Saunders: How did you come to settle on Icelandic and Old Norse as an area of study?

Crawford: Well, I could tell that in a pretty long story, and I’m not sure how long of a story you want. I’ll try to keep it short. I was a dinosaur kid, interested especially in how dinosaurs evolved. When it came time to decide what language to study in middle school, I picked Latin, because all the dinosaur names were in Latin. Then I learned from studying Latin that languages evolved too. From there I wanted to learn the ancestor of English, so I started teaching myself Old English in high school. And when I got more and more interested in the entire family of Indo-European languages, I started e-mailing experts on the subject and asking them what other languages I might teach myself. A professor at UCLA said that Old Norse would be pretty easy, since I had studied Old English, and I sort of “fell in love” with the language.

Saunders: Does your family history play into your direction at all?

Crawford: No. I don’t know of any Scandinavian family.

Saunders: I’m interested to know what kind of opportunities you’ve had to put your language abilities to use. In terms of visiting Scandinavia and Iceland.

Crawford: I’ve only been to Iceland once, for six weeks in the summer of 2007. I spent two weeks traveling the Ring Road by bus, staying on farms and just talking to farmers, insisting on using Icelandic. Then I took the 4-week Sigurður Nordal Institute Icelandic course at Háskóli Íslands.

Saunders: And how did it feel being out there and being able to communicate in Icelandic?

Crawford: It felt really good. Naturally one gets frustrated sometimes with one’s inability to say something. I also often surprised Icelanders by speaking in Icelandic… I think that sometimes people didn’t know what language I was speaking. I was told by some that they had never heard Icelandic with a foreign accent.

Saunders: Were there any particular highlights from the trip you found memorable?

Crawford: Definitely; the people that I stayed with were all wonderful. Hospitable, patient, and helpful to a fault.

Saunders: So for someone thinking about learning Icelandic, what kind of advice would you give them?

Crawford: That depends on how much time you have. If you have a while, it really helped me to know Old English first. To see that English comes out of a language with a grammar and lexicon very similar to Icelandic, makes the “why” of Icelandic much more understandable.

Saunders: Okay, but if you’re not able to go that route. Top three things?

Crawford: 1. Use self-help materials that include audio, like the online course at http://icelandic.hi.is/ or Hildur Jónsdóttir’s book-and-CD set Teach Yourself Icelandic. 2. Find something that you really want to read in the language, something that will feel like a fun diversion rather than a chore. 3. Practice every day. Large amounts of time spent on it now and then are nowhere near as good as even half an hour every day.

Saunders: With your language study and abilities, what do you see yourself doing career-wise?

Crawford: Ideally I’d like to work in academia. But I know that that may not happen. For me, the PhD is a goal in itself, irrespective of what may come after. I have not had to pay for graduate school (I have taught and had fellowships). Aristotle says that flute-players can’t pay attention to anything else when they hear a flute playing. My flute-playing is Old Norse – so as long as I have an opportunity to let that distract me from other things, I’m going to do it.

That was Jackson Crawford, author of Star Wars as an Icelandic saga, talking to Jim Saunders of Iceland News.

Popularity: 76% [?]