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An unusual phoneme
This is a phoneme which sounds strange to an English speaker, but occurs in various parts of the world, e.g. the Caucasus, southern Africa and a Ladin-speaking valley in the Alps. It turns up too in a number of Native American languages and is perhaps most familiar to us in Mexican geographical names. There is a state called Tlaxcala (Nahuatl Tlaxcallān [tɬaʃˈkalːaːn]) and then there is the famous volcano Popocatepetl [popoːkaˈtepeːtɬ]. It has also appeared in Icelandic, spelt double l, and possibly Faroese, but I know of no other North Germanic language which has it.
Occurrence in Icelandic
I have not been able so far to discover how long the phoneme has existed in the language, but I suspect it has been around for a good long while and may have arrived in Iceland with Old Norse. I think this because it appears to be in Faroese as well. Both have the same word for mountain (fjall) and the affricate seems to occur in both. However, I can find no clear evidence that the phoneme occurred in Old Norse.
As I understand it, the Faroes and, later, Iceland were settled principally by people of Norwegian origin who had been living close to the coasts of the Irish Sea, e.g. in the Dublin area, in western Wales and in Cumbria. I wonder whether the affricate did not develop in Scandinavia at all, but in these areas. This is pure speculation, as I have no evidence one way or the other.
I am a little confused as to whether the second element is a lateral fricative or a lateral approximant, but I had assumed that this was because of carelessness on the part of transcribers. However, listening to the geographical name Eyjafjallajökull, I think I am hearing both. My feeling is supported, although not exactly confirmed, by the wording of this section. If the second element is actually an aproximant, the phoneme does not conform to the definition of an affricate. After all, English uses the group tl in such words as flatly, but I should regard this as consisting of two separate phonemes in different syllables.
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