[§ 102]. Icelandic, Old Norse.—Although Icelandic is the usual name for the mother-tongue of the Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian, the Norwegian philologists generally prefer the term Old Norse.
In favour of this view is the fact that Norway was the mother-country, Iceland the colony, and that much of what is called Old Icelandic was composed in Norway.
Still the reason is insufficient; since the present term Icelandic is given to the language not because Iceland was the country that produced, but because it is the country that has preserved it.
This leads to the argument in its most general form—should a language be named from the colony, or from the mother-country? The Norwegians say from the mother-country. Let us consider this.
Suppose that whilst the Latin of Virgil and Cicero in Italy had been changing into the modern Italian, in some old Roman colony (say Sardinia) it had remained either wholly
unaltered, or else, altered so little as for the modern Sardinian—provided he could read at all—to be able to read the authors of the Augustan age, just like those of the era of Charles Albert; no other portion of the old Roman territory—not even Rome itself—having any tongue more like to that of the Classical writers, than the most antiquated dialect of the present Italian. Suppose, too, that the term Latin had become obsolete, would it be imperative upon us to call the language of the Classics Old Italian, Old Roman, or at least Old Latin, when no modern native of Rome, Latium, or Italy could read them? Would it be wrong to call it Sardinian when every Sarde could read them? I think not. Mutatis mutandis, this is the case with Iceland and Norway.
CHAPTER V.
ANALYSIS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE—GERMANIC ELEMENTS.