own use, such as breweries and cold-storage houses. Of the 787 plants reported in 1900, 571 used the compressor, and 216 the absorption system. (See REFRIGERATION.) The total product of the 787 factories was 4,294,439 tons, of which 4,139,764 tons, or 96.4 per cent., was can ice, and only 154,675 tons plate ice. The Middle States produced more ice than any other group, the amount being 1,574,980 tons, as compared with 1,414,158 tons for the Southern States, and only 40,059 tons for the New England States. The average value of the ice at the plants, for the whole country, was $3.11 per ton for can ice, and $2.85 for plate ice. As a rule, the Southern States now depend wholly upon the manufactured product for their ice-supply, the few possible exceptions being some of the coast cities. As one goes farther North, natural ice comes more and more into competition with the manufactured article, until at the extreme North it actually, or prac tically, displaces the latter. But the use of manufactured ice has increased rapidly of late and is continually extending toward the North. SANITARY ASPECTS. The sanitary quality of ice-supplies depends chiefly upon the presence or absence of disease germs, chiefly those of typhoid fever, in the original water, and upon the effect of freezing upon such germs. In addition there is the possibility that manufactured ice may become contaminated during the freezing process by sick or careless workmen, and that any ice may be fouled while it is being distributed to consumers. Proper washing of ice before domestic use, care not to bring ice in contact with food or water, and proper supervision of ice factories, would go far toward preventing danger from what may be termed incidental contamination. The water from which artificial ice is made is frequently distilled or filtered, or both. In general, it may be said that artificial ice should be made from none but naturally pure water or from that which has been purified, and that natural ice should not be harvested from polluted streams or lakes. It may be noted, however, that natural ice, when formed in fairly deep and quiet water, eliminates much of the impurities while freezing, and that recent bacterial studies show that after a few weeks practically all bacteria, and particularly the dangerous ones, disappear. Under anything like carefully guarded conditions, therefore, the chance of typhoid infection by means of ice is small. In the case of artificial ice, the freezing process, being from the outside in, concentrates the impurities at and near the centre of the cake.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Consult Hile, The Ice Crop (New York, 1892); and for the sanitary aspects of the subject, consult: Reports of the Massachusetts State Board of Health for 1889, 1892, and 1900; the Report of the Boston Board of Health for 1901; and Prudden, Drinking Water and Ice Supplies (New York, 1900).

ICELAND. An island and Danish colony in the North Atlantic, on the northern edge of the temperate zone. The Arctic Circle cuts the two most northern points of the island, which extends south to latitude 63° 35′ N., and from longitude 13° 23′ to 24° 35′ W. (Map: Denmark, F 1). It is about 600 miles distant from Norway, and 250 from Greenland. Its area is 39,756 square miles, of which only about one-sixth is habitable. The southern coast has no indentations, but the west, north, and east coasts are

broken to a remarkable extent by numerous deep fiords, skirted by many small islands. In the south the coastal lands are low and sandy, but. elsewhere the coasts are frowning and precipitous.

Iceland is a land of plateaus, built up of volcanic masses of old and recent origin; formations dating from before the Tertiary Period are nowhere found. The average height of the land is from 1600 to 2000 feet. The few low grounds are small, and occupy only about one-fourteenth of the total area. Only these low grounds, the coasts, and some narrow valleys are inhabited, while the extensive highlands are quite unfit for settlement; the outer edges only are utilized as summer pastures for sheep. Basalt and volcanic breccia are the component rocks; the latter is found in the centre and extends down to the south, while the greater part of the west, north, and east coasts consists of basalt.

Above the elevated plains of the interior rise the broad domes of the ice-covered mountains; the largest of them rest on breccia, and where the glaciers descend almost to the sea, as on the south coast, there are no fiords or harbors, for these have been filled up by detritus. The basaltic regions, on the contrary, are intersected by numerous fiords, and contain many good harbors, often lying behind narrow tongues of land, which probably are old glacier moraines.

