for those who would like to get to know language technology at the undergraduate level, especially those who are interested in pursuing the language technology program at the MA-level. The course is taught alongside MLT701F Programming in language technology at the MA-level and all students attend the same lectures but BA students get shorter assignments than MA students. When solving various programming tasks involving the analysis of text it is beneficial for students to be at least somewhat familiar with important concepts in the grammatical analysis of natural languages but if a student is unsure whether they have the appropriate background for the course, they should feel free to contact the instructor for further information. 

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing. Students who subsequently enroll in the MA-program in language technology will build on skills acquired in this course in other courses about natural language processing.

Later

This course covers the basics of phonetics and phonology. The first half of the course will focus on phonetics. The speech articulators and sound production will be described. Students will receive training in phonetic transcription. The main acoustic methods will be introduced and the relationship between phonetics and phonology will be discussed. In the second part of the course, concepts and methods in the analysis of phonological systems will be introduced and students will be trained in their use. Different theories in phonology will be examined in relation to language in general and Icelandic phonology in particular.

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

Can literature play a part in the fight against global warming? How do volcanic eruptions and natural disasters feature in Icelandic literature? The course searches answers to these and many more questions regarding the connection between literature and nature or the environment. This connection is what concerns ecocriticism, which will be introduced in the course, along with other research fields within environmental humanities. Works from various periods of the history of Icelandic literature will be read and analysed in view of critical theories within environmental humanities. These include the connection of literature with the ocean, natural disasters, climate, parts of the land, aesthetic sense and the future of life on planet Earth.

This is a basic composition course. Writing skills will be honed through weekly assignments, lectures, class discussions and workshops.Approaches to writing research papers will be addressed, such as choosing and narrowing a topic, structure, and sources. Register, style, spelling, punctuation, and resources for writers will be discussed. Students write essays and papers of various kinds and get regular feedback from peers and teachers. Course assessment is based on written assignments and class participation. The course can only be passed if all assignments are turned in.

This course provides an introduction to the study of folk narrative as a particular genre within the overall field of folkloristics. Students will be introduced to the main theories concerning the origins, features and distribution of folk tales, their role in society, their collection, methods of classification and means of preservation. Among others, students will be introduced to the work of Antti Aarne, Inger M. Boberg, Bruno Bettleheim, Linda Dégh, Stith Thompson, Timothy Tangherlini and Alan Dundes. Particular attention will be laid to the main forms of oral narrative, particular attention being paid to the form and analysis of legends and fairy tales from the viewpoint of the main arguments concerning these aspects of study, among others the work of Algirdas Greimas, Bengt Holbek, Max Lüthi, Axel Olrik and Vladimir Propp.

The aim of this survey course is to sample the literary history of the last four millennia by reading a number of world masterpieces from Africa, Asia and Europe. All texts will be read in Icelandic translations. 

The major aspects of the history of linguistics traced from the antiquity through the middle ages till the beginning of the 19th Century. The Old Icelandic grammatical treatises. The major aspects of the history of linguistics in the 19th and 20th century. Emphasis is placed on the theories and discoveries that have been most influential in the development of ideas and methods in linguistics.

The course gives an overview of the phonological system of Old Icelandic and its prehistory. We will read the First Grammatical Treatise and discuss its importance as source of evidence of Old Icelandic phonology and its contribution to the history of linguistics. The morphological structure of Old Icelandic will be treated in detail.

The teaching consists of lectures and special tutorial classes that will discuss homework assignments.

This module focuses on Icelandic literary history of the 20th and 21st century. Literary fiction of various kinds is read and discussed in a cultural historical context, both locally and internationally.

In this course the position of women in popular narrative genres in the Icelandic Middle Ages will be discussed. We will look for clues about the fate of women in poems and sagas, especially based on how violence is addressed in many of them, not least sexual violence. The reaction of women and society in general to the violence will also be examined. The genres that will be investigated span a long period of time; the Icelandic, legendary and chivalric sagas, poetic genres such as the heroic poems of Edda, rímur, sagnakvæði (a narrative genre), and finally ballads, but their role in women's culture will also be discussed.

In this course, love will be explored in Icelandic literature and films, set in the context of Western cultural history, from the courtly love of the Middle Ages to mass-produced contemporary love stories. Discussions will revolve around the main themes of love, the differences in its representation in high literature versus popular culture. Poems, plays, and novels will be read, and well-known films, either connected to the literary works or standing independently, will be analyzed. Among the authors to be studied are Elín Thorarensen, Halldór Laxness, Guðrún frá Lundi, Snjólaug Bragadóttir, Guðbergur Bergsson, and Bergsveinn Birgisson. Translated love stories and films within the genre will also be included.

The course offers a survey of Irish literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course focuses on plays, poetry, and novels of seminal authors as well as examining the main literary trends of the period. The course is based on lectures, discussions and group work.

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

This course is taught in Icelandic and is intended for graduate students and BA students in their final year. It presents the main theories of psychoanalysis in light of philosophy and literary and cultural studies. It also concentrates on the contribution of psychoanalysis to further our understanding of culture and cultural achievements such as literature and cinema. It is taught twice a week, students give presentations and write a final essay.

This course provides an overview of Icelandic manuscript culture. Students will get practical training in reading Icelandic manuscripts from different periods, from the earliest extant Icelandic vellums dating to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries down to the paper manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The origins of the Icelandic script will be discussed as well as its development over time, and students will get practical training in reading different types of script from different periods. The orthography of medieval manuscripts differs considerably from the modern orthography. It includes a system of abbreviations that is partly inherited from a much earlier Latin tradition. Students will get practical training in interpreting these abbreviations. The Icelandic language has also changed over time, and different manifestations of these language changes appear when reading and examining Icelandic texts from different periods. A selection of these changes will be discussed. Changes in script, orthography, and language provide valuable indications of the date of the manuscript, and students will get practical training in dating medieval Icelandic manuscripts based on script, orthography, and language.

Various aspects of medieval book production will be discussed, including the making of parchment and ink, and book binding. Scribes and scribal schools will be discussed as well as probable centres of book production in medieval Iceland. The works of some prolific scribes in the fourteenth century will be examined. What did they write? How did they write? Did they change their practice over a long scribal career? The texts contained by the manuscripts will also be examined and the basics of textual criticism introduced. Njáls saga, for instance, has survived in over sixty manuscripts with considerable textual variation. Which manuscript should then constitute the basis for a printed edition of Njáls saga? Different types of printed editions will be discussed, and students try their hand at editing a medieval text. The electronic editing of pre-modern texts will be introduced, and students will get practical training in mark-up with XML according to the guidelines of the Medieval Nordic Text Archive (MENOTA) and the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI).

The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops with considerable student engagement. Many of the lectures will be pre-recorded allowing more time in the classroom for discussion and student contributions.

The course is run in cooperation with the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies which has the custody of the largest single collection of Icelandic medieval manuscripts. Students will visit the institute to learn about its collections and facilities and to examine manuscripts.

Course synopsis

Week 1
(1) Introduction
The course: format, readings, requirements and assessment.
The subject matter: Medieval Icelandic manuscripts.

(2) The earliest Icelandic manuscripts
A sketch of the history of the Latin script and the earliest writings in Icelandic. Where did Icelanders learn to use the Latin alphabet? Which orthography did they employ? Some main characteristics of medieval orthography and the use of abbreviations.

Week 2
(3) Electronic editing of medieval texts
How can medieval texts be presented electronically? The XML mark-up language, TEI, MENOTA, MUFI, and related matters. We will try our hand at electronic editing.

(4) The earliest Icelandic orthography and the First Grammatical Treatise
The use of the Latin alphabet for writing Icelandic: challenges — and the solutions proposed by the author of the First Grammatical Treatise in the middle of the twelfth century.

Week 3
(5) Icelandic script and orthography in the thirteenth century
The difference between Icelandic and Norwegian orthography in the twelfth century. What changed in the course of the thirteenth century?

(6) Different types of print editions: scholarly editions
How accurate should printed editions be? Should every little detail in the manuscript be reproduced? What is “Classical Old Icelandic Normalized Orthography”? What are the needs of the readers? What is the role of the editor?

Week 4
(7) Norwegian influence on script, orthography, and language in Icelandic manuscripts
What is the manifestation of this Norwegian influence? How deep-rooted was it? How long did it last?

(8) The dating of manuscripts: script, orthography, and language
How can medieval Icelandic manuscripts be dated? Features of script, orthography, and language that can be helpful for dating.

Week 5
(9) Icelandic script and orthography in the fourteenth century
Main characteristics and their development.

(10) One scribal hand or many?
Distinguishing different scribal hands: some criteria. The Icelandic Homily Book from around 1200: One scribe or fourteen?

Week 6
(11) Book production: parchment, ink, binding — and conservation
From animal skin to parchment. How was the ink produced? Book design and book binding. The care and conservation of medieval manuscripts.

(12) Book production: parchment, ink, binding — and conservation
A visit to the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

— STUDY WEEK —

Week 7
(13) Scribes, scribal milieus, the export of books
On prolific scribes, scribal collaboration, and extensive production of books. Were books produced in Iceland for export in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries?

(14) Icelandic script and orthography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
Main characteristics and their development.

Week 8
(15) Textual criticism
On the transmission of texts through copying. Textual variation, manuscript classification, and stemmatology.

(16) Textual criticism
Comparing manuscripts and collecting variants.

Week 9
(17) Manuscript illumination
On illuminated manuscripts, historiated initials, artists and their models.

(18) Manuscript catalogues and cataloguing
We will familiarize ourselves with the most important manuscript catalogues and learn about the principles of manuscript cataloguing.

Week 10
(19) Icelandic script and orthography in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Main characteristics and their development.

