Did older Icelandic use any apostrophes? Representing what?
I am generally unfamiliar with any use of apostrophes in Icelandic, current or older.
However, I just discovered a punctuation mark similar to an apostrophe in quite a few places in this 100 years old article. Those occurrences are mostly found in the right hand side, bottom part of the printed page, and they include the following:
Ég vissi´ ekki hvar[...]
[...]örninn uppi´ á hamrinu[...]
Það tjáir ekki´ að flýja[...]
(The text can be zoomed into using ctrl + mouse click for a closer look.)
The apostrophe only ever occurs at the end of a word, following a final "i", and before a word starting with a vowel. However, the same context may also appear without the apostrophe:
Stella ætlaði ekki að hreyfa sig,[...]
(to be found in the middle column of the same article)
What does the apostrophe stand for?
1 answer
Icelandic does have some conventions for the use of apostrophes. It´s just that apostrophes are rare and optional in Icelandic. They are so rare that some translator resources declare that apostrophes are not used in the Icelandic language at all; or, for another illustration, unexpected symbols, such as inverted commas, might occasionally end up substituting for the completely unavoidable apostrophes in some foreign names, such as in O'Brien.
The Icelandic term for the apostrophe (´) is "úrfellingarmerki" and it is understood (per Íslensk Nútímaorðabók) to take the place of an omitted letter or letters or a speech sound.
Icelandic is normally written without any apostrophes; even any letters that would get omitted in faster speech get always written out in full. However, if the focus is on representing (and stylizing) the spoken form of the language, such as in direct speech or poetry, an apostrophe might be employed - especially to represent a silent word-final vowel letter before another vowel.
For example, "uppi á" (meaning "above on") might be written "upp' á" within direct speech in current Icelandic.
Interestingly, the 100 years old newspaper story in the OP employs the apostrophe in a different manner and they write that same common word combination as "uppi´ á", but still only in direct speech. (In Icelandic, direct speech is not always enclosed in quotation marks, which arguably creates some tiny push for indicating it through other available means. The first two paragraphs of the last column of the newspaper article are "sung in a low voice" by a protagonist and the rhythm of the song is represented with the aid of some of those apostrophes. Inner direct speech uses quotation marks, the song as a whole doesn't.)
These two styles (i.e., an apostrophe instead of the silent letter, or after the silent letter, are both exemplified side by side on the this page (University of Iceland), without labelling either one as obsolete, along with an additional use in abbreviated year numbers.
Entire books full of dialogue and/or year numbers have been published in Icelandic without a single apostrophe in them, though.
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