There are many lakes, but most of them are small. In the valleys of the basaltic tracts are deep lakes hollowed out of the solid rocks, as, for instance, the Lagarfljot, the surface of which lies 85 feet above sea-level, while its bottom is 275 feet below. In the highlands one finds several groups of moraine lakes, and in recent times large sheets of water have been formed by the damming up of glacier streams. Certain lakes fill hollows formed by the sinking of lava streams, while others are typical crater lakes. During a journey in 1889 Herr Thoroddsen discovered to the west of the great snow-field of Vatnajökull, grand and beautiful group of crater lakes. This country is remarkable for its natural beauty; the whole surface is covered with colossal craters filled with water, and would resemble a landscape in the moon were it not for the greenish pools that show themselves everywhere among the coal-black lava, the brownish mounds of ashes, and the red heaps of scoriæ.

The glaciers of Iceland cover an area of 5200 square miles. The climate is peculiarly suited for the development of large glaciers, for the air is keen, cold, and damp. On the southeast coast the rainfall is considerable, and here lies the great Vatnajökull, 3100 square miles in area. The humidity on the coast is much greater than it is in the interior highlands, as is shown by the height of the snow-line. On the south side of Vatnajökull the snow-line descends to 1970 feet,

while on the north side it is 4270 feet above the sea. The Breidamerkurjökull glacier advances on the south to 65 feet above the sea, while the lowest glacier on the north terminates at an altitude of 2500. Large areas (4300 to 4600 square miles) in the very centre of the island are covered with lava of recent origin. The higher lava-fields are almost entirely devoid of vegetation, and present a most dreary appearance. The most extensive lava desert is the Odadahraun, to the north of Vatnajökull, which covers an area of over 1540 square miles, and lies 2000 to 4000 feet above

the sea. Its volume is probably more than 51 cubic miles, and it has been formed by the ejectamenta of 20 volcanoes. There are about 100 volcanoes, of which 20 have been in eruption in modern times. The best-known volcanoes are Hecla, Katla, and Askja. The crater of Askja is 16 square miles in area, and is covered with glaciers which melt in times of eruption, causing great inundations. There are many hot springs, and the geysers are famous for their intermittent eruptions of scalding water. About 75 severe earthquakes have occurred in the past century, many of which have done great damage to life and property. Several shocks in the closing years of the nineteenth century were severely felt in Reykjavik, the capital and chief town.

The climate is not very severe, considering the high latitude, as the island is open to the ameliorating influences of the Atlantic. In the highlands of the interior it is more severe and variable; here snow-storms often occur even in the middle of summer. The winter is long and damp, the summer short and cool. A journey can seldom be commenced before July, for in spring the soil is saturated with snow-water, and the mountains and elevated plateaus covered with snow. Grass first appears on elevated spots in July, while in the highlands of the interior the scattered patches of verdure seldom yield fodder for horses before the end of August. The greatest hindrance to exploration is this scarcity of grass. The lowlands and the valleys have a great depth of rich soil, and on the field slopes grasses of several kinds mingle with the scrubby mountain birch and stunted willow, and afford luxuriant herbage for the sheep. A few mountain ashes are the only trees worthy of the name, Elymus arenarius, a species of wild corn, is grown along the sandy coasts; and Iceland moss is a lucrative article of commerce.

The fauna embraces, in seven families, 34 species of mammals, 24 of which live in the water. Seals breed around the coasts, several varieties of whales, basking sharks, and over 60 species of fishes abound in the adjacent waters, and walruses are sometimes caught. White and blue foxes are numerous and are hunted for their fur. In 1770 reindeer were imported from Denmark, and are now found wild in the interior. Polar bears frequently arrive on ice-drifts from Greenland. The horse, the cow, the sheep, dog, and cat are the domestic animals. The dog resembles the Scotch collie and the Eskimo dog. Among indigenous birds are the falcon, ptarmigan, whistling swan, and several species of ducks. The eider-duck is especially valuable for its down, and is jealously protected.