(20) The transmission of the text: a relic or a living text?
How did the language change when a scribe copied from an old exemplar? Njáls saga is believed to have been written towards the end of the thirteenth century. What is the language of Njáls saga in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscripts?

Week 11
(21) Antiquarianism, manuscript collectors, and copyists
The sixteenth century saw the rise of interest in antiquities, old manuscripts were collected and copied.

(22) Different types of print editions: popular editions
How is a pre-modern text best presented to the modern reader? Should archaic features of language and orthography be retained or should they be updated? On the allegiance to the manuscript and allegiance to the reader.

Week 12
(23) Manuscript collections and manuscript collectors
The life and work of Árni Magnússon.

(24) The manuscript dispute and the return of the manuscripts to Iceland
The search for Codex Scardensis and a nerve-racking auction in London. The custody dispute with Denmark and the return of the manuscripts to Iceland 1971–1997.

— This synopsis may be subject to change. —

Readings

The reading list is on the course website on Canvas. It consists of readings in several languages, including English, Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, German, and French. The reading list is (often) divided into three main sections:

(a) Required readings: Texts that everyone is required to read. These are all in English.

(b) Optional supplementary readings: These are optional readings for those who want a more in-depth discussion. Most of these readings are in English, but not all.

(c) For those who still want more: A variety of optional readings in several languages, not least in Icelandic, for those who still want more. This section is mostly for reference purposes and as a tool for further research.

Many of the required readings (and some of the optional readings) are found on the Canvas course website. Other reading materials are available in the institute library in the Árni Magnússon Institute in Edda and the University Library (Háskólabókasafn) in the Þjóðarbókhlaða.

Prerequisites
Some skills in Icelandic are essential to fully benefit from the course, as emphasis will be placed on practical training in reading and transcribing text from medieval Icelandic manuscripts. MIS105F Old Icelandic 1 or equivalent study of Old Icelandic is sufficient or some skills in Modern Icelandic. Please, consult the instructor if in doubt.

Course format
The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops with considerable student engagement. Many of the lectures will be prerecorded allowing more time in the classroom for discussion and student contributions (flipped classroom).

Working language: This course is open to students with different linguistic backgrounds, and there are two working languages, English and Icelandic. Pre-recorded lectures are in both English and Icelandic (except for guest lecturers who will present in English), written assignments are in both English and Icelandic, and reading materials are in English, Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages, but for those who cannot read Icelandic or the Scan-dinavian languages, all required readings are in English. English is the main working language in the classroom, but questions and contributions to class discussion may also be in Icelandic. — See a separate note on the working languages and the classroom arrangement.

Course requirements and assessment
The final grade for the course will be based on:

(1) Transcription assignments: 30%
(2) Manuscript catalogue assignment: 10%
(3) Manuscript dating assignment: 10%
(4) Presentation: manuscript of the day: 10%
(5) Research paper: 30%
(6) Class participation: 10%

All written assignments will be submitted through Canvas. More detailed instructions and information on deadlines is found on Canvas.

This course is an introduction into some of the basic ideas and topics in theoretical syntax. The topics include phrase structure, X-bar theory, functional projections, verb raising, argument structure, case marking, binding principles and locality principles. The discussion will be based on examples from Icelandic, English and many other languages.

This is an advanced morphology course that is taught every other year. The aim of the course is introduce to students various theories and topics in morphology, using examples from Icelandic and other languages, and to train students to work on morphology on their own.

This course focuses on  short stories in Icelandic, old and new, original and translated. Main theories about the genre or genres will be presented as well as its origin and development. Texts discussed are very diverse, we will be reading and working with heterogeneous texts from Romantic and Realist short stories of the 19^th Century to short prose and short messages of our days and age. Certain genres will also be considered, such as horror stories, crime stories and fantasies. The cource will approach the chosen texts from different point of view and different theoretical perspectives, connect the stories to their predecessors and show how their themes are still around us.

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

This course is a survey of linguistic research on first language acquisition, in particular, although we will also look at bilingualism and the acquisition of second and foreign languages. We will be concerned with the question of how young children acquire their native language. The primary focus is on (1) the biological foundations of language and the effects of the language environment on young children's language acquisition, and (2) grammatical development in language acquisition, i.e. how children develop the system of rules - syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological - which comprise the grammar of their language, and acquire its vocabulary. In the course, we will concentrate on Icelandic language development, although we also look at language development in English and other languages.

The class is taught in Icelandic.  In this course, students get a chance to hone their writing skills. Students will hand in regular writing assignments where they practise different ways of presenting scholarly work in a creative manner, such as op-eds and creative nonfiction. Students will also write creative texts, such as short stories. Students can use material from their field of study but will also have to face new challenges. Classes will be in the form of lectures, discussions, and workshops. Assessment will be based on regular assignments, self-assessment, a midterm assignment, a final assignment, a portfolio, and attendance and participation. Attendance and participation make up 15% of the grade and is partly mandatory (8 out of 12 workshops). The course is open to all undergraduate students at the University of Iceland but students must themselves make sure that the course can be used for credit in their particular studies.

Online learning:

The course is organized as face-to-face learning but all lectures from teachers will be recorded. This is done to assure better access to the course. Students who do not attend class will listen to the lectures and write short reports. They also turn in assignments otherwise done in class.

An examination will be made of the religious beliefs and practices of people in Scandinavia from the earliest of times until the conversion, material ranging from burial practices to rock carvings, to the written evidence given in the works of Tacitus, Adam of Bremen and Saxo Grammaticus, as well as in early Icelandic works like the Eddic poems and the Kings' sagas. Alongside this discussion of the development and key features of Old Norse religion, some attention will be paid to the concepts of seid and shamanism, especially in connection to their role in early religions. Finally, an examination will be made of the conversion of Scandinavia and how Christian concepts and practices both fitted and contrasted with the previously dominant Old Norse worldview.

Teaching form:
The teaching takes place in the form of lectures and discussion on the material of the lectures.

The meaning of words and sentences is often determined by the context, for instance in irony. How do listeners understand us if we don‘t always say what we mean? What do conversations in different cultures and languages have in common? In this course we will examine language in interaction from different perspectives. Key concepts in linguistic pragmatics will be introduced, including the contribution of context to meaning. The methodology and key topics of conversation analysis will be described along with recent comparative studies on language in interaction around the world. We will also briefly discuss interdisciplinary psycholinguistic research on pragmatics. Students will get hands-on experience with recording conversations, the conceptual analysis of talk, and use of relevant software (including Praat for analyzing and processing sound files and ELAN for annotation of conversation).

Kings’ sagas and Family sagas are two major types of medieval Icelandic literature. Scholarship on the Kings’ sagas started in the 17^th century, but in the 20^th century, scholars were focusing the Family sagas in particular. A core question at the time was whether these sagas were built upon some sort of oral tradition, or whether they were first and foremost written literature. These questions were not least dependent on currents from other field of research, for example sociology and anthropology. Today, the scholarly landscape has changed yet again, and many scholars now have their focus on either the developments and revolutions in Europe from the 12^th to the 14^th century, or on topics that are relevant to us today, for example, the dealing of man with nature, or human emotions in the light of growing uncertainty and insecurity in daily life. In this class, we want to dive deeper into the history and development of this research, and we also want to read several Kings’ sagas and Family sagas to come to our own scholarly conclusions.

A course on Icelandic lyrics and popular culture from the mid-20th century to the present. The approaches of Cultural Studies will be used in order to throw light on the position and development of these lyrics during a period of social changes, rock culture and multimedia.

This course will introduce concepts and methods in Historical Linguistics, i.e., the field of Linguistics that studies language change. The various kinds of language change will be discussed, their causes and characteristics. We will study examples of language changes from different periods, from Germanic and other Indo-European languages, in particular, but also from other language families. The development of ideas about the nature of language change will be discussed along the way.

The course provides students with an overview of speech pathologists' main subject areas within an Icelandic setting. This is a vast and diverse domain, ranging from the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia and aphasia in adults, to language impairment and speech sound disorders in children. The course will intertwine essential terms and knowledge with more practical approaches to the material. Furthermore, students should gain the skills necessary to acquaint themselves with relevant research and peer-reviewed articles within the field of speech-language pathology.

This course is primarily intended for undergraduate student in the humanities at the University of Iceland who wish to be able to use programming in their work. In the course, we go through the foundations of programming using the programming language Python and an emphasis is placed on the analysis of textual data. The course is therefore appropriate for those who would like to get to know language technology at the undergraduate level, especially those who are interested in pursuing the language technology program at the MA-level. The course is taught alongside MLT701F Programming in language technology at the MA-level and all students attend the same lectures but BA students get shorter assignments than MA students. When solving various programming tasks involving the analysis of text it is beneficial for students to be at least somewhat familiar with important concepts in the grammatical analysis of natural languages but if a student is unsure whether they have the appropriate background for the course, they should feel free to contact the instructor for further information. 

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing. Students who subsequently enroll in the MA-program in language technology will build on skills acquired in this course in other courses about natural language processing.

Later

This course covers the basics of phonetics and phonology. The first half of the course will focus on phonetics. The speech articulators and sound production will be described. Students will receive training in phonetic transcription. The main acoustic methods will be introduced and the relationship between phonetics and phonology will be discussed. In the second part of the course, concepts and methods in the analysis of phonological systems will be introduced and students will be trained in their use. Different theories in phonology will be examined in relation to language in general and Icelandic phonology in particular.

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

Can literature play a part in the fight against global warming? How do volcanic eruptions and natural disasters feature in Icelandic literature? The course searches answers to these and many more questions regarding the connection between literature and nature or the environment. This connection is what concerns ecocriticism, which will be introduced in the course, along with other research fields within environmental humanities. Works from various periods of the history of Icelandic literature will be read and analysed in view of critical theories within environmental humanities. These include the connection of literature with the ocean, natural disasters, climate, parts of the land, aesthetic sense and the future of life on planet Earth.

