Icelandic is a North Germanic language descended from Old Norse, the language brought to Iceland by Norwegian settlers during the Viking Age settlement of 874 AD. Unlike the other Scandinavian languages, Icelandic has undergone remarkably little change over the past thousand years, meaning modern Icelanders can read the medieval Eddas and sagas with relative ease. This linguistic conservatism is partly attributed to Iceland's geographic isolation and a deliberate policy of language purism, in which new foreign concepts are expressed using native Icelandic roots rather than borrowing international terms — the word for 'computer' is 'tölva', a blend of 'tala' (number) and 'völva' (prophetess). Iceland has no dialects to speak of, making it one of the most linguistically homogeneous nations in the world. The country maintains one of the highest literacy rates globally, closely tied to its centuries-old tradition of saga literature.