AGRICULTURE AND OTHER INDUSTRIES. About five-sixths of the inhabitants live by horse, cattle, and sheep raising. A large part of the slopes and river valleys of the plateaus affords excellent pasture for sheep, and in the low-lying lands are extensive meadows, which, properly managed, could support twice the number of cattle that now graze on them. The island contains about 1,000,000 sheep and 20,000 cows. A great deal has been done latterly to improve the soil. Agricultural societies have been formed, and there are now four agricultural schools. At one time a little barley was grown, but it could not be made to pay, and therefore field cultivation has been abandoned. Horticulture, on the other hand,

makes great progress, potatoes, cabbages, and 1hubarb thrive well, and some berries, such as currants, are cultivated. Woods have never existed since the glacial period, and the brushwood of birch is less extensive than formerly, owing to the sheep. The birch is seldom higher than a man, though in one place on the east side some specimens attain a height of over thirty feet. The mountain ash reaches the same height. The fishing grounds (cod, herring, flounders, whale, and seal) are frequented by English and French boats. The sea is very stormy, and therefore fishing is best pursued in large and strong vessels. The fishermen of Iceland have had to content themselves with small open boats. They brave the billows of the ocean in winter with the greatest boldness and contempt of danger, and every year many lose their lives. Want of capital has prevented them from acquiring large vessels, but considerable progress has been made in this direction, and the Icelanders now possess a fair fleet of fishing smacks. Manufacturing industries, with the exception of fish oil, are utterly absent. The simpler articles of dress and necessaries of life are usually supplied by every native for himself, and the number of artisans is very small. The mineral deposits are not sufficiently large to repay exploitation. Turf is the chief fuel, but some coal is imported.

The chief exports are dried fish, wool, live sheep and horses, eider-down, salted meat, oil, and whalebone. The annual value of the exports amounts at present to over $2,000,000. The imports consist of textiles, cereals, and other foodstuffs, and have an annual value of between $2,000,000 and $2,500,000. Up to 1854 the trade of Iceland was a State monopoly of Denmark. Since then it has been free, and is now chiefly in the hands of Denmark and Great Britain. Iceland has regular steam communication every three weeks with Denmark via Leith, the port of Edinburgh. There are a number of trading stations on the island, and six commercial centres. There are few roads. In the settled districts the traveler follows bridle-paths worn by the hoofs of the small Iceland horses. But a few good roads have now been built, and some of the streams are being bridged. The people are sturdy, and have not allowed the hardships they have endured to crush them. As the farthest outpost of civilization they have always had to fight a hard battle with nature. They are of an earnest, quiet, and somewhat melancholy disposition, and as a rule very intelligent. Though the lower classes live in poor circumstances, they are very enlightened; perhaps in no other country of Europe are so many books, in proportion to the population, printed and sold as in Iceland. The island contains five printing establishments, from which issue ten newspapers and eight periodicals.. During recent decades many Icelanders have emigrated to America, and have founded flourishing colonies in Manitoba. In all about 12.000 have crossed the Atlantic, but of late years the emigration has fallen off. Besides Reykjavik, the capital, with a population of about 4000, the chief settlements are Akreyri and Isafiord.

GOVERNMENT. At the head of the administration is a Governor-General, appointed by the King of Denmark, and exercising his authority under the supervision of the Secretary for Iceland at Copenhagen. The Althing, or the Parliament of the colony, although in existence since

the Norwegian occupation, had not attained its full power before 1874, when the new Constitution granted by the King of Denmark endowed it with complete legislative authority. The Althing consists of 36 members, of whom 30 are elected by the people, and 6 appointed by the Crown. It is convened every two years, and is divided into two chambers, of which the upper is composed of six elected, and as many appointed members, and the lower one consists of 24 elected members. For purposes of administration the island is divided into three districts-the South, the West, and the North and East-administered by two officials having their seats at Reykjavik and Akreyri. The districts are subdivided into 20 smaller divisions known as syssels, and administered by sheriffs, who perform the functions of tax collectors, and judges of first instance. At Reykjavik there is a court of second instance from which appeals are made to the Supreme Court at Copenhagen. The revenue is derived from customs and tax on spirits, tobacco, coffee, and sugar. Elementary education is well provided for, and the number of illiterates is remarkably small. There are also a number of higher schools, a theological seminary, and a college at Reykjavik, with about 100 students. For religious purposes Iceland forms a separate bishopric in the Lutheran Church.