This is a basic composition course. Writing skills will be honed through weekly assignments, lectures, class discussions and workshops.Approaches to writing research papers will be addressed, such as choosing and narrowing a topic, structure, and sources. Register, style, spelling, punctuation, and resources for writers will be discussed. Students write essays and papers of various kinds and get regular feedback from peers and teachers. Course assessment is based on written assignments and class participation. The course can only be passed if all assignments are turned in.

This course provides an introduction to the study of folk narrative as a particular genre within the overall field of folkloristics. Students will be introduced to the main theories concerning the origins, features and distribution of folk tales, their role in society, their collection, methods of classification and means of preservation. Among others, students will be introduced to the work of Antti Aarne, Inger M. Boberg, Bruno Bettleheim, Linda Dégh, Stith Thompson, Timothy Tangherlini and Alan Dundes. Particular attention will be laid to the main forms of oral narrative, particular attention being paid to the form and analysis of legends and fairy tales from the viewpoint of the main arguments concerning these aspects of study, among others the work of Algirdas Greimas, Bengt Holbek, Max Lüthi, Axel Olrik and Vladimir Propp.

BA-thesis in Icelandic

The aim of this survey course is to sample the literary history of the last four millennia by reading a number of world masterpieces from Africa, Asia and Europe. All texts will be read in Icelandic translations. 

The major aspects of the history of linguistics traced from the antiquity through the middle ages till the beginning of the 19th Century. The Old Icelandic grammatical treatises. The major aspects of the history of linguistics in the 19th and 20th century. Emphasis is placed on the theories and discoveries that have been most influential in the development of ideas and methods in linguistics.

In this course the position of women in popular narrative genres in the Icelandic Middle Ages will be discussed. We will look for clues about the fate of women in poems and sagas, especially based on how violence is addressed in many of them, not least sexual violence. The reaction of women and society in general to the violence will also be examined. The genres that will be investigated span a long period of time; the Icelandic, legendary and chivalric sagas, poetic genres such as the heroic poems of Edda, rímur, sagnakvæði (a narrative genre), and finally ballads, but their role in women's culture will also be discussed.

In this course, love will be explored in Icelandic literature and films, set in the context of Western cultural history, from the courtly love of the Middle Ages to mass-produced contemporary love stories. Discussions will revolve around the main themes of love, the differences in its representation in high literature versus popular culture. Poems, plays, and novels will be read, and well-known films, either connected to the literary works or standing independently, will be analyzed. Among the authors to be studied are Elín Thorarensen, Halldór Laxness, Guðrún frá Lundi, Snjólaug Bragadóttir, Guðbergur Bergsson, and Bergsveinn Birgisson. Translated love stories and films within the genre will also be included.

The course offers a survey of Irish literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course focuses on plays, poetry, and novels of seminal authors as well as examining the main literary trends of the period. The course is based on lectures, discussions and group work.

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

This course is taught in Icelandic and is intended for graduate students and BA students in their final year. It presents the main theories of psychoanalysis in light of philosophy and literary and cultural studies. It also concentrates on the contribution of psychoanalysis to further our understanding of culture and cultural achievements such as literature and cinema. It is taught twice a week, students give presentations and write a final essay.

This course provides an overview of Icelandic manuscript culture. Students will get practical training in reading Icelandic manuscripts from different periods, from the earliest extant Icelandic vellums dating to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries down to the paper manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The origins of the Icelandic script will be discussed as well as its development over time, and students will get practical training in reading different types of script from different periods. The orthography of medieval manuscripts differs considerably from the modern orthography. It includes a system of abbreviations that is partly inherited from a much earlier Latin tradition. Students will get practical training in interpreting these abbreviations. The Icelandic language has also changed over time, and different manifestations of these language changes appear when reading and examining Icelandic texts from different periods. A selection of these changes will be discussed. Changes in script, orthography, and language provide valuable indications of the date of the manuscript, and students will get practical training in dating medieval Icelandic manuscripts based on script, orthography, and language.

Various aspects of medieval book production will be discussed, including the making of parchment and ink, and book binding. Scribes and scribal schools will be discussed as well as probable centres of book production in medieval Iceland. The works of some prolific scribes in the fourteenth century will be examined. What did they write? How did they write? Did they change their practice over a long scribal career? The texts contained by the manuscripts will also be examined and the basics of textual criticism introduced. Njáls saga, for instance, has survived in over sixty manuscripts with considerable textual variation. Which manuscript should then constitute the basis for a printed edition of Njáls saga? Different types of printed editions will be discussed, and students try their hand at editing a medieval text. The electronic editing of pre-modern texts will be introduced, and students will get practical training in mark-up with XML according to the guidelines of the Medieval Nordic Text Archive (MENOTA) and the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI).

The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops with considerable student engagement. Many of the lectures will be pre-recorded allowing more time in the classroom for discussion and student contributions.

The course is run in cooperation with the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies which has the custody of the largest single collection of Icelandic medieval manuscripts. Students will visit the institute to learn about its collections and facilities and to examine manuscripts.

Course synopsis

Week 1
(1) Introduction
The course: format, readings, requirements and assessment.
The subject matter: Medieval Icelandic manuscripts.

(2) The earliest Icelandic manuscripts
A sketch of the history of the Latin script and the earliest writings in Icelandic. Where did Icelanders learn to use the Latin alphabet? Which orthography did they employ? Some main characteristics of medieval orthography and the use of abbreviations.

Week 2
(3) Electronic editing of medieval texts
How can medieval texts be presented electronically? The XML mark-up language, TEI, MENOTA, MUFI, and related matters. We will try our hand at electronic editing.

(4) The earliest Icelandic orthography and the First Grammatical Treatise
The use of the Latin alphabet for writing Icelandic: challenges — and the solutions proposed by the author of the First Grammatical Treatise in the middle of the twelfth century.

Week 3
(5) Icelandic script and orthography in the thirteenth century
The difference between Icelandic and Norwegian orthography in the twelfth century. What changed in the course of the thirteenth century?

(6) Different types of print editions: scholarly editions
How accurate should printed editions be? Should every little detail in the manuscript be reproduced? What is “Classical Old Icelandic Normalized Orthography”? What are the needs of the readers? What is the role of the editor?

Week 4
(7) Norwegian influence on script, orthography, and language in Icelandic manuscripts
What is the manifestation of this Norwegian influence? How deep-rooted was it? How long did it last?

(8) The dating of manuscripts: script, orthography, and language
How can medieval Icelandic manuscripts be dated? Features of script, orthography, and language that can be helpful for dating.

Week 5
(9) Icelandic script and orthography in the fourteenth century
Main characteristics and their development.

(10) One scribal hand or many?
Distinguishing different scribal hands: some criteria. The Icelandic Homily Book from around 1200: One scribe or fourteen?

Week 6
(11) Book production: parchment, ink, binding — and conservation
From animal skin to parchment. How was the ink produced? Book design and book binding. The care and conservation of medieval manuscripts.

(12) Book production: parchment, ink, binding — and conservation
A visit to the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

— STUDY WEEK —

Week 7
(13) Scribes, scribal milieus, the export of books
On prolific scribes, scribal collaboration, and extensive production of books. Were books produced in Iceland for export in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries?

(14) Icelandic script and orthography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
Main characteristics and their development.

Week 8
(15) Textual criticism
On the transmission of texts through copying. Textual variation, manuscript classification, and stemmatology.

(16) Textual criticism
Comparing manuscripts and collecting variants.

Week 9
(17) Manuscript illumination
On illuminated manuscripts, historiated initials, artists and their models.

(18) Manuscript catalogues and cataloguing
We will familiarize ourselves with the most important manuscript catalogues and learn about the principles of manuscript cataloguing.

Week 10
(19) Icelandic script and orthography in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Main characteristics and their development.

(20) The transmission of the text: a relic or a living text?
How did the language change when a scribe copied from an old exemplar? Njáls saga is believed to have been written towards the end of the thirteenth century. What is the language of Njáls saga in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscripts?

Week 11
(21) Antiquarianism, manuscript collectors, and copyists
The sixteenth century saw the rise of interest in antiquities, old manuscripts were collected and copied.

(22) Different types of print editions: popular editions
How is a pre-modern text best presented to the modern reader? Should archaic features of language and orthography be retained or should they be updated? On the allegiance to the manuscript and allegiance to the reader.

Week 12
(23) Manuscript collections and manuscript collectors
The life and work of Árni Magnússon.

(24) The manuscript dispute and the return of the manuscripts to Iceland
The search for Codex Scardensis and a nerve-racking auction in London. The custody dispute with Denmark and the return of the manuscripts to Iceland 1971–1997.

— This synopsis may be subject to change. —

Readings

The reading list is on the course website on Canvas. It consists of readings in several languages, including English, Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, German, and French. The reading list is (often) divided into three main sections:

(a) Required readings: Texts that everyone is required to read. These are all in English.

(b) Optional supplementary readings: These are optional readings for those who want a more in-depth discussion. Most of these readings are in English, but not all.

(c) For those who still want more: A variety of optional readings in several languages, not least in Icelandic, for those who still want more. This section is mostly for reference purposes and as a tool for further research.

Many of the required readings (and some of the optional readings) are found on the Canvas course website. Other reading materials are available in the institute library in the Árni Magnússon Institute in Edda and the University Library (Háskólabókasafn) in the Þjóðarbókhlaða.

Prerequisites
Some skills in Icelandic are essential to fully benefit from the course, as emphasis will be placed on practical training in reading and transcribing text from medieval Icelandic manuscripts. MIS105F Old Icelandic 1 or equivalent study of Old Icelandic is sufficient or some skills in Modern Icelandic. Please, consult the instructor if in doubt.

