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Rating: 
Summary: Excellent.
Review: I begin with telling this is not a book for beginners. To grab the basics, buy Daisy L. Neijmann's Colloquial Icelandic. After you have completed that, this book will become your ultimate authority on this difficult but beautiful language. The reason for that is, this book assumes you have a fairly comprehensive knowledge of language in general, needed for learning the Icelandic language as well. The Colloquial Icelandic book introduces you this very gradually, whereas it is presented in bigger fragments in Stefán Einarsson's book.
The book is: very good-looking, very thick, very complete. However, is also very old (written around the second world war), so for newer words, you have to look elsewhere. This said, its biggest impediment is also its biggest advantage: everything is presented in a very thorough way (like only could have been done long ago), accompanied by beautiful pictures of various texts and exercises.
The book has been devided in various parts, and not in chapters:---------------------------------------------------
1) INTRODUCTION (page I - XXVII)
• preface
• preface to the second edition
• how to use the book
• topical index
• bibliography
• abbreviations
• contents
• list of illustrations The target of the introduction is to learn how to use the book. Everything is well done here, but it's a pity that the bibliography does almost only mention books that are out of print.
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2) GRAMMAR AND TEXTS (page 1 - 293) • contents of grammar
• grammar
• texts I
• texts II This is of course the actual heart of the book. The grammar is build up of three parts: pronunciation, inflexions, and syntax. The pronunciation is very profound and every possible sound is mentioned. The inflexions teach the possible forms of ANY wordtype (and is therefore very valuable), while the syntax focusses on WHEN everything is used, and also explains what "cases" are, etc. etc.
The texts come in two varieties, the one kind being texts with references to which grammar to learn, the other kind being texts without that. While the themes of the first are sometimes unsignificant, the latter are really about parts of Icelandic society. And, remember, each text comes with a separate glossary to learn.
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3) GLOSSARY (page 295-502) The glossary may be the best reason to buy the book. In fact, it's an Icelandic/English dictionairy, with reference to the grammar part for the inflections of the words. Honestly, this is the only book which contains (something close to) a dictionairy, with the full forms of any word. Too bad it isn't English/Icelandic!
--------------------------------------------------- I hope I've helped you with my review, just remember that you won't regret buying this book! =)
Rating: 
Summary: A great book for cold, blustery days.
Review: I just wanna say that you can't beat this price. I had to special-order mine from the publisher for fifty bucks. Also, this book is a lot of fun (for anybody who likes languages). The grammar and syntax are presented very straight-forwardly and the readings are many and varied. The language is beautiful and just feels good; it always makes me wish I were there. (And if this book's a bit old-fashioned, it's no more so than the sagas.) Gangi þér vel!
Rating:
Summary: Not for beginners
Review: Icelandic is not an easy language to learn and this book is a real antique in its approach to language learning, so I can imagine the frustration of a student whose previous experiences are high school or college courses (say beginning Spanish or French) or a Berlitz or Teach-Yourself course with tapes or CDs. Be warned, this is not that kind of book. If you speak native-level English and have studied Greek, Latin or German, this book will do you much good. If you know something about grammar and linguistics, so much the better. No phonetic descriptions are going to teach you to speak Icelandic or any other language. For that you'll have be around a native speaker, and you might do well also to get a phrase book and tapes. If, however, you want to learn to read Icelandic(and also old Norse)this is the best book I've found. It's surely an indispensable reference work to accompany other Icelandic programs as well. I don't know where else you'll find so much information to help unravel the complexities of Icelandic. Get it, but be prepared to work. It will take even an experienced language learner a couple of years to digest half of what it has to offer.
Rating:
Summary: Old fashioned? Maybe. Thorough? Definitely!
Review: If you have an interest in the Icelandic language, you've definitely been frustrated by the lack of learning materials for English-speakers. Looks like Routledge is coming out with a "Colloquial Icelandic" sometime this summer (finally!), so that will definitely fill a huge void. Even so, I believe Einarsson's book will still fill a need. It employs an interesting methodology. In my 1945 edition, pages 1-31 give a very thorough introduction to the pronunciation. (too bad there are not accompanying tapes.) Pages 32-104 give the grammar (nouns, pronouns, verbs, in table form). Pages 105-180 covers syntax, with English translations of all sample phrases and sentences. Pages 181-246 is the pedagogical "heart" of the book; it consists of "aefingar" (exercises, drills). They are short readings with vocabulary. Before each of these, the author tells you what sections of the grammar and syntax sections you need to learn before going through the reading. For example, for the very first reading, you are instructed to learn the present indicative of the verb "to be"; the personal pronouns; and the weak declension of masculine and feminine nouns. So what you do is dip back, again and again, into the grammar and syntax, gradually learning more and more. At the same time, you're learning vocabulary through the readings. This "learning" section is followed by about 50 pages of readings, and there is a complete glossary at the back. Bottom line, it's a big book (about 500 pages), and if you work through it conscientiously, you'll have an excellent READING knowledge of Icelandic. For spoken Icelandic, you'll have to look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Old fashioned? Maybe. Thorough? Definitely!