POPULATION. The population, estimated at over 46,000 at the beginning of the nineteenth century, was 72,422 in 1880; 70,927 in 1890. The birth-rate is large, but it is offset by the large infant mortality resulting from the severity of the climate. The Icelanders are of Scandinavian origin, and belong exclusively to the Lutheran Church. They live mostly on isolated farms, there being very few settlements.

HISTORY. Iceland was not visited by Europeans, as far as is known, until the end of the eighth century, when some Celts landed on the island, but its history really dates from about 870, when various Norsemen discovered it, chiefly by accident. One of these, Flóki Vilgertharson, gave it its present name. Soon thereafter the Scandinavians came in large numbers, owing to the despotism of Harold Haarfagr (q.v.) at home, and permanent settlements were made, among them the present capital, Reykjavik. The settlements were all independent of one another, and for some time the only bond of union was furnished by their common religion, until finally in 927 one Ulfljotr was sent to Norway to prepare a code of laws. He did so, returning in 930. His Constitution provided for a yearly assembly, but all details are lacking to us. Many legal changes, however, had to take place before even a semblance of order prevailed in Iceland. In time, regular territorial divisions appeared, and a system of law very similar to that of AngloSaxon England. The most important event in the early history of Iceland was the conversion of its inhabitants to Christianity. The first missionary was Thorvaldr Kothranson, who came in 981, but after five years left the country, having failed utterly. More successful was the attempt made under the auspices of King Olaf Tryggva son of Norway (995-1000), who introduced Christianity, chiefly by force, in the year 1000. Under the influence of the new religion civilization gradually spread, and the laws became milder. Until 1103 Iceland belonged to the province of the Archbishop of Bremen, later to that

of Lund. Meanwhile the kings of Norway regarded Iceland with a jealous eye, for it was a place of refuge for all their rebellious subjects, but all attempts to conquer it failed for many years. The history of the island was mainly one of rivalries of different chiefs, and about the beginning of the twelfth century all the contests in the land were connected with those of the three sons of Sturle, the historian Snorri, Thord, and Sieghvat, the most powerful chiefs of their time. By marriage and other means, Sturle Thordson had become godar, or supreme magistrate, of several provinces, for these offices were hereditary in certain families. These offices he transmitted to his sons, who, however, were unable to agree. Finally, in 1262, Norway having been appealed to, King Hakon of that country induced Iceland to join its fortunes to that of Norway. The prosperity of the country from that time onward rapidly declined as strict navigation laws were enforced. In 1380 Iceland, joined together with Norway, came under the Crown of Denmark. Much of the subsequent history of the island is filled with the relation of physical evils which desolated the land, and effectually subdued the spirit of its inhabitants. Thus there were repeatedly severe volcanic eruptions, and between 1402 and 1404 the black death depopulated the island, sweeping away, it is said, two-thirds of the population. In 1540 Christian III. of Denmark began to introduce into Iceland the Reformation, which rapidly prevailed throughout the whole country. Its history since that time has been on the whole scarce in striking events. During the Napoleonic wars England captured it, but gave it back to Denmark by the Treaty of Vienna in 1815. The Althing or Legislative Assembly, which had existed since the earliest times, was now dissolved, but was reorganized in 1843. For many years constitutional conflicts with Denmark went on, which were finally amicably settled in 1874. practically home rule.