Course format
The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops with considerable student engagement. Many of the lectures will be prerecorded allowing more time in the classroom for discussion and student contributions (flipped classroom).

Working language: This course is open to students with different linguistic backgrounds, and there are two working languages, English and Icelandic. Pre-recorded lectures are in both English and Icelandic (except for guest lecturers who will present in English), written assignments are in both English and Icelandic, and reading materials are in English, Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages, but for those who cannot read Icelandic or the Scan-dinavian languages, all required readings are in English. English is the main working language in the classroom, but questions and contributions to class discussion may also be in Icelandic. — See a separate note on the working languages and the classroom arrangement.

Course requirements and assessment
The final grade for the course will be based on:

(1) Transcription assignments: 30%
(2) Manuscript catalogue assignment: 10%
(3) Manuscript dating assignment: 10%
(4) Presentation: manuscript of the day: 10%
(5) Research paper: 30%
(6) Class participation: 10%

All written assignments will be submitted through Canvas. More detailed instructions and information on deadlines is found on Canvas.

This course is an introduction into some of the basic ideas and topics in theoretical syntax. The topics include phrase structure, X-bar theory, functional projections, verb raising, argument structure, case marking, binding principles and locality principles. The discussion will be based on examples from Icelandic, English and many other languages.

This is an advanced morphology course that is taught every other year. The aim of the course is introduce to students various theories and topics in morphology, using examples from Icelandic and other languages, and to train students to work on morphology on their own.

This course focuses on  short stories in Icelandic, old and new, original and translated. Main theories about the genre or genres will be presented as well as its origin and development. Texts discussed are very diverse, we will be reading and working with heterogeneous texts from Romantic and Realist short stories of the 19^th Century to short prose and short messages of our days and age. Certain genres will also be considered, such as horror stories, crime stories and fantasies. The cource will approach the chosen texts from different point of view and different theoretical perspectives, connect the stories to their predecessors and show how their themes are still around us.

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

This course is a survey of linguistic research on first language acquisition, in particular, although we will also look at bilingualism and the acquisition of second and foreign languages. We will be concerned with the question of how young children acquire their native language. The primary focus is on (1) the biological foundations of language and the effects of the language environment on young children's language acquisition, and (2) grammatical development in language acquisition, i.e. how children develop the system of rules - syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological - which comprise the grammar of their language, and acquire its vocabulary. In the course, we will concentrate on Icelandic language development, although we also look at language development in English and other languages.

The class is taught in Icelandic.  In this course, students get a chance to hone their writing skills. Students will hand in regular writing assignments where they practise different ways of presenting scholarly work in a creative manner, such as op-eds and creative nonfiction. Students will also write creative texts, such as short stories. Students can use material from their field of study but will also have to face new challenges. Classes will be in the form of lectures, discussions, and workshops. Assessment will be based on regular assignments, self-assessment, a midterm assignment, a final assignment, a portfolio, and attendance and participation. Attendance and participation make up 15% of the grade and is partly mandatory (8 out of 12 workshops). The course is open to all undergraduate students at the University of Iceland but students must themselves make sure that the course can be used for credit in their particular studies.

Online learning:

The course is organized as face-to-face learning but all lectures from teachers will be recorded. This is done to assure better access to the course. Students who do not attend class will listen to the lectures and write short reports. They also turn in assignments otherwise done in class.

An examination will be made of the religious beliefs and practices of people in Scandinavia from the earliest of times until the conversion, material ranging from burial practices to rock carvings, to the written evidence given in the works of Tacitus, Adam of Bremen and Saxo Grammaticus, as well as in early Icelandic works like the Eddic poems and the Kings' sagas. Alongside this discussion of the development and key features of Old Norse religion, some attention will be paid to the concepts of seid and shamanism, especially in connection to their role in early religions. Finally, an examination will be made of the conversion of Scandinavia and how Christian concepts and practices both fitted and contrasted with the previously dominant Old Norse worldview.

Teaching form:
The teaching takes place in the form of lectures and discussion on the material of the lectures.

BA-thesis in Icelandic

By focusing on folk tales, literature and other relevant sources, the course discusses the manifestations of nature and the supernatural in Icelandic narrative culture throughout the centuries. Students will learn about the significance, interface, and unclear boundaries of these phenomena and how they have shaped society and the environment as well. Students will thus get to know different ideas about the position of people and (other) animals within, above or "outside" of nature. Through diverse lectures and assignments, topics such as humanity vs. animality, the known world vs. other worlds, and materiality vs. the supernatural, will be discussed from critical points of view. The roles and forms of landscape, organisms, bodies, weather, and natural phenomena in the narrative culture will be explored. The latest research in this broad field will be presented, such as on the representation of earthquakes and celestial bodies, bears, whales, seals, and domestic animals, and on the supernatural creatures of nature and other mythological creatures such as fairies, ghosts, trolls, and berserks. Students will learn how story worlds and folklore have left their mark on the perception of nature, folk traditions, folk customs, and social spaces such as enchanted spots, sacred places and hunted places. We also ask how these narratives appear in folk art and visual art, from previous centuries to the present. Finally, we will explore the significance of nature narratives and the supernatural in the context of the Anthropocene, human perspectives, climate change, and the different statuses of social groups and species

This is a joint course for students in Icelandic, General Linguistics and Sign Language Linguistics. It falls into two parts. On the one hand, in Thursday classes, the students receive training in critical thinking, scientific methods and academic writing. Topics include the use of handbooks and other sources, the style and structure of academic papers, research methods in linguistics and literature, conventions regarding citations and bibliographies, etc.

In the second part of the course, taught on Tuesdays, the students are introduced to the various sub-disciplines of Icelandic, General Linguistics and Sign Language Linguistics as academic subjects and their connection to other subject areas. Different teachers and other guests introduce their sub-disciplines and areas of specialization.

The course gives an introduction to linguistics and methods of linguistic analyses. The goal is to acquaint students with the nature of human languages and the main features of Icelandic grammar. 

This course is an introduction to literary theory, its terms and methods. Students are trained in analysing literary texts, poems, prose and drama. 

An overview of Icelandic literary history from the beginning to the end of the 19th century. Novelties and changes in Icelandic literature will be placed in context with contemporary currents in European literature.

The course focuses on the various ways in which medieval texts can be studied, referring to both medieval or modern literary theory. The characteristics of medieval textual culture will be discussed, as well as medieval attitudes to fact and fiction, entertainment and edification. Texts representing all of the most important genres of Icelandic medieval literature will be read.

An introductory course in Icelandic phonetics, phonology, and morphology. The basics of acoustic phonetics and Icelandic articulatory phonetics will be introduced, accompanied by training in phonetic transcription. The main concepts of phonology will be presented, followed by an overview of sound alternations in Icelandic and their conditions. Basic concepts in morphology will be presented and the main word formation processes in Icelandic and their productivity will be dealt with. Grammatical categories in Icelandic will be outlined, the inflection of the main parts of speech will be described, and an overview given of inflectional classes and variations.

Historical overview of the development of literary theory. The main emphasis is on twentieth and twenty-first century trends and methods. In addition to lectures there are small group discussion periods.

This course aims at explaining the connection between diachronic language change and synchronic language variation, as it is generally assumed that language changes generate variants that coexist for a time and that all synchronic variants are caused by a language change of some kind. The course will, on the one hand, discuss the nature of language change and the main types of changes, and on the other hand, the nature of synchronic variation. We will focus on the development of Icelandic; hence, examples will primarily be taken from the history of Icelandic and from present-day Icelandic, but we will also look at parallels in other languages.

This course covers the basic issues in Icelandic syntax, including parts of speech, phrasal categories, the syntactic classification of verbs, movements of various kinds and grammatical functions. The ways in which language use, semantics, and pragmatics relate to syntax will also be discussed.

The meaning of words and sentences is often determined by the context, for instance in irony. How do listeners understand us if we don‘t always say what we mean? What do conversations in different cultures and languages have in common? In this course we will examine language in interaction from different perspectives. Key concepts in linguistic pragmatics will be introduced, including the contribution of context to meaning. The methodology and key topics of conversation analysis will be described along with recent comparative studies on language in interaction around the world. We will also briefly discuss interdisciplinary psycholinguistic research on pragmatics. Students will get hands-on experience with recording conversations, the conceptual analysis of talk, and use of relevant software (including Praat for analyzing and processing sound files and ELAN for annotation of conversation).

Kings’ sagas and Family sagas are two major types of medieval Icelandic literature. Scholarship on the Kings’ sagas started in the 17^th century, but in the 20^th century, scholars were focusing the Family sagas in particular. A core question at the time was whether these sagas were built upon some sort of oral tradition, or whether they were first and foremost written literature. These questions were not least dependent on currents from other field of research, for example sociology and anthropology. Today, the scholarly landscape has changed yet again, and many scholars now have their focus on either the developments and revolutions in Europe from the 12^th to the 14^th century, or on topics that are relevant to us today, for example, the dealing of man with nature, or human emotions in the light of growing uncertainty and insecurity in daily life. In this class, we want to dive deeper into the history and development of this research, and we also want to read several Kings’ sagas and Family sagas to come to our own scholarly conclusions.

A course on Icelandic lyrics and popular culture from the mid-20th century to the present. The approaches of Cultural Studies will be used in order to throw light on the position and development of these lyrics during a period of social changes, rock culture and multimedia.

This course will introduce concepts and methods in Historical Linguistics, i.e., the field of Linguistics that studies language change. The various kinds of language change will be discussed, their causes and characteristics. We will study examples of language changes from different periods, from Germanic and other Indo-European languages, in particular, but also from other language families. The development of ideas about the nature of language change will be discussed along the way.

