Icelandic Language Day (, English: "day of the Icelandic tongue") is a festival celebrated on 16 November each year in

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

to celebrate the

Icelandic language Icelandic ( ; , ) is a North Germanic languages, North Germanic language from the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland, where it is the national languag ...

. This date was chosen to coincide with the birthday of the Icelandic poet Jónas Hallgrímsson. In Autumn 1995, the Icelandic Minister of Education, Science and Culture, Björn Bjarnason, suggested that one day a year should be proposed to celebrate the Icelandic language, which has been well-preserved in its original form over the centuries, unlike most other languages; and the efforts to preserve this unique symbol of the country. 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 Ísafjörður (pronounced , meaning ''ice fjord'', literally ''fjord of ices'') is a town in the northwest of Iceland. The oldest part of Ísafjörður with the town centre is located on a spit of sand, or ''eyri'', in Skutulsfjörður, a fjord ...

and in 2005 she visited Reykjanesbær.

References

See also