Icelandic Language Day (Icelandic: ‘dagur íslenskrar tungu’, or ‘day of the Icelandic tongue’) is a festival celebrated on 16 November each year in Iceland to celebrate the Icelandic language, a date chosen to coincide with the birthday of the much loved Icelandic poet Jónas Hallgrímsson. In Autumn 1995, the Icelandic ‘Minister of Education, Science and Culture’, Björn Bjarnason, suggested that the Icelandic language (and the efforts to preserve it) should be celebrated one day a year as, unlike most other languages, it has been well-preserved in its original form over the centuries. As such, on 16 November, the Minister of Education, Science and Culture awards the ‘Jónas Hallgrímsson Award’ to someone who has “in a unique way contributed to the Icelandic language”. The Minister may also visit a local area of Iceland’s schools and cultural institutions: for example, in 2004 Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir visited Ísafjörður and in 2005 she visited Reykjanesbær.
To read poetry by Jónas Hallgrímsson translated into English click here
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