The course provides students with an overview of speech pathologists' main subject areas within an Icelandic setting. This is a vast and diverse domain, ranging from the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia and aphasia in adults, to language impairment and speech sound disorders in children. The course will intertwine essential terms and knowledge with more practical approaches to the material. Furthermore, students should gain the skills necessary to acquaint themselves with relevant research and peer-reviewed articles within the field of speech-language pathology.

This course is primarily intended for undergraduate student in the humanities at the University of Iceland who wish to be able to use programming in their work. In the course, we go through the foundations of programming using the programming language Python and an emphasis is placed on the analysis of textual data. The course is therefore appropriate for those who would like to get to know language technology at the undergraduate level, especially those who are interested in pursuing the language technology program at the MA-level. The course is taught alongside MLT701F Programming in language technology at the MA-level and all students attend the same lectures but BA students get shorter assignments than MA students. When solving various programming tasks involving the analysis of text it is beneficial for students to be at least somewhat familiar with important concepts in the grammatical analysis of natural languages but if a student is unsure whether they have the appropriate background for the course, they should feel free to contact the instructor for further information. 

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing. Students who subsequently enroll in the MA-program in language technology will build on skills acquired in this course in other courses about natural language processing.

Later

This course covers the basics of phonetics and phonology. The first half of the course will focus on phonetics. The speech articulators and sound production will be described. Students will receive training in phonetic transcription. The main acoustic methods will be introduced and the relationship between phonetics and phonology will be discussed. In the second part of the course, concepts and methods in the analysis of phonological systems will be introduced and students will be trained in their use. Different theories in phonology will be examined in relation to language in general and Icelandic phonology in particular.

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

Can literature play a part in the fight against global warming? How do volcanic eruptions and natural disasters feature in Icelandic literature? The course searches answers to these and many more questions regarding the connection between literature and nature or the environment. This connection is what concerns ecocriticism, which will be introduced in the course, along with other research fields within environmental humanities. Works from various periods of the history of Icelandic literature will be read and analysed in view of critical theories within environmental humanities. These include the connection of literature with the ocean, natural disasters, climate, parts of the land, aesthetic sense and the future of life on planet Earth.

This is a basic composition course. Writing skills will be honed through weekly assignments, lectures, class discussions and workshops.Approaches to writing research papers will be addressed, such as choosing and narrowing a topic, structure, and sources. Register, style, spelling, punctuation, and resources for writers will be discussed. Students write essays and papers of various kinds and get regular feedback from peers and teachers. Course assessment is based on written assignments and class participation. The course can only be passed if all assignments are turned in.

This course provides an introduction to the study of folk narrative as a particular genre within the overall field of folkloristics. Students will be introduced to the main theories concerning the origins, features and distribution of folk tales, their role in society, their collection, methods of classification and means of preservation. Among others, students will be introduced to the work of Antti Aarne, Inger M. Boberg, Bruno Bettleheim, Linda Dégh, Stith Thompson, Timothy Tangherlini and Alan Dundes. Particular attention will be laid to the main forms of oral narrative, particular attention being paid to the form and analysis of legends and fairy tales from the viewpoint of the main arguments concerning these aspects of study, among others the work of Algirdas Greimas, Bengt Holbek, Max Lüthi, Axel Olrik and Vladimir Propp.

The aim of this survey course is to sample the literary history of the last four millennia by reading a number of world masterpieces from Africa, Asia and Europe. All texts will be read in Icelandic translations. 

The major aspects of the history of linguistics traced from the antiquity through the middle ages till the beginning of the 19th Century. The Old Icelandic grammatical treatises. The major aspects of the history of linguistics in the 19th and 20th century. Emphasis is placed on the theories and discoveries that have been most influential in the development of ideas and methods in linguistics.

The course gives an overview of the phonological system of Old Icelandic and its prehistory. We will read the First Grammatical Treatise and discuss its importance as source of evidence of Old Icelandic phonology and its contribution to the history of linguistics. The morphological structure of Old Icelandic will be treated in detail.

The teaching consists of lectures and special tutorial classes that will discuss homework assignments.

This module focuses on Icelandic literary history of the 20th and 21st century. Literary fiction of various kinds is read and discussed in a cultural historical context, both locally and internationally.

In this course the position of women in popular narrative genres in the Icelandic Middle Ages will be discussed. We will look for clues about the fate of women in poems and sagas, especially based on how violence is addressed in many of them, not least sexual violence. The reaction of women and society in general to the violence will also be examined. The genres that will be investigated span a long period of time; the Icelandic, legendary and chivalric sagas, poetic genres such as the heroic poems of Edda, rímur, sagnakvæði (a narrative genre), and finally ballads, but their role in women's culture will also be discussed.

In this course, love will be explored in Icelandic literature and films, set in the context of Western cultural history, from the courtly love of the Middle Ages to mass-produced contemporary love stories. Discussions will revolve around the main themes of love, the differences in its representation in high literature versus popular culture. Poems, plays, and novels will be read, and well-known films, either connected to the literary works or standing independently, will be analyzed. Among the authors to be studied are Elín Thorarensen, Halldór Laxness, Guðrún frá Lundi, Snjólaug Bragadóttir, Guðbergur Bergsson, and Bergsveinn Birgisson. Translated love stories and films within the genre will also be included.

The course offers a survey of Irish literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course focuses on plays, poetry, and novels of seminal authors as well as examining the main literary trends of the period. The course is based on lectures, discussions and group work.

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

This course is taught in Icelandic and is intended for graduate students and BA students in their final year. It presents the main theories of psychoanalysis in light of philosophy and literary and cultural studies. It also concentrates on the contribution of psychoanalysis to further our understanding of culture and cultural achievements such as literature and cinema. It is taught twice a week, students give presentations and write a final essay.

This course provides an overview of Icelandic manuscript culture. Students will get practical training in reading Icelandic manuscripts from different periods, from the earliest extant Icelandic vellums dating to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries down to the paper manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The origins of the Icelandic script will be discussed as well as its development over time, and students will get practical training in reading different types of script from different periods. The orthography of medieval manuscripts differs considerably from the modern orthography. It includes a system of abbreviations that is partly inherited from a much earlier Latin tradition. Students will get practical training in interpreting these abbreviations. The Icelandic language has also changed over time, and different manifestations of these language changes appear when reading and examining Icelandic texts from different periods. A selection of these changes will be discussed. Changes in script, orthography, and language provide valuable indications of the date of the manuscript, and students will get practical training in dating medieval Icelandic manuscripts based on script, orthography, and language.

Various aspects of medieval book production will be discussed, including the making of parchment and ink, and book binding. Scribes and scribal schools will be discussed as well as probable centres of book production in medieval Iceland. The works of some prolific scribes in the fourteenth century will be examined. What did they write? How did they write? Did they change their practice over a long scribal career? The texts contained by the manuscripts will also be examined and the basics of textual criticism introduced. Njáls saga, for instance, has survived in over sixty manuscripts with considerable textual variation. Which manuscript should then constitute the basis for a printed edition of Njáls saga? Different types of printed editions will be discussed, and students try their hand at editing a medieval text. The electronic editing of pre-modern texts will be introduced, and students will get practical training in mark-up with XML according to the guidelines of the Medieval Nordic Text Archive (MENOTA) and the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI).

The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops with considerable student engagement. Many of the lectures will be pre-recorded allowing more time in the classroom for discussion and student contributions.

The course is run in cooperation with the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies which has the custody of the largest single collection of Icelandic medieval manuscripts. Students will visit the institute to learn about its collections and facilities and to examine manuscripts.

Course synopsis

Week 1
(1) Introduction
The course: format, readings, requirements and assessment.
The subject matter: Medieval Icelandic manuscripts.

(2) The earliest Icelandic manuscripts
A sketch of the history of the Latin script and the earliest writings in Icelandic. Where did Icelanders learn to use the Latin alphabet? Which orthography did they employ? Some main characteristics of medieval orthography and the use of abbreviations.

Week 2
(3) Electronic editing of medieval texts
How can medieval texts be presented electronically? The XML mark-up language, TEI, MENOTA, MUFI, and related matters. We will try our hand at electronic editing.

(4) The earliest Icelandic orthography and the First Grammatical Treatise
The use of the Latin alphabet for writing Icelandic: challenges — and the solutions proposed by the author of the First Grammatical Treatise in the middle of the twelfth century.

Week 3
(5) Icelandic script and orthography in the thirteenth century
The difference between Icelandic and Norwegian orthography in the twelfth century. What changed in the course of the thirteenth century?

(6) Different types of print editions: scholarly editions
How accurate should printed editions be? Should every little detail in the manuscript be reproduced? What is “Classical Old Icelandic Normalized Orthography”? What are the needs of the readers? What is the role of the editor?

Week 4
(7) Norwegian influence on script, orthography, and language in Icelandic manuscripts
What is the manifestation of this Norwegian influence? How deep-rooted was it? How long did it last?

(8) The dating of manuscripts: script, orthography, and language
How can medieval Icelandic manuscripts be dated? Features of script, orthography, and language that can be helpful for dating.

Week 5
(9) Icelandic script and orthography in the fourteenth century
Main characteristics and their development.

(10) One scribal hand or many?
Distinguishing different scribal hands: some criteria. The Icelandic Homily Book from around 1200: One scribe or fourteen?

Week 6
(11) Book production: parchment, ink, binding — and conservation
From animal skin to parchment. How was the ink produced? Book design and book binding. The care and conservation of medieval manuscripts.

(12) Book production: parchment, ink, binding — and conservation
A visit to the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

— STUDY WEEK —

Week 7
(13) Scribes, scribal milieus, the export of books
On prolific scribes, scribal collaboration, and extensive production of books. Were books produced in Iceland for export in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries?

