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Why is it that so many English words, as one traces their etymologies, run through Icelandic as one goes back?

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Can you give an example of a word whose etymology runs through Icelandic? – nohat♦ May 27 '11 at 1:50
@nohat Wikipedia gives several: epli, bók, hár, hús, móðir, nótt, steinn, það, orð, which are all nearly identical to their English counterparts (if you are familiar with the Icelandic alphabet). – HaL May 27 '11 at 2:26
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I believe it is more a case of having a common Germanic root rather than 'running through' Icelandic. – Shane L Harris May 27 '11 at 2:43
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@HaL none of those words are English words – nohat♦ May 27 '11 at 5:34
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As others have noted, there don't seem to be many English words that do derive directly from Icelandic. There are quite a few that come from a common earlier root, but that's a different question. – Hugo May 27 '11 at 8:34
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2 Answers

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English doesn't have many words which come from Icelandic, geyser is possibly the most prominent.

But English does have a good few words which share a common ancestor with Icelandic. Icelandic as the most conservative of the Scandinavian languages is relatively close to Old Norse, from which English borrowed while the vikings were in Britain. They include such seemingly native words as them, skirt, and sky.

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And more commonplace examples would be "them", "skirt" and "sky". – Colin Fine May 27 '11 at 15:37
@Colin: I tried to pick one that was still spelled the same in Icelandic and English and felt Icelandic too. Also I was too lazy to dig through lots of etymologies (-: – hippietrail May 28 '11 at 3:37
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Fine. But my point is that "saga" is a comparatively modern loan, and still feels like one ("-a" is extremely rare in native English words), whereas I was exemplifying Norse loanwords that entered the language so long ago that they are naturalised. – Colin Fine May 31 '11 at 11:11
@Colin: Oh I didn't realise saga was borrowed 300 years ago - you're right. I was originally thinking about one of the pronounds/demonstratives in th- but thought I'd struck gold with saga. I'll look into it a bit more and edit my answer. Thanks! – hippietrail May 31 '11 at 14:08
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I think it's what I know as red car syndrome, which urban dictionary calls blue car syndrome

Either you know Icelandic, or you recently noticed one Icelandic etymology in particular, and thereafter became particularly prone to notice others.

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