Iceland
Although the indigenous people were exposed to foreign cultures through trade during the 9th century, Iceland does not have an official minority language.
However, because of their close proximity to Denmark, most Icelanders are conversant in Danish due to business dealings with this country.
The country is mostly bilingual. Icelandic is also one of its two official languages; Danish is the other. A lot of Icelandic customs are borrowed from their Nordic neighbours – Sweden and Norway – as they are all Scandinavian countries speaking the Scandinavian languages.
Languages in Iceland are relatively diverse but there is a general pattern of words flowing west-to-east around Scandinavia.
Danish is spoken by about five percent of Iceland’s population and Swedish has been used as a second language for over 300 years by those who live on the island’s east coast.
Norwegian was used by some immigrants in Reykjavik before 1950 and so many Norwegian words are now used in everyday speech that you might think you’re hearing Swedish or Danish.
Icelandic has developed into many different dialects due to settlements spreading across such a large area but it is still an Indo-European language like Finnish, Norwegian and Swedish which have evolved separately for centuries.
One notable exception is Faroese which falls under the Germanic branch of European languages like English, Dutch, German and Swedish.