(14) Icelandic script and orthography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
Main characteristics and their development.

Week 8
(15) Textual criticism
On the transmission of texts through copying. Textual variation, manuscript classification, and stemmatology.

(16) Textual criticism
Comparing manuscripts and collecting variants.

Week 9
(17) Manuscript illumination
On illuminated manuscripts, historiated initials, artists and their models.

(18) Manuscript catalogues and cataloguing
We will familiarize ourselves with the most important manuscript catalogues and learn about the principles of manuscript cataloguing.

Week 10
(19) Icelandic script and orthography in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Main characteristics and their development.

(20) The transmission of the text: a relic or a living text?
How did the language change when a scribe copied from an old exemplar? Njáls saga is believed to have been written towards the end of the thirteenth century. What is the language of Njáls saga in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscripts?

Week 11
(21) Antiquarianism, manuscript collectors, and copyists
The sixteenth century saw the rise of interest in antiquities, old manuscripts were collected and copied.

(22) Different types of print editions: popular editions
How is a pre-modern text best presented to the modern reader? Should archaic features of language and orthography be retained or should they be updated? On the allegiance to the manuscript and allegiance to the reader.

Week 12
(23) Manuscript collections and manuscript collectors
The life and work of Árni Magnússon.

(24) The manuscript dispute and the return of the manuscripts to Iceland
The search for Codex Scardensis and a nerve-racking auction in London. The custody dispute with Denmark and the return of the manuscripts to Iceland 1971–1997.

— This synopsis may be subject to change. —

Readings

The reading list is on the course website on Canvas. It consists of readings in several languages, including English, Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, German, and French. The reading list is (often) divided into three main sections:

(a) Required readings: Texts that everyone is required to read. These are all in English.

(b) Optional supplementary readings: These are optional readings for those who want a more in-depth discussion. Most of these readings are in English, but not all.

(c) For those who still want more: A variety of optional readings in several languages, not least in Icelandic, for those who still want more. This section is mostly for reference purposes and as a tool for further research.

Many of the required readings (and some of the optional readings) are found on the Canvas course website. Other reading materials are available in the institute library in the Árni Magnússon Institute in Edda and the University Library (Háskólabókasafn) in the Þjóðarbókhlaða.

Prerequisites
Some skills in Icelandic are essential to fully benefit from the course, as emphasis will be placed on practical training in reading and transcribing text from medieval Icelandic manuscripts. MIS105F Old Icelandic 1 or equivalent study of Old Icelandic is sufficient or some skills in Modern Icelandic. Please, consult the instructor if in doubt.

Course format
The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops with considerable student engagement. Many of the lectures will be prerecorded allowing more time in the classroom for discussion and student contributions (flipped classroom).

Working language: This course is open to students with different linguistic backgrounds, and there are two working languages, English and Icelandic. Pre-recorded lectures are in both English and Icelandic (except for guest lecturers who will present in English), written assignments are in both English and Icelandic, and reading materials are in English, Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages, but for those who cannot read Icelandic or the Scan-dinavian languages, all required readings are in English. English is the main working language in the classroom, but questions and contributions to class discussion may also be in Icelandic. — See a separate note on the working languages and the classroom arrangement.

Course requirements and assessment
The final grade for the course will be based on:

(1) Transcription assignments: 30%
(2) Manuscript catalogue assignment: 10%
(3) Manuscript dating assignment: 10%
(4) Presentation: manuscript of the day: 10%
(5) Research paper: 30%
(6) Class participation: 10%

All written assignments will be submitted through Canvas. More detailed instructions and information on deadlines is found on Canvas.

This course is an introduction into some of the basic ideas and topics in theoretical syntax. The topics include phrase structure, X-bar theory, functional projections, verb raising, argument structure, case marking, binding principles and locality principles. The discussion will be based on examples from Icelandic, English and many other languages.

This is an advanced morphology course that is taught every other year. The aim of the course is introduce to students various theories and topics in morphology, using examples from Icelandic and other languages, and to train students to work on morphology on their own.

This course focuses on  short stories in Icelandic, old and new, original and translated. Main theories about the genre or genres will be presented as well as its origin and development. Texts discussed are very diverse, we will be reading and working with heterogeneous texts from Romantic and Realist short stories of the 19^th Century to short prose and short messages of our days and age. Certain genres will also be considered, such as horror stories, crime stories and fantasies. The cource will approach the chosen texts from different point of view and different theoretical perspectives, connect the stories to their predecessors and show how their themes are still around us.

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

This course is a survey of linguistic research on first language acquisition, in particular, although we will also look at bilingualism and the acquisition of second and foreign languages. We will be concerned with the question of how young children acquire their native language. The primary focus is on (1) the biological foundations of language and the effects of the language environment on young children's language acquisition, and (2) grammatical development in language acquisition, i.e. how children develop the system of rules - syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological - which comprise the grammar of their language, and acquire its vocabulary. In the course, we will concentrate on Icelandic language development, although we also look at language development in English and other languages.

The class is taught in Icelandic.  In this course, students get a chance to hone their writing skills. Students will hand in regular writing assignments where they practise different ways of presenting scholarly work in a creative manner, such as op-eds and creative nonfiction. Students will also write creative texts, such as short stories. Students can use material from their field of study but will also have to face new challenges. Classes will be in the form of lectures, discussions, and workshops. Assessment will be based on regular assignments, self-assessment, a midterm assignment, a final assignment, a portfolio, and attendance and participation. Attendance and participation make up 15% of the grade and is partly mandatory (8 out of 12 workshops). The course is open to all undergraduate students at the University of Iceland but students must themselves make sure that the course can be used for credit in their particular studies.

Online learning:

The course is organized as face-to-face learning but all lectures from teachers will be recorded. This is done to assure better access to the course. Students who do not attend class will listen to the lectures and write short reports. They also turn in assignments otherwise done in class.

An examination will be made of the religious beliefs and practices of people in Scandinavia from the earliest of times until the conversion, material ranging from burial practices to rock carvings, to the written evidence given in the works of Tacitus, Adam of Bremen and Saxo Grammaticus, as well as in early Icelandic works like the Eddic poems and the Kings' sagas. Alongside this discussion of the development and key features of Old Norse religion, some attention will be paid to the concepts of seid and shamanism, especially in connection to their role in early religions. Finally, an examination will be made of the conversion of Scandinavia and how Christian concepts and practices both fitted and contrasted with the previously dominant Old Norse worldview.

Teaching form:
The teaching takes place in the form of lectures and discussion on the material of the lectures.

The meaning of words and sentences is often determined by the context, for instance in irony. How do listeners understand us if we don‘t always say what we mean? What do conversations in different cultures and languages have in common? In this course we will examine language in interaction from different perspectives. Key concepts in linguistic pragmatics will be introduced, including the contribution of context to meaning. The methodology and key topics of conversation analysis will be described along with recent comparative studies on language in interaction around the world. We will also briefly discuss interdisciplinary psycholinguistic research on pragmatics. Students will get hands-on experience with recording conversations, the conceptual analysis of talk, and use of relevant software (including Praat for analyzing and processing sound files and ELAN for annotation of conversation).

Kings’ sagas and Family sagas are two major types of medieval Icelandic literature. Scholarship on the Kings’ sagas started in the 17^th century, but in the 20^th century, scholars were focusing the Family sagas in particular. A core question at the time was whether these sagas were built upon some sort of oral tradition, or whether they were first and foremost written literature. These questions were not least dependent on currents from other field of research, for example sociology and anthropology. Today, the scholarly landscape has changed yet again, and many scholars now have their focus on either the developments and revolutions in Europe from the 12^th to the 14^th century, or on topics that are relevant to us today, for example, the dealing of man with nature, or human emotions in the light of growing uncertainty and insecurity in daily life. In this class, we want to dive deeper into the history and development of this research, and we also want to read several Kings’ sagas and Family sagas to come to our own scholarly conclusions.

A course on Icelandic lyrics and popular culture from the mid-20th century to the present. The approaches of Cultural Studies will be used in order to throw light on the position and development of these lyrics during a period of social changes, rock culture and multimedia.

This course will introduce concepts and methods in Historical Linguistics, i.e., the field of Linguistics that studies language change. The various kinds of language change will be discussed, their causes and characteristics. We will study examples of language changes from different periods, from Germanic and other Indo-European languages, in particular, but also from other language families. The development of ideas about the nature of language change will be discussed along the way.

The course provides students with an overview of speech pathologists' main subject areas within an Icelandic setting. This is a vast and diverse domain, ranging from the diagnosis and treatment of dysphagia and aphasia in adults, to language impairment and speech sound disorders in children. The course will intertwine essential terms and knowledge with more practical approaches to the material. Furthermore, students should gain the skills necessary to acquaint themselves with relevant research and peer-reviewed articles within the field of speech-language pathology.

This course is primarily intended for undergraduate student in the humanities at the University of Iceland who wish to be able to use programming in their work. In the course, we go through the foundations of programming using the programming language Python and an emphasis is placed on the analysis of textual data. The course is therefore appropriate for those who would like to get to know language technology at the undergraduate level, especially those who are interested in pursuing the language technology program at the MA-level. The course is taught alongside MLT701F Programming in language technology at the MA-level and all students attend the same lectures but BA students get shorter assignments than MA students. When solving various programming tasks involving the analysis of text it is beneficial for students to be at least somewhat familiar with important concepts in the grammatical analysis of natural languages but if a student is unsure whether they have the appropriate background for the course, they should feel free to contact the instructor for further information. 

The main goal of this course is to support students in taking their first step toward learning programming, help them to knack the basis and train them in solving simple but diverse assignments in language technology using Python. Students will be introduced to a few text processing tools that can be used for natural language processing. Students who subsequently enroll in the MA-program in language technology will build on skills acquired in this course in other courses about natural language processing.

