A formal opening ceremony was held in the library of the Edda building on the 23rd of October to celebrate the launch of a new Icelandic-to-English online dictionary. The dictionary is an important addition to the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies’ collection of online dictionaries. It is also the tenth bilingual dictionary published by the institute since 2011.
Work on the new dictionary began as a research project in 2021. Semi-automatic methods were applied to accelerate the work. The project was later continued with the aid of grants.
During the opening ceremony, the dictionary’s editors and organisers addressed the multifaceted role of bilingual dictionaries and accounted for their decisions regarding e.g. the dictionary’s editorial policy, dictionary definition, and the inclusion of different wording and spelling according to linguistic areas.
In addition, Dr Bryony Matthew, His Majesty’s Ambassador in Iceland, addressed the ceremony, as well as Sigrún Brynja Einarsdóttir, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture, Innovation, and Higher Education, who also took in hand the officially opening of the online dictionary.
The picture above shows all the speakers at the ceremony; from left to right: Bryony Mathew, UK ambassador; Guðrún Nordal, Director of the Árni Magnússon Institute; Max Naylor, editor; Björn Halldórsson, editor; Sigrún Brynja Einarsdóttir, Undersecretary of the Ministry of Culture, Innovation, and Higher Education; Þórdís Úlfarsdóttir, editor-in-chief; and Halldóra Jónsdóttir, the dictionary’s project manager.
Further information on the dictionary
The dictionary consists of 56 thousand entries, 33 thousand example sentence, and ten thousand idioms. All entries contain spoken audio for pronunciation, which can be especially useful for users whose first language is not Icelandic. The dictionary is solely accessible online and is free and open to all users through the domain enska.arnastofnun.is. A simplified version of the dictionary can also be accessed through the simplified dictionary portal m.is.
The dictionary is built on the foundations laid down by the Icelandic-Scandinavian online dictionary ISLEX (islex.arnastofnun.is), which was launched in the autumn of 2011. Initially, the dictionary offered entries for Icelandic to Danish, Swedish, Nynorsk, and Bokmal, but eventually Finnish and Faroese were also added. Since ISLEX was launched, the database of Icelandic dictionary entries has been reviewed and grown exponentially, and more online dictionaries have followed. Lexía (lexia.arnastofnun.is), an Icelandic to German and French dictionary was launched in 2021, and in 2025 the Institute also launched an Icelandic to Polish dictionary (polska.arnastofnun.is). That dictionary is also accessible through m.is.
The dictionary’s editor-in-chief is Þórdís Úlfarsdóttir, and the English language editors are Max Naylor and Björn Halldórsson. Translator Larissa Kyzer also took part in the translation work. Project management was undertaken by Halldóra Jónsdóttir.
The project was funded by the Ministry of Culture, Innovation, and Higher Education, in addition to the University of Iceland’s Áslaug Hafliðadóttir Memorial Fund.
