Hardly a lecture, and it's the only Icelandic word I've commitied to memory. And it was from a viable source. However, I know plenty of Anglo Saxon words that I could share with you.

I'm in a fight mode, so sorry in advance. But my point is, you shouldn't stress out about a single word from a different language and claiming it as being the only way to pronounce it. Try the following words: Thor, Odin, Ragnarök, Loke, Schwarzenegger. No, you didn't pronounce them correctly in your head, and you never will. It doesn't matter. But don't try to be smart if you can't back up your case. Nordic mythology is based on the Edda, a collection of fairytales about the Nordic gods and their adventures. Teh word Gjallarhorn was spelled in a different way a long time ago as all other ancient words from the bible, for example. So how it is pronounced in today's writing, it doesn't matter. I'm swedish btw. I pronounce it Yallahoorrn. My german friends pronounce it with a G mostly. Rant over.

No worries, but read my initial post. I was simply and stating what I'd heard. A man from Iceland was on the Planet Destiny Pod cast, and he was talking about it. He said that Gjallarhorn was a very old Nordic word, and that Icelandic still uses a lot of old Nordic vocalisations. He pronounced it Gatt-le-hon. So if they still pronounce it the old way in Iceland, then that's most likely the original way to pronounce it. Langauge and pronounciation change radically over time. I studied Old English, which bears no resemblance to current English. Simple example: Knight is pronounced 'night', but was was pronounced ker-nig-tah. As you say, things change, and although you pronounce it with a Y, (as do I), a person with a better grasp on the history and significance of the original word pronounces it differently than both of us. I'm sorry that I didn't bother to initially back this up, I wasn't expecting a Swede to step in a make an issue of it.

I'm sorry, too. You never know which academic background your chat partner has. You seem to be an intelligent guy. I just wanted to make clear that knowing how to spell one word of a foreign language doesn't make you an expert at it. Everybody has their own way of pronouncing words. That's fine by me as long as they don't claim it to be THE way to pronounce it. But no worries man, like i said I'm a bit agitated (?) today. Too many Gjallarhorn posts, paired with 30°C in my living room, i really should stay away from the forums.