Since then Iceland has had

BIBLIOGRAPHY. Nicol, An Historical and Deccriptive Account of Iceland, Greenland, and the Faroe Islands (3d ed., Edinburgh, 1844); Ebel, Geographische Naturkunde von Island (Königsberg, 1850); Forbes, Iceland (London, 1860); Lindsay, "Flora of Iceland," in Edinburgh Philosophical Journal (Edinburgh, 1861); BaringGould, Iceland (London, 1864); Maurer, Island von seiner ersten Entdeckung bis zum Untergange des Freistaates (Munich, 1874); Kaalund, Bidrag til en historisk-topografisk Beskrivelse af Island (Copenhagen, 1877-82); Headley, The Island of Fire (Boston, 1875); Burton, Ultima Thule, vol. i. (Edinburgh, 1875); Maurer, Zur politischen Geschichte Islands (Leipzig, 1880); Otté, Denmark and Iceland (London, 1882); Peestion, Island, das Land und seine Bewohner (Vienna, 1885); Schweitzer, Island (Leipzig, 1885); Baumgartner, Island und die Faröer (Freiburg, 1889): De Groote, Island (Brussels, 1890); McCormick, A Ride Across Iceland (London, 1892); several articles in Geografisk Tidskrift (Copenhagen, 1897-1901); Kornerup, Island (Copenhagen, 1900); Thorvald Thoroddsen, Geschichte der isländischen Geographie (Leipzig, 1898).

ICELANDIC LANGUAGE. With the Norwegian popular dialects and Faroese, Icelandic forms the West Norse subdivision of the Scandi

navian languages, as opposed to the East Norse, made up of Swedish and Danish. The history of Icelandic begins with the settlement of Iceland by Norwegians, principally from Western Norway, at the end of the ninth century. After this time there was gradually developed in Iceland a particular West Norwegian dialect, which, however, at the outset differed but slightly from the parent Norwegian. Only after the introduction of Christianity, about the year 1000, is it possible to speak of languages instead of dialects in the whole Scandinavian north, and at this time Icelandic, too, ranged itself by the side of Norwegian, Swedish, and Danish as a separate language, with characteristic differences in sounds, inflection, and vocabulary.

In the history of Icelandic it is customary to distinguish two main periods-Old Icelandic, from the settlement of the island, in the ninth century, to the Reformation, at the middle of the sixteenth century, and New Icelandic, down to the present day. Old Icelandic is further subdivided into three periods, the first of which extends from 874 until about 1200; the second, the so-called classical period, during which the principal literary works were produced, from 1200 to about 1350; and the third, or transitional period, from 1350 to 1540. The language of the first period, at the beginning identical with that of Norway, at the end is distinguishable from it by but comparatively few differences. One of the most plainly discernible and characteristic distinctions between the two is the retention in Icelandic of initial hl, hm, hr, whose h early disappears in Norwegian, as it does in Swedish and Danish, but which has remained in Icelandic, alone of all the Germanic languages, to this very day. The language of the second period, on the other hand, exhibits many important changes along broad lines, in phonetic conditions and in inflectional forms, that from this time on sharply differentiate Icelandic and Norwegian. This forms an intermediary period which witnesses the gradual growth of those changes in the language whose consummation marks the beginning of the new period of Icelandic. During this whole time the language remained practically homogeneous throughout the island, and no sharply defined dialectic differences were developed. Manuscripts of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries from the west of Iceland show, it is true, characteristic phonetic conditions in certain instances, and it is likely that others existed as between the north, west, and southeast, but none of them are important. From 983 to about 1400 Icelandic was also spoken in the settlements of Greenland, but to what extent this language deviated from that of Iceland cannot be determined from the few runic inscriptions which have come down to us.

Old Icelandic, both from the standpoint of the language itself and of the literature written in it, is by far the most important of the ancient Scandinavian languages. The sources of our knowledge of it are an almost unparalleled literature in prose and verse, written after the early part of the twelfth century, but often of far more ancient ultimate origin. The alphabet used is the usual Latin script of the end of the Middle Ages, introduced by way of England and modified to fit the special conditions of the language. The few runic inscriptions that exist in Iceland are

