Words with the German prefix be- entered Icelandic from the fifteenth to twentieth centuries, mostly from Danish. Nearly 300 words are listed in the Icelandic University Dictionary in Reykjavík. However, almost none of these words are usable in Icelandic today, and the disappearance of these words from the language therefore makes an interesting example of a halted borrowing process. The number of new words belonging to this group entering Icelandic fell drastically in the nineteenth century, and words first attested in twentieth-century texts are almost all from historical novels and sailor language. A few words are native Icelandic neologisms, which suggests that even if the prefix never acquired the role of a model for domestic word formation in Icelandic, it may at least have had the possibility to take on such a role. Words of this type have been criticized by Icelandic language purists and it has been regarded as fact that they were rather frequent in the language of previous centuries. An investigation of a corpus of 1,640 nineteenth-century private letters does, however, not suggest that such words were usual in the language of common people at the time, and neither does a brief comparison with another corpus of nearly 4.5 million pages from 810 magazines and periodicals.

The article discusses the words fokka (verb) and fokk (noun) in Icelandic. These words have a dual origin in the language. On the one hand, the verb was probably first borrowed from older Danish or Low German already in the 17th century, and the noun later derived from it. On the other hand, the much more recent loanword, E. fuck (verb, noun, exclamation), took the same form in the language, both in writing and pronunciation. This happened even though Icelandic phonotactics and phonology require the short vowel in English words such as butter, hut, luck, etc. to be represented by the Icel. phoneme /ö/, surfacing as [œ], when such words enter the language as loanwords or are pronounced with an Icelandic accent. However, the words fuck and fucking, which started appearing in Icelandic newspapers and magazines around 1970, are almost always pronounced and spelt differently than expected, i.e., with the vowel [ɔ] and spelt fokk, fokking, not with [œ] or spelt *fökk, *fökking. The reason probably is that the older words to a certain extent, both in terms of semantics, use and partly in pronunciation, already occupied the position that the new loanwords were expected to take in the language. However, the older words, fairly low valued, belonging to a low linguistic register and relatively rare, judging from the texts that have been examined, gave in to the new words. The new words were accompanied by pressure from popular culture, the language of young people and supported by high international use and social media. This article discusses the older words fokka and fokk, their history over the past centuries, their meaning, usage and semantic development, and compares them with the newer words derived from E. fuck who took their place, with examples taken to show what happened when the new loanwords met the old ones.

The process of the Reformation in Iceland in its narrow sense is framed by the publication of the New Testament in 1540 and the whole Bible in 1584. It is sometimes believed that Icelandic lan­guage would have chang­ed more than what it has, if these translations had not seen the day.       During the 16th century, in all 51 books in Icelandic were printed. Almost all are translations, mostly from German. These books contain many loanwords, chiefly of German origin. These words are often a direct result of the Reformation, but some of them are considerably older. As an example, words with the German prefix be- were discussed to some length in the article.       Some loanwords from the 16th century have lived on to our time, but many were either wiped out in the Icelandic language purism of the nineteenth and twentieth century, or never became an integrated part of the language, outside of religious and official texts. Some words even only show up in one or two books of the 16th century.       The impact of the Reformation on the future develop­ment of the Icelandic language, other than a temporary one on the lexicon was limited, and influence on the (spoken) language of common people was probably little.

The Change menninir > mennurnir, mennirnir in Icelandic LASSE MÅRTENSSONto verbosity with app. 9% more words than Ice (in contrast to +3% in Sw), and especially in No this serves to enhance a certain colloquial tone. Sw, on the other hand,shortensandsimplifiessentencesbyfavouringmainclauseswithsubject first,thusattimesrunningtheriskofsyntacticmonotony.Itisfurthermoresug gested here, tentatively, that the differences in the three GS can be explained by different aims (and target groups?): A popular approach in No, a pedagogical zeal in Da, and a learned leaning in Sw.

Jan Axelson, Isländska sällskapets skattmästare, avled 17 november i fjol, 59 år gammal. Som en av dem som har känt Jan längst känner jag mig kallad att skriva några ord om honom. Mina första minnen stammar från cirka 1980 då en ung man som visade sig vara Jan började hälsa på mig när vi stötte ihop, utan att jag kände honom. Förklaringen var en gemensam vän, Ola Larsmo, som läste svenska och teologi tillsammans med Jan och som hade pekat ut mig som någon som var intresserad av forn nordiska, ett av Jans intressen. Genom Ola har jag fått veta en del om Jans studie tid. Han var en lysande student som olika lärare verkligen uppmärk sammade som en studie begåvning av första rang. Redan under sin gymnasiegång i Köping uppen barades hans begåvning, vilket han aldrig själv lät påskina men som framgick genom olika historier han berättade under åren. Växte upp gjorde han i Kolsva som enda barnet till två äldre föräldrar och en exemplarisk son måste han ha varit under hela deras livstid. Med tiden kom han att sköta om mer och mer av det praktiska åt dem och mot slutet tog han tjänst ledigt i perioder för att kunna hjälpa till på plats. När hans mamma dog följde pappan efter inom kort och de begravdes i samma grav vid Malma gamla kyrka där nu också Jans aska vilar. Jans och mina vägar möttes på riktigt när han började på C-seminariet för att skriva uppsats. Ämnet han valde med Lena Peterson som handledare var ortnamnet Barkestorp i Småland. Det tog honom flera år att slut föra uppsatsen, men den är också ett riktigt lärdoms prov. Fördröjningen hade sin förklaring delvis i att Jan ägnade sig åt annat men i ännu högre grad tror jag i karaktärs drag som alltmer kom att prägla hans liv. Jan var extremt plikt trogen, till den grad att det påverkade socialt umgänge och