Review: If you have an interest in the Icelandic language, you've definitely been frustrated by the lack of learning materials for English-speakers. Looks like Routledge is coming out with a "Colloquial Icelandic" sometime this summer (finally!), so that will definitely fill a huge void. Even so, I believe Einarsson's book will still fill a need. It employs an interesting methodology. In my 1945 edition, pages 1-31 give a very thorough introduction to the pronunciation. (too bad there are not accompanying tapes.) Pages 32-104 give the grammar (nouns, pronouns, verbs, in table form). Pages 105-180 covers syntax, with English translations of all sample phrases and sentences. Pages 181-246 is the pedagogical "heart" of the book; it consists of "aefingar" (exercises, drills). They are short readings with vocabulary. Before each of these, the author tells you what sections of the grammar and syntax sections you need to learn before going through the reading. For example, for the very first reading, you are instructed to learn the present indicative of the verb "to be"; the personal pronouns; and the weak declension of masculine and feminine nouns. So what you do is dip back, again and again, into the grammar and syntax, gradually learning more and more. At the same time, you're learning vocabulary through the readings. This "learning" section is followed by about 50 pages of readings, and there is a complete glossary at the back. Bottom line, it's a big book (about 500 pages), and if you work through it conscientiously, you'll have an excellent READING knowledge of Icelandic. For spoken Icelandic, you'll have to look elsewhere.
Rating:
Summary: Very precise grammatically w/ extra reading material
Review: Just so you know this book is as colloquial as you can get. It is worth every penny i spent on it. Information & all. Icelandic text is hard to find, but as of this moment to the next Liguist around will help bring more and more products to the states. trust me i have searched, Here and there THis site has good material to start with. Very precise for the retentive.
Rating:
Summary: Complete, but not easy
Review: The good points first: - Very complete. Everything is included in a huge grammar.
- Lots of readings. Not just the sagas, not just the everyday dialogues - actually, you get a lot of both.
- quite a lot of exercises.
- much better than the OTHER book. (which, I believe, you should have as well.)
- a glossary so large that it would cost about the same if you were to buy it separately.
- where else do you get 500+ excellent pages for this price? However, this book is not written the way you would expect it. Of course, it is about as old as my grandmother. For starters: - A topical index and a bibliography at the very BEGINNING of the book. - A rather thorough and very technical grammar before any introductory exercises. (Yes, I know, it says right after the preface that the absolute beginner should start by the exercises, but it is not very usual to start a book on page 181) - No discussion of vowel changes before a lot of exercises where they are needed. "Teach yourself" has the same problem. However, it is not something easy to explain, but future authors should at least try to either discuss each vowel shift just before it is needed or to use as few as possible in the first exercises. - You need a good memory. As an example, in order to go through the first group of exercises, you have to memorize (I couldn't do it in any other way) 6 different forms of the verb to be, about 40 different pronoun forms and about 12 different kinds of endings for nouns. Of course, no one said it was going to be easy. Icelandic has three genders, four cases and a huge amount of different verb forms... but this is HARD. - An old-looking rather small font that makes you read slower than on a modern book. Besides, it does not have a lot of white space. Pages are thick with text. This gives you the impression that you are going very slowly.
Rating:
Summary: Complete, but not easy
Review: The good points first: - Very complete. Everything is included in a huge grammar.
- Lots of readings. Not just the sagas, not just the everyday dialogues - actually, you get a lot of both.
- quite a lot of exercises.
- much better than the OTHER book. (which, I believe, you should have as well.)
- a glossary so large that it would cost about the same if you were to buy it separately.
- where else do you get 500+ excellent pages for this price? However, this book is not written the way you would expect it. Of course, it is about as old as my grandmother. For starters: - A topical index and a bibliography at the very BEGINNING of the book. - A rather thorough and very technical grammar before any introductory exercises. (Yes, I know, it says right after the preface that the absolute beginner should start by the exercises, but it is not very usual to start a book on page 181) - No discussion of vowel changes before a lot of exercises where they are needed. "Teach yourself" has the same problem. However, it is not something easy to explain, but future authors should at least try to either discuss each vowel shift just before it is needed or to use as few as possible in the first exercises. - You need a good memory. As an example, in order to go through the first group of exercises, you have to memorize (I couldn't do it in any other way) 6 different forms of the verb to be, about 40 different pronoun forms and about 12 different kinds of endings for nouns. Of course, no one said it was going to be easy. Icelandic has three genders, four cases and a huge amount of different verb forms... but this is HARD. - An old-looking rather small font that makes you read slower than on a modern book. Besides, it does not have a lot of white space. Pages are thick with text. This gives you the impression that you are going very slowly.
Rating: 
Summary: an almost useless method to learn a difficult language
Review: This thick book starts by the most unpalatable description of Icelandic grammar and continues with dozens of exercizes without any correction at all. Also, more than 60 pages depict the prononciation, letter after letter (a CD or a cassette would do far better). A phonologist's jargon nightmare!
What is the point of having so many English texts supposed to be translated into correct Icelandic by the reader, with just a couple of vocabulary notes in the margin? Such notes can be found anyway in the glossary a few pages further anyway. When learning a language by yourself, you need to be able to correct yourself. Impossible to do so with this otherwise very, very thick book.
I had learnt the basics of this most beautiful language with a mere "Teach Yourself Icelandic" (cheaper & better)and thought this one would take me further.
Extract of one exercize: "I can see the raven eating off a lamb's eyes". No comment... Icelanding language really deserves a better promotion.
Rating:
Summary: Best book for the price
Review: Though I have carried & used the Glending grammar for many years in my isolated study of Icelandic, this book, by Einarsson, offers direct & enlightening descriptive explanations of the orthography of Icelandic and examples of usage. I consider it an impotrant asset to anyone studying Icelandic on their own.
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