A Quick Understanding of Icelandic Characters

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The ‘Þ’ character in Icelandic, used in places like Þingvellir and Þorlákshöfn, is pronounced like a ‘Th’ is in English, as in the word ‘Thing’. In fact, to avoid confusing tourists, the ever helpful Icelandic people often write those place names down as Thingvellir and Thorlakshofn, rather than use the extra character in their own language. The ‘Þ’ symbol was actually a letter in the English language until the middle ages, with both Icelandic and Old English largely deriving from the Old Norse language of the Vikings. In the end, England scrapped the extra character due to German technology, maybe the original cause to use the phrase ‘Vorsprung Durch Technik’.

Through the middle ages, the English started to write ‘Þ’ without the top curve, so that it basically looked like a backwards letter ‘y’. When the first typewriters appeared on the scene, they came from Germany and so didn’t contain the extra letters that you found in English and Icelandic at time (not only ‘Þ’, but also ‘ð’), and so the first English typists just replaced it with the letter ‘y’, and hoped that everyone would realise that it was meant to be a backwards ‘y’. That’s why, when people talk about old English pubs, they are always called ‘Ye Olde’ something or other. It wasn’t actually pronounced ‘Ye’, it was pronounced ‘The’, and it’s just that the ‘Y’ replaced ‘Þ’. Eventually, some bright spark pointed out that having a ‘Y’ with two pronunciations was just confusing, and we ended up replacing the ‘Þ’ with ‘Th’ instead. I’m hoping that one day that fact will turn up in a pub quiz, but I’m not holding my breath.

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