Later

This course covers the basics of phonetics and phonology. The first half of the course will focus on phonetics. The speech articulators and sound production will be described. Students will receive training in phonetic transcription. The main acoustic methods will be introduced and the relationship between phonetics and phonology will be discussed. In the second part of the course, concepts and methods in the analysis of phonological systems will be introduced and students will be trained in their use. Different theories in phonology will be examined in relation to language in general and Icelandic phonology in particular.

Faroeese is the language that has the strongest similarity to Icelandic among the Nordic languages but it has changed more than Icelandic with respect to phonology, inflections and syntax. Investigating Faroese is important for Icelandic linguistics because Faroese provides a unique perspective on how Icelandic could have changed or may change in the next centuries.

This course will give an overview of the grammar of Faroese (phonology, inflections, word-formation and syntax) in comparison to Icelandic and the other Nordic languages. Language changes, dialects and foreign influence on Faroese will also be discussed. Moreover, students will get some training in listening to spoken Faroese.

This is a course for people who want to be able to analyze datasets stastically to better understand them, for example through visualization with graphs. Recent years have seen an increased focus on data collection and statistical analysis within the humanities. This is particularly apparent in growing branches such as computational linguistics and psycholinguistics, cognitive literary studies and experimental philosophy, to name a few. The push towards quantitative methods occurs at a time where the validity and reliability of well-established statistical methods are called into question in other fields, with increased demands of replicability and open access as well as data protection and responsibility. In this course, students explore the value of quantitative methods in their field while getting training in the collection and analysis of data. A diverse set of research methods will be introduced, ranging from surveys to corpus analysis and experiments in which participants’ response to stimuli (such as words, texts or audio-visual materials) is quantified. Basic concepts in statistics will be reviewed, enabling students to know the difference between descriptive and inferential statistics, understand statistical significance and interpret visual representations of data in graphs. The course will be largely practical and students are expected to apply their knowledge of data collection and analysis under the instructor’s guidance. Students will work on a project within their own discipline but will also explore the possibility of cross-disciplinary work. Open source tools such as R Studio will be used for all assignments but no prior knowledge of the software or statistics in general is required. The course is suitable for all students within the humanities who want to collect quantitative data to answer interesting questions and could therefore be a useful preparation for a BA or MA project.

Can literature play a part in the fight against global warming? How do volcanic eruptions and natural disasters feature in Icelandic literature? The course searches answers to these and many more questions regarding the connection between literature and nature or the environment. This connection is what concerns ecocriticism, which will be introduced in the course, along with other research fields within environmental humanities. Works from various periods of the history of Icelandic literature will be read and analysed in view of critical theories within environmental humanities. These include the connection of literature with the ocean, natural disasters, climate, parts of the land, aesthetic sense and the future of life on planet Earth.

This is a basic composition course. Writing skills will be honed through weekly assignments, lectures, class discussions and workshops.Approaches to writing research papers will be addressed, such as choosing and narrowing a topic, structure, and sources. Register, style, spelling, punctuation, and resources for writers will be discussed. Students write essays and papers of various kinds and get regular feedback from peers and teachers. Course assessment is based on written assignments and class participation. The course can only be passed if all assignments are turned in.

This course provides an introduction to the study of folk narrative as a particular genre within the overall field of folkloristics. Students will be introduced to the main theories concerning the origins, features and distribution of folk tales, their role in society, their collection, methods of classification and means of preservation. Among others, students will be introduced to the work of Antti Aarne, Inger M. Boberg, Bruno Bettleheim, Linda Dégh, Stith Thompson, Timothy Tangherlini and Alan Dundes. Particular attention will be laid to the main forms of oral narrative, particular attention being paid to the form and analysis of legends and fairy tales from the viewpoint of the main arguments concerning these aspects of study, among others the work of Algirdas Greimas, Bengt Holbek, Max Lüthi, Axel Olrik and Vladimir Propp.

BA-thesis in Icelandic

The aim of this survey course is to sample the literary history of the last four millennia by reading a number of world masterpieces from Africa, Asia and Europe. All texts will be read in Icelandic translations. 

The major aspects of the history of linguistics traced from the antiquity through the middle ages till the beginning of the 19th Century. The Old Icelandic grammatical treatises. The major aspects of the history of linguistics in the 19th and 20th century. Emphasis is placed on the theories and discoveries that have been most influential in the development of ideas and methods in linguistics.

In this course the position of women in popular narrative genres in the Icelandic Middle Ages will be discussed. We will look for clues about the fate of women in poems and sagas, especially based on how violence is addressed in many of them, not least sexual violence. The reaction of women and society in general to the violence will also be examined. The genres that will be investigated span a long period of time; the Icelandic, legendary and chivalric sagas, poetic genres such as the heroic poems of Edda, rímur, sagnakvæði (a narrative genre), and finally ballads, but their role in women's culture will also be discussed.

In this course, love will be explored in Icelandic literature and films, set in the context of Western cultural history, from the courtly love of the Middle Ages to mass-produced contemporary love stories. Discussions will revolve around the main themes of love, the differences in its representation in high literature versus popular culture. Poems, plays, and novels will be read, and well-known films, either connected to the literary works or standing independently, will be analyzed. Among the authors to be studied are Elín Thorarensen, Halldór Laxness, Guðrún frá Lundi, Snjólaug Bragadóttir, Guðbergur Bergsson, and Bergsveinn Birgisson. Translated love stories and films within the genre will also be included.

The course offers a survey of Irish literature in the 20th and 21st centuries. The course focuses on plays, poetry, and novels of seminal authors as well as examining the main literary trends of the period. The course is based on lectures, discussions and group work.

This course covers cross-linguistic comparison and the main methods and topics in typology, especially concerning syntax and inflectional morphology.

In this course we will discuss selected topics in linguistics, with a focus on the origin of language and its influence on thought. Most of the course will be devoted to the origin and evolution of language and speech, seen from a broad perspective. Classic theories and research in the field will be discussed, including hypotheses on the role of gesture (Corballis) and grooming (Dunbar), the “single mutation” theory (Chomsky), and research on the evolution of speech (Fitch). We will also discuss more recent research that provides insights into the origin and nature of speech and the language capacity, such as research on songbirds, musicality and interaction. Did human language originate in gesture or vocal calls of animals? Did it evolve out of the need for gossip and grooming? Did music have any role in the evolution of language? What can genetic studies tell us about the evolution of language? Do biological biases or the environment influence the evolution of languages?  In the course we will also discuss the relationship between language and thought. Categorization of various phenomena and objects in languages of the world will be discussed, for example in relation to color vocabulary. How does the language we speak influence the way we think and perceive the world around us?

This course is taught in Icelandic and is intended for graduate students and BA students in their final year. It presents the main theories of psychoanalysis in light of philosophy and literary and cultural studies. It also concentrates on the contribution of psychoanalysis to further our understanding of culture and cultural achievements such as literature and cinema. It is taught twice a week, students give presentations and write a final essay.

This course provides an overview of Icelandic manuscript culture. Students will get practical training in reading Icelandic manuscripts from different periods, from the earliest extant Icelandic vellums dating to the twelfth and thirteenth centuries down to the paper manuscripts of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The origins of the Icelandic script will be discussed as well as its development over time, and students will get practical training in reading different types of script from different periods. The orthography of medieval manuscripts differs considerably from the modern orthography. It includes a system of abbreviations that is partly inherited from a much earlier Latin tradition. Students will get practical training in interpreting these abbreviations. The Icelandic language has also changed over time, and different manifestations of these language changes appear when reading and examining Icelandic texts from different periods. A selection of these changes will be discussed. Changes in script, orthography, and language provide valuable indications of the date of the manuscript, and students will get practical training in dating medieval Icelandic manuscripts based on script, orthography, and language.

Various aspects of medieval book production will be discussed, including the making of parchment and ink, and book binding. Scribes and scribal schools will be discussed as well as probable centres of book production in medieval Iceland. The works of some prolific scribes in the fourteenth century will be examined. What did they write? How did they write? Did they change their practice over a long scribal career? The texts contained by the manuscripts will also be examined and the basics of textual criticism introduced. Njáls saga, for instance, has survived in over sixty manuscripts with considerable textual variation. Which manuscript should then constitute the basis for a printed edition of Njáls saga? Different types of printed editions will be discussed, and students try their hand at editing a medieval text. The electronic editing of pre-modern texts will be introduced, and students will get practical training in mark-up with XML according to the guidelines of the Medieval Nordic Text Archive (MENOTA) and the Medieval Unicode Font Initiative (MUFI).

The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops with considerable student engagement. Many of the lectures will be pre-recorded allowing more time in the classroom for discussion and student contributions.

The course is run in cooperation with the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies which has the custody of the largest single collection of Icelandic medieval manuscripts. Students will visit the institute to learn about its collections and facilities and to examine manuscripts.

Course synopsis

Week 1
(1) Introduction
The course: format, readings, requirements and assessment.
The subject matter: Medieval Icelandic manuscripts.

(2) The earliest Icelandic manuscripts
A sketch of the history of the Latin script and the earliest writings in Icelandic. Where did Icelanders learn to use the Latin alphabet? Which orthography did they employ? Some main characteristics of medieval orthography and the use of abbreviations.

Week 2
(3) Electronic editing of medieval texts
How can medieval texts be presented electronically? The XML mark-up language, TEI, MENOTA, MUFI, and related matters. We will try our hand at electronic editing.

(4) The earliest Icelandic orthography and the First Grammatical Treatise
The use of the Latin alphabet for writing Icelandic: challenges — and the solutions proposed by the author of the First Grammatical Treatise in the middle of the twelfth century.