unimportant from a linguistic point of view, in that they are all more recent than the oldest manuscripts written in Latin letters. The oldest conditions, however, are in many cases not to be found in the oldest manuscripts, but in poems contained in manuscripts of the thirteenth century, which, as a consequence of their metrical construction, have kept forms as old, in some instances, as the ninth century, from which early time they had been transmitted orally from generation to generation. The oldest manuscript that has been preserved is an inventory of the church at Reykjaholt, in Iceland, the most ancient part of which was probably written between 1178 and 1193. The principal manuscript of the Elder Edda, the so-called Codex Regius, dates from the end of the thirteenth century; the principal manuscript of the Snorri Edda, the so-called Codex Upsaliensis, is of the same period. The best manuscripts are all written before the middle of the fourteenth century. Icelandic manuscripts are both parchment and paper. The former medium was used from the beginning of writing, at the end of the twelfth century, down into the sixteenth century; the latter from the fifteenth century almost to the present day. Old Icelandic manuscripts are preserved principally in four large collections-viz. the Arnamagnæan collection, so called from the Icelander Arni Magnusson, who collected and gave it to the University Library in Copenhagen; the collection in the Royal Library in Copenhagen; the so-called Delagardic collection, in the University Library in Upsala, Sweden; and the collection in the Royal Library in Stockholm. Besides these, there are a few manuscripts in the University Library in Christiania, Norway; in the British Museum, in London; the Bodleian Library, in Oxford; the Advocates' Library, in Edinburgh; in Germany, in Wolfenbüttel, in Tübingen; in Utrecht, Holland; in. Vienna and Paris. No manuscripts of importance whatever have been left in Iceland, with the exception of the Reykjaholt inventory, which is a single quarto leaf of parchment preserved in the public archives in Reykjavik.

The most predominant characteristics of Old Icelandic as a Scandinavian language are, in the main, the following: To an extent unknown to the other members of the Germanic group, Icelandic exhibits a consistent and widely developed process of assimilation in consonants and vowels; under this head falls the extraordinary extension of umlaut, which is here not merely a process of palatalization, as elsewhere in the Germanic languages, but of labialization as well. There is besides this a characteristic preference for suffixes, as exhibited in the use of the suffixed definite article with substantives, masc. -nn, fem. -n, neut. t; the formation of an entirely new medio-passive conjugation by the suffixal use of the reflexive pronoun; and the expression of negation by an added -gi, -a, or at. Other important characteristics are the universal shortening of the vowels of inflection and of derivation; the disappearance of final n in the so-called weak inflection of substantives and adjectives, and in the infinitive of verbs, whose accompanying preposition, furthermore, is at, instead of du (zu), as in the other Germanic languages, and the use of the consonantal case ending -r, elsewhere retained only in Gothic as -8, in masculine and feminine substantives. There are, in addition, many

other minor peculiarities in sounds, inflections, and syntax. Contrasted with Old Swedish and Old Danish, whose earliest documentary remains date from 1281 and 1329 respectively, Old Icelandic possesses, as a whole, as is to be expected, a much more ancient character in sounds and in inflectional forms. It is, however, by no means invariably the most conservative. The far greater extension of the process of umlaut, for instance, in Old Icelandic, results in a large number of forms that are more recent than the corresponding ones in the other Scandinavian languages in their oldest period. The notably wide vocabulary of Old Icelandic shows some admixture of foreign elements. These are Latin words, introduced mainly through the Church after the Christianization of Iceland in the year 1000; Celtic words, introduced in considerable number as a result of the contact of Celtic-speaking people in the British Islands with the Norwegian settlers of Iceland, many of whom came by the way of Scotland, Ireland, the Orkneys, the Hebrides, and the Shetlands, where they had previously lived for longer or shorter periods; Anglo-Saxon words, which came in as a consequence of the close contact of Icelanders in England with the people, their language, and their culture; and finally, a few French and German words, due to the use in literature of foreign material, derived either directly or remotely from these sources.

