danish-foundation-models/icelandic-dynaword

🧨 Icelandic Dynaword

Version	0.0.14 (Changelog)
Language	Icelandic (is, isl)
License	Openly Licensed, See the respective dataset
Models	Currently there is no models trained on this dataset
Contact	If you have question about this project please create an issue here

Dataset Description

• Number of samples: 39.85M
• Number of tokens (Llama 3): 2.67B
• Average document length in tokens (min, max): 66.98 (3, 1.03M)

Dataset Summary

The Icelandic dynaword is a collection of Icelandic free-form text datasets from various domains. All of the datasets in the Icelandic Dynaword are openly licensed and deemed permissible for training large language models.

Icelandic dynaword is continually developed, which means that the dataset will actively be updated as new datasets become available. If you would like to contribute a dataset see the contribute section.

Loading the dataset

from datasets import load_dataset

name = "danish-foundation-models/icelandic-dynaword"
ds = load_dataset(name, split="train")
sample = ds[0]

or load it by streaming the data

ds = load_dataset(name, split="train", streaming=True)
sample = next(iter(ds))

You can also load a single subset at a time:

ds = load_dataset(name, "igc-parla-2024ext", split="train")

As Icelandic dynaword is continually expanding and curated you can make sure that you get the same dataset every time by specifying the revision:

ds = load_dataset(name, revision="{desired revision}")

Languages

This dataset includes the following languages:

• Icelandic (isl-Latn)

In addition it likely contains small amounts of English due to code-switching and other languages in quotations or embedded references.

Language is denoted using BCP-47, using the language code from ISO 639-3 and the script code from ISO 15924.

Language	Sources	N. Tokens
is	igc-parla, igc-journals-22-10, igc-adjud, igc-law, saga, igc-social-blogs, igc-social-bland, igc-social-hugi, igc-social-malefnin, wikipedia, hjh-corpus, wiki-comments, wikisource, wikibooks, stjornartidindi, icepahc, gutenberg, rafbokavefur	2.67B
Total		2.67B

Domains

This dynaword consist of data from various domains (e.g., legal, books, social media). The following table and figure give an overview of the relative distributions of these domains. To see a full overview of the source check out the source data section

Domain	Sources	N. Tokens
Social Media	igc-social-blogs, igc-social-bland, igc-social-hugi, igc-social-malefnin	1.36B
Conversation	igc-parla, wiki-comments	707.14M
Legal	igc-adjud, igc-law, stjornartidindi	480.08M
Encyclopedic	igc-journals-22-10, wikipedia	94.47M
Books	saga, wikisource, wikibooks, icepahc, gutenberg, rafbokavefur	27.05M
Speeches	hjh-corpus	738.68K
Total		2.67B

Licensing

The following gives an overview of the licensing in the Dynaword. To get the exact license of the individual datasets check out the overview table. These license is applied to the constituent data, i.e., the text. The collection of datasets (metadata, quality control, etc.) is licensed under CC-0.

License	Sources	N. Tokens
CC-BY 4.0	igc-parla, igc-journals-22-10, igc-adjud, igc-law, saga, igc-social-blogs, igc-social-bland, igc-social-hugi, igc-social-malefnin, icepahc	2.52B
Icelandic Copyright Law	stjornartidindi, rafbokavefur	102.80M
CC-BY-SA 4.0	wikipedia, hjh-corpus, wiki-comments, wikisource, wikibooks	47.70M
Other (Attribution required)	gutenberg	227.43K
Total		2.67B

Dataset Structure

The dataset contains text from different sources which are thoroughly defined in Source Data.

Data Instances

Each entry in the dataset consists of a single text with associated metadata.

{
  "id": "igc-social-bland_2000_12.1",
  "text": "Það er það eina sem ég hafði alltaf svo miklar áhyggjur af en þurfti samt ekki.",
  "source": "igc-social-bland",
  "added": "2026-07-31",
  "created": "2000-12-01, 2000-12-31",
  "token_count": 36
}

Data Fields

An entry in the dataset consists of the following fields:

• id (str): A unique identifier for each document.
• text (str): The content of the document.
• source (str): The source of the document (see Source Data).
• added (str): The date when the document was added to this collection.
• created (str): The date range when the document was originally created.
• token_count (int): The number of tokens in the sample computed using the Llama 3 tokenizer.

Data Splits

The entire corpus is provided in the train split.

Dataset Creation

Curation Rationale

These datasets were collected and curated with the intention of making openly licensed Icelandic data available. While this was collected with the intention of developing language models it is likely to have multiple other uses such as examining language development and differences across domains.

Annotations

This data generally contains no annotation besides the metadata attached to each sample such as source, date, and token count.

Source Data

Below follows a brief overview of the sources in the corpus along with their individual license. To get more information about the individual dataset click the hyperlink in the table.