Week 3
(5) Icelandic script and orthography in the thirteenth century
The difference between Icelandic and Norwegian orthography in the twelfth century. What changed in the course of the thirteenth century?

(6) Different types of print editions: scholarly editions
How accurate should printed editions be? Should every little detail in the manuscript be reproduced? What is “Classical Old Icelandic Normalized Orthography”? What are the needs of the readers? What is the role of the editor?

Week 4
(7) Norwegian influence on script, orthography, and language in Icelandic manuscripts
What is the manifestation of this Norwegian influence? How deep-rooted was it? How long did it last?

(8) The dating of manuscripts: script, orthography, and language
How can medieval Icelandic manuscripts be dated? Features of script, orthography, and language that can be helpful for dating.

Week 5
(9) Icelandic script and orthography in the fourteenth century
Main characteristics and their development.

(10) One scribal hand or many?
Distinguishing different scribal hands: some criteria. The Icelandic Homily Book from around 1200: One scribe or fourteen?

Week 6
(11) Book production: parchment, ink, binding — and conservation
From animal skin to parchment. How was the ink produced? Book design and book binding. The care and conservation of medieval manuscripts.

(12) Book production: parchment, ink, binding — and conservation
A visit to the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies.

— STUDY WEEK —

Week 7
(13) Scribes, scribal milieus, the export of books
On prolific scribes, scribal collaboration, and extensive production of books. Were books produced in Iceland for export in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries?

(14) Icelandic script and orthography in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
Main characteristics and their development.

Week 8
(15) Textual criticism
On the transmission of texts through copying. Textual variation, manuscript classification, and stemmatology.

(16) Textual criticism
Comparing manuscripts and collecting variants.

Week 9
(17) Manuscript illumination
On illuminated manuscripts, historiated initials, artists and their models.

(18) Manuscript catalogues and cataloguing
We will familiarize ourselves with the most important manuscript catalogues and learn about the principles of manuscript cataloguing.

Week 10
(19) Icelandic script and orthography in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
Main characteristics and their development.

(20) The transmission of the text: a relic or a living text?
How did the language change when a scribe copied from an old exemplar? Njáls saga is believed to have been written towards the end of the thirteenth century. What is the language of Njáls saga in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century manuscripts?

Week 11
(21) Antiquarianism, manuscript collectors, and copyists
The sixteenth century saw the rise of interest in antiquities, old manuscripts were collected and copied.

(22) Different types of print editions: popular editions
How is a pre-modern text best presented to the modern reader? Should archaic features of language and orthography be retained or should they be updated? On the allegiance to the manuscript and allegiance to the reader.

Week 12
(23) Manuscript collections and manuscript collectors
The life and work of Árni Magnússon.

(24) The manuscript dispute and the return of the manuscripts to Iceland
The search for Codex Scardensis and a nerve-racking auction in London. The custody dispute with Denmark and the return of the manuscripts to Iceland 1971–1997.

— This synopsis may be subject to change. —

Readings

The reading list is on the course website on Canvas. It consists of readings in several languages, including English, Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, German, and French. The reading list is (often) divided into three main sections:

(a) Required readings: Texts that everyone is required to read. These are all in English.

(b) Optional supplementary readings: These are optional readings for those who want a more in-depth discussion. Most of these readings are in English, but not all.

(c) For those who still want more: A variety of optional readings in several languages, not least in Icelandic, for those who still want more. This section is mostly for reference purposes and as a tool for further research.

Many of the required readings (and some of the optional readings) are found on the Canvas course website. Other reading materials are available in the institute library in the Árni Magnússon Institute in Edda and the University Library (Háskólabókasafn) in the Þjóðarbókhlaða.

Prerequisites
Some skills in Icelandic are essential to fully benefit from the course, as emphasis will be placed on practical training in reading and transcribing text from medieval Icelandic manuscripts. MIS105F Old Icelandic 1 or equivalent study of Old Icelandic is sufficient or some skills in Modern Icelandic. Please, consult the instructor if in doubt.

Course format
The course is taught through a combination of lectures and workshops with considerable student engagement. Many of the lectures will be prerecorded allowing more time in the classroom for discussion and student contributions (flipped classroom).

Working language: This course is open to students with different linguistic backgrounds, and there are two working languages, English and Icelandic. Pre-recorded lectures are in both English and Icelandic (except for guest lecturers who will present in English), written assignments are in both English and Icelandic, and reading materials are in English, Icelandic and the Scandinavian languages, but for those who cannot read Icelandic or the Scan-dinavian languages, all required readings are in English. English is the main working language in the classroom, but questions and contributions to class discussion may also be in Icelandic. — See a separate note on the working languages and the classroom arrangement.

Course requirements and assessment
The final grade for the course will be based on:

(1) Transcription assignments: 30%
(2) Manuscript catalogue assignment: 10%
(3) Manuscript dating assignment: 10%
(4) Presentation: manuscript of the day: 10%
(5) Research paper: 30%
(6) Class participation: 10%

All written assignments will be submitted through Canvas. More detailed instructions and information on deadlines is found on Canvas.

This course is an introduction into some of the basic ideas and topics in theoretical syntax. The topics include phrase structure, X-bar theory, functional projections, verb raising, argument structure, case marking, binding principles and locality principles. The discussion will be based on examples from Icelandic, English and many other languages.

This is an advanced morphology course that is taught every other year. The aim of the course is introduce to students various theories and topics in morphology, using examples from Icelandic and other languages, and to train students to work on morphology on their own.

This course focuses on  short stories in Icelandic, old and new, original and translated. Main theories about the genre or genres will be presented as well as its origin and development. Texts discussed are very diverse, we will be reading and working with heterogeneous texts from Romantic and Realist short stories of the 19^th Century to short prose and short messages of our days and age. Certain genres will also be considered, such as horror stories, crime stories and fantasies. The cource will approach the chosen texts from different point of view and different theoretical perspectives, connect the stories to their predecessors and show how their themes are still around us.

Do AI tools work in Icelandic? Do they work as well as in languages such as English? In this course we explore these two questions in the context of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as the ones underlying the ChatGPT and Claude AI assistants. We will examine the methods used to assess the language comprehension and production of LLMs in languages such as Icelandic and discuss whether various potential risks of increased LLM use (e.g. disinformation and bias propagation) are exacerbated in lower-resource language communities. We will place these discussions in the context of current theoretical debates, asking what AI performance in Icelandic tells us about the nature of LLMs and human language, e.g. regarding questions about how children and machines learn language.

This course is a survey of linguistic research on first language acquisition, in particular, although we will also look at bilingualism and the acquisition of second and foreign languages. We will be concerned with the question of how young children acquire their native language. The primary focus is on (1) the biological foundations of language and the effects of the language environment on young children's language acquisition, and (2) grammatical development in language acquisition, i.e. how children develop the system of rules - syntactic, semantic, morphological, phonological - which comprise the grammar of their language, and acquire its vocabulary. In the course, we will concentrate on Icelandic language development, although we also look at language development in English and other languages.

The class is taught in Icelandic.  In this course, students get a chance to hone their writing skills. Students will hand in regular writing assignments where they practise different ways of presenting scholarly work in a creative manner, such as op-eds and creative nonfiction. Students will also write creative texts, such as short stories. Students can use material from their field of study but will also have to face new challenges. Classes will be in the form of lectures, discussions, and workshops. Assessment will be based on regular assignments, self-assessment, a midterm assignment, a final assignment, a portfolio, and attendance and participation. Attendance and participation make up 15% of the grade and is partly mandatory (8 out of 12 workshops). The course is open to all undergraduate students at the University of Iceland but students must themselves make sure that the course can be used for credit in their particular studies.

Online learning:

The course is organized as face-to-face learning but all lectures from teachers will be recorded. This is done to assure better access to the course. Students who do not attend class will listen to the lectures and write short reports. They also turn in assignments otherwise done in class.

An examination will be made of the religious beliefs and practices of people in Scandinavia from the earliest of times until the conversion, material ranging from burial practices to rock carvings, to the written evidence given in the works of Tacitus, Adam of Bremen and Saxo Grammaticus, as well as in early Icelandic works like the Eddic poems and the Kings' sagas. Alongside this discussion of the development and key features of Old Norse religion, some attention will be paid to the concepts of seid and shamanism, especially in connection to their role in early religions. Finally, an examination will be made of the conversion of Scandinavia and how Christian concepts and practices both fitted and contrasted with the previously dominant Old Norse worldview.

Teaching form:
The teaching takes place in the form of lectures and discussion on the material of the lectures.

BA-thesis in Icelandic

By focusing on folk tales, literature and other relevant sources, the course discusses the manifestations of nature and the supernatural in Icelandic narrative culture throughout the centuries. Students will learn about the significance, interface, and unclear boundaries of these phenomena and how they have shaped society and the environment as well. Students will thus get to know different ideas about the position of people and (other) animals within, above or "outside" of nature. Through diverse lectures and assignments, topics such as humanity vs. animality, the known world vs. other worlds, and materiality vs. the supernatural, will be discussed from critical points of view. The roles and forms of landscape, organisms, bodies, weather, and natural phenomena in the narrative culture will be explored. The latest research in this broad field will be presented, such as on the representation of earthquakes and celestial bodies, bears, whales, seals, and domestic animals, and on the supernatural creatures of nature and other mythological creatures such as fairies, ghosts, trolls, and berserks. Students will learn how story worlds and folklore have left their mark on the perception of nature, folk traditions, folk customs, and social spaces such as enchanted spots, sacred places and hunted places. We also ask how these narratives appear in folk art and visual art, from previous centuries to the present. Finally, we will explore the significance of nature narratives and the supernatural in the context of the Anthropocene, human perspectives, climate change, and the different statuses of social groups and species