The history of New Icelandic, or the present period of the language, begins with the Reformation, although the conditions that characterize it can already be observed in process of develop ment in the transitional period at the end of Old Icelandic. The earliest literary monument of New Icelandic is the first Icelandic printed book, the New Testament, translated by Odd Gottskalksson, and printed at Roeskilde, in Denmark, in 1540. In general, Icelandic has still retained, to the present time, along broad lines, in inflections and vocabulary, its archaic characteristics, so that to-day it is on the whole the most ancient in appearance of the Germanic tongues. Since the beginning of the period the language has, however, in reality undergone a continual internal development. This is particularly true of the sounds, which have been very materially changed in pronunciation, although frequently the conservative retention of the old orthography gives no clue to it. What has helped Icelandic to retain its early conditions is, more than anything else, its relative isolation and the consequent minimum contact with other languages, on the one side, and the fact of its unbroken use in literature on the other. The production of literature in Iceland, although it dwindles in value and amount after the classical period until it is awakened to new life by the Reformation, has never wholly ceased since its very beginning. All this, with the continuous culture of the old literature, which has in some form or other never been forgotten, has tended to keep the language phenomenally pure and homogeneous throughout the island. After 1380, when Iceland, which since the end of the Republic in 1262 had belonged to Norway, fell with that country under the soyereignty of Denmark, a Danish influence was exerted upon the language which has continued, with varying effect, down to the present time. This influence was particularly active in the two centuries immediately following the Reformation,

when, as a consequence of the reawakened literary activity, which brought with it many translations of foreign, and especially of Danish books, it made itself felt in vocabulary and orthography to such an extent that the language seemed on the way to lose forever its characteristic purity. It was an appeal to the old literature which furnished the missing norm, and not only checked the further introduction of Danicisms, but set on foot a reactionary tendency toward the forms and orthography of the classical period of the language. This puristic movement began toward the end of the eighteenth century, but was particularly furthered by the formation of the Icelandic Literary Society by the Danish philologist Rask in 1816. Since that time an influence has been carefully and intelligently exerted, both to eliminate foreign elements from the vocabulary, and either to rehabilitate old forms or to set in their place new forms made out of the old elements of the language, and to reform the orthography from the standpoint of etymology. A printed page of Icelandic at the present day has as a consequence a much more primitive character than the facts of its pronunciation actually warrant. In comparison with the other Germanic languages, changes have, nevertheless, been relatively few, and Icelandic, not only apparently, but in reality, as it is in use to-day, is inherently the best preserved of this entire group.

The present territory of Icelandic, aside from small settlements in the United States and in British America, is the island of Iceland, where it is the spoken and written language of the 70,000 inhabitants. The literary language of the present time is to all intents and purposes the spoken speech, not of any particular region or of any separate class, but of the people of the whole country, with the reservation that in the capital and the trading places along the coast much Danish is in use, and the spoken language is no longer as pure as elsewhere. As in the old period, there are no dialects in modern Icelandic, although there are still, as then, minor differences that give the language of certain parts of the country a local color.

BIBLIOGRAPHY. The standard grammar in German is Noreen's Altisländische und altnorwegische Grammatik (2d ed., Halle, 1892). A briefer treatment of Icelandic alone was published by the same author in 1896. Kahle's Altisländisches Elementarbuch (Heidelberg, 1896), and Holthausen's Lehrbuch der altisländischen Sprache (Weimar, 1895), are both excellent. The best treatment of the inflections in Danish is Wimmer's Oldnordisk Formlare (5th ed., Copenhagen, 1897). The earliest grammar in English is Dasent's translation of Rask's work (London, 1845). The most convenient grammar in English is Sweet's An Icelandic Primer (Oxford, 1886). Reference may also be made to Vigfusson and Powell's An Icelandic Prose Reader (Oxford, 1879). The whole subject of Old Northern grammar is treated scientifically by Noreen in Paul's Grundriss der germanischen Philologie, vol. i. (Strassburg, 1901). A very careful treatment of modern Icelandic pronunciation will be found in Sweet's A Handbook of Phonetics (Oxford, 1877). The modern language is discussed in Carpenter's Grundriss der neuisländischen Grammatik (Halle, 1881). The only lexicon with English renderings is Vigfusson's An Icelandic-English Dictionary, etc. (Oxford, 1874), valuable for