Overview Table (click to unfold)

Source	Description	Domain	N. Tokens	License
igc-social-bland	Sentences from Bland.is, a general-interest Icelandic online forum	Social Media	898.73M	CC-BY 4.0
igc-parla	Icelandic parliamentary speeches from Alþingi	Conversation	706.13M	CC-BY 4.0
igc-social-hugi	Sentences from Hugi.is, an Icelandic online discussion forum	Social Media	250.14M	CC-BY 4.0
igc-adjud	Icelandic court adjudications	Legal	225.53M	CC-BY 4.0
igc-social-malefnin	Sentences from Málefnin.com, an Icelandic discussion forum	Social Media	185.32M	CC-BY 4.0
igc-law	Icelandic proposals, parliamentary bills, and laws	Legal	163.02M	CC-BY 4.0
stjornartidindi	Icelandic laws, regulations and international agreements as published in the official state gazette	Legal	91.53M	Icelandic Copyright Law
igc-journals-22-10	Icelandic scholarly and scientific journal articles	Encyclopedic	58.31M	CC-BY 4.0
wikipedia	The Icelandic subsection of wikipedia	Encyclopedic	36.16M	CC-BY-SA 4.0
igc-social-blogs	Icelandic blog posts from three sites: Jónas.is, Silfur Egils, and Heimur.is	Social Media	25.13M	CC-BY 4.0
rafbokavefur	Out-of-copyright Icelandic books, from the medieval sagas to the early twentieth century	Books	11.27M	Icelandic Copyright Law
wikisource	The Icelandic subsection of Wikisource, a library of transcribed source texts	Books	7.88M	CC-BY-SA 4.0
saga	The Icelandic sagas	Books	3.65M	CC-BY 4.0
icepahc	Icelandic prose spanning the 12th to the 21st century, sampled from dated editions	Books	2.11M	CC-BY 4.0
wikibooks	The Icelandic subsection of Wikibooks	Books	1.90M	CC-BY-SA 4.0
wiki-comments	Community discussion and policy pages from the Icelandic Wikipedia	Conversation	1.02M	CC-BY-SA 4.0
hjh-corpus	Radio broadcasts by Helgi J. Halldórsson on the Icelandic language	Speeches	738.68K	CC-BY-SA 4.0
gutenberg	The Icelandic subsection of Project Gutenberg	Books	227.43K	Gutenberg
Total			2.67B

Data Collection and Processing

This dynaword is continually developed, which means that the dataset will actively be updated as new datasets become available. This means that the size of Dynaword increases over time as seen in the following plot:

The data collection and processing varies depending on the dataset and is documentationed the individual datasheets, which is linked in the above table. If possible the collection is documented both in the datasheet and in the reproducible script (data/{dataset}/create.py).

In addition to data specific processing we also run a series automated quality checks to ensure formatting (e.g. ensuring correctly formatted columns and unique IDs), quality checks (e.g. duplicate and empty string detection) and datasheet documentation checks. These checks are there to ensure a high quality of documentation and a minimal level of quality. To allow for the development of novel cleaning methodologies we do not provide more extensive cleaning.

Dataset Statistics

The following plot(s) are intended to give an overview of docuements length in the various sources.

Contributing to the dataset

We welcome contributions to the dataset, including new sources, improved data filtering, and other enhancements. To get started on contributing, please see the contribution guidelines

Citation Information

If you use this work, please cite the scientific article introducing the Dynaword approach and with the Icelandic Gigaword Corpus which provides large parts of the datasets:

Enevoldsen, K.C., Jensen, K.N., Kostkan, J., Szab'o, B.I., Kardos, M., Vad, K., Heinsen, J., N'unez, A.B., Barmina, G., Nielsen, J., Larsen, R., Vahlstrup, P.B., Dalum, P.M., Elliott, D., Galke, L., Schneider-Kamp, P., & Nielbo, K.L. (2025). Dynaword: From One-shot to Continuously Developed Datasets.

Barkarson, Starka{\dh}ur, Steingr{'i}msson, Stein{\th}{'o}r, & Hafsteinsd{'o}ttir, Hildur (2022). Evolving Large Text Corpora: Four Versions of the Icelandic Gigaword Corpus.

@article{enevoldsen2025dynaword,
  title={Dynaword: From One-shot to Continuously Developed Datasets},
  author={Enevoldsen, Kenneth and Jensen, Kristian N{\o}rgaard and Kostkan, Jan and Szab{\'o}, Bal{\'a}zs and Kardos, M{\'a}rton and Vad, Kirten and N{\'u}{\~n}ez, Andrea Blasi and Barmina, Gianluca and Nielsen, Jacob and Larsen, Rasmus and others},
  journal={arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.02271},
  year={2025}
}

@inproceedings{barkarson2022igc,
  title={Evolving Large Text Corpora: Four Versions of the Icelandic Gigaword Corpus},
  author={Barkarson, Starka{\dh}ur and Steingr{\'\i}msson, Stein{\th}{\'o}r and Hafsteinsd{\'o}ttir, Hildur},
  booktitle={Proceedings of the Language Resources and Evaluation Conference},
  pages={2371--2381},
  year={2022}
}

Additionally, we recommend citing the relevant source datasets as well. See the individual datasheets for more information.

License information

The license for each constituent dataset is supplied in the Source data table. This license is applied to the constituent data, i.e., the text. The collection of datasets (metadata, quality control, etc.) is licensed under CC-0.

Personal and Sensitive Information

As far as we are aware the dataset does not contain information identifying sexual orientation, political beliefs, religion, or health connected along with a personal identifier of any non-public or non-historic figures.

Bias, Risks, and Limitations

Certain works in this collection may be historical works and thus reflect the linguistic, cultural, and ideological norms of their time. As such, it includes perspectives, assumptions, and biases characteristic of the period, which may be considered offensive or exclusionary by contemporary standards.

Notice and takedown policy

We redistribute files shared with us under a license permitting such redistribution. If you have concerns about the licensing of these files, please contact us. If you consider that the data contains material that infringe your copyright, please:

• Clearly identify yourself with detailed contact information such as an address, a telephone number, or an email address at which you can be contacted.
• Clearly reference the original work claimed to be infringed
• Clearly identify the material claimed to be infringing and information reasonably sufficient to allow us to locate the material.

You can contact us through this channel. We will comply with legitimate requests by removing the affected sources from the next release of the corpus

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A Danish Foundation Models dataset