Icelandic as a first foreign language (that I’m very personally interested in) or something else

Hi there, I’m hoping to get some advice about choosing which language to go all in on. Firstly, I want to say that I am very personally interested in learning Icelandic. I find the language beautiful, love the idea of being able to read the old sagas in a largely unchanged language from when they were written, and have an Icelandic musician that I love whose songs I would love to be able to sing and understand (I am a singer/guitarist also). I’m also very interested in Norse mythology and Viking history, hence the mention of the sagas.

The reason why I am having difficulty committing to the decision is that Icelandic is a relatively obscure language. There are very few native speakers relatively speaking, the amount of good resources for practice as far as I’m aware are very limited, and I doubt it has much utility to me as an Australian, native English speaker. I also understand that it is a very difficult language and am concerned about losing motivation due to the difficulty, lack of resources and opportunity to practice with others.

I’m considering learning another Nordic/Scandinavian language that may be more accessible, have more resources etc. I guess primarily my questions are: - Do you think my fears about jumping into Icelandic as a first language other than English are valid? - Do you think with some good advice from this sub and good planning I can overcome these? - Are there other languages like Swedish or Norwegian or Danish etc that are more closely related to Icelandic than others that maybe I could learn first to get something under my belt so to speak that would give me a leg up to eventually tackle Icelandic? - Does anybody else have experience tackling a “difficult” language as their first language and can you share any advice about how you went?

Thank you in advance.

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