Learning Old and Modern Icelandic
Alaric has found himself creating various teaching resources for Old Icelandic and related areas. All have been created under pressure of time, for specific ad hoc purposes, so none is perfect, and it may be that none suit your personal needs! (Though Alaric is quite proud of his Magic Sheet.) All the same, Alaric thought it would be good to make his resources available incase other people find them useful. If you'd like not only to use any of the resources here but to alter them, then just email Alaric (alaric@cantab.net) and he'll send you the original files.
Old Icelandic grammar resources
- Alaric's Magic Sheet of Old Norse paradigms.
- Alarics magiske side (the Magic Sheet in Danish, translated by Richard Cole and Winnie Mohr Have Jensen).
- Norse core vocabulary.
- Modern Icelandic mp3 course.
For better or worse, Alaric's also made some videos aimed at native English-speakers with no previous background in language learning, to help them get started learing Old Norse/Icelandic using the Magic Sheet:
- Alaric's updated version of Henry Sweet's An Icelandic Primer.
(Alaric uploaded this at the request of some of the participants at a recent conference on teaching Old Norse; it's certainly not yet perfect, and also contravenes the Project Gutenberg licence, so Alaric's not sure how long he'll keep it up here! Email him if you want it as .doc.)
A series of low-tech videos aiming to give a quick guide to what was afoot in medieval Scandinavia, by way of a context for medieval Icelandic literature.
- lecture 1 (mainly geography): 20 minutes
- lecture 2 (mainly Vikings): 17 minutes
- lecture 3 (mainly religious and political change from the Viking Age to the end of the Middle Ages): 39 minutes
- lecture 4 (sketching the kinds of literature produced in medieval Iceland): 29 minutes
- Snorri Sturluson's description of Hermóðr's ride to Hel
- Snorri's story of Freyr and Gerðr
- Skírnismál
- How Eiríkr Blóðøx married Gunnhildr, from Haralds saga hárfagra (Old Icelandic spelling)
- How Eiríkr Blóðøx married Gunnhildr, from Haralds saga hárfagra (Modern Icelandic spelling)
- The last fight of Gísli Súrsson
- Þrymskviða