I've lived in Iceland and learnt some Icelandic, so I can help you out.
Since you're European, you can get lots of opportunities through ERASMUS or whatever it's called. From what I've seen, most of the working opportunities through that sort of thing will be beheading sheep for slaughter time. It's very difficult to get jobs in Iceland when you don't speak very good Icelandic, unless you have contacts who can help you get a job (in which case... it's rather easy to get a job).
As for them not being open to learners, it's basically that Icelanders are not at all used to foreigners or bad Icelandic. They are very much an "in-group" that you do not belong to. You will definitely not be treated the same as an Icelander's Icelandic friend, unless you're extremely lucky (an easy example is that your Icelandic friend will simply have a lot more "time" to meet with their Icelandic freinds, but none to meet you with). When you try to speak Icelandic with someone, they'll tolerate you for a few minutes and then leave or switch to English. This isn't just strangers, this is also friends, spouses, etc. So for example, it's easy to speak Icelandic at the cashier but very difficult to find someone who will speak to you all night in it (unless they're extremely drunk and trying to pick you up). The ones who will speak Icelandic to you no matter what are Icelanders who hate English, Icelanders who desperately want to move and live abroad (and even then it's iffy), people who don't know any English (such as little kids), and other foreigners.
Plus Icelanders are TERRIBLE at teaching their own language, even if that is their job - for example, I asked someone what cases were and when you use them, and they replied "Cases! Well that's hestur, hest, hesti, hests". Okay, that helps someone who has never heard of a case before an awful lot... I've had teachers make fun of me for bad pronunciation, teachers refusing to answer students' questions, teachers refusing to answer Emails, teachers comparing all the foreign students to when their (born and raised in Iceland with Icelandic parents) learnt Icelandic. They often don't give nearly enough examples, you learn tiny parts of grammar but not how to put them all together into long sentences, their translations to English are wrong sometimes, most of the learning material is too outdated (some we didn't even use since it was too old, even though it was made by teachers who still work at the University today), and the teachers expect you to learn an incredible amount (for someone unused to languages like that and having no/little help at home) in a short amount of time. It's perfectly possible to learn Swedish in the amount of time they give you, but I don't think you can learn Icelandic that well at that speed unless you have a lot of help at home (such as living with a native family). All the non-University courses I've heard about were even worse - never moving past basic phrases, or being so difficult they had to take them five times before they passed them, or a mix of both.
2 of 2 Icelanders might say your Icelandic is terrible, they will ask "why aren't you studying harder", they will automatically say "you said that perfectly!" and "you're almost fluent!" even when it's obvious that's not the case (sometimes as an excuse not to correct your mistakes since they find that annoying), they will think you are lying when you say you are studying since "if you were really studying, you'd be better", they wont understand that you do some things or don't know some things due to cultural differences and not just because you're stupid, and so on... because they are not used to foreigners at all, let alone accented Icelandic etc. However if you are a guest (exchange student, or otherwise only there for a short time) they will treat you a lot better than they treat immigrants, so you might not have these problems.
From what I have seen, you'll have much better luck outside of Reykjavík. People in Reykjavík are more depressed, meaner, and stick with their own friends more, AND speak less clearly. The problem is that the only "good" school in Iceland for Icelandic is in Reykjavík, and the classes there aren't so good either (it's basically a lot of work, all in Icelandic from day one, many many students drop out of the classes or have to retake them).
So then you want to study by yourself. Which materials to use entirely depends on how familiar you are with grammar and with Germanic languages. I don't know anything about Gaelic but it might help you tremendously. I'll read up on Gaelic grammar and then tell you which materials I think you'd learn fastest with.
Oh yes, and the majority of helpful materials for Icelandic grammar and word use.... are entirely in Icelandic. But I can translate those to English for you.
Honestly the Wikipedia for Icelandic grammar has gotten really good over the past few years, it might be good to just read through that. When getting a physical dictionary, the Icelandic-English ones are really bad (tons of missing words) and the only good ones are Icelandic-Icelandic and Icelandic-Danish. So the best idea is to get an Icelandic-Icelandic, and use the free online Icelandic-English dictionary to make sense of the entries (or you can message me with entries and I'll translate them for you).
The declension dictionary is also very useful when writing! If you plan to use Icelandic online, there is an Icelandic dictionary you can install on Firefox that acts as a spell-checker. Be warned that most websites that have Icelandic as a language option have wrong (sometimes REALLY wrong) Icelandic, unless of course it is an originally-Icelandic site. In which case it might not have an English version, or a complete English version.
I felt like I should make wordlists on Memrise for Icelandic (first I was going to do prepositions and which cases they govern). But if there is a grammar topic you want to know about, or a text you want to read and can't understand, message me and I will help you as best I can. In the future I'm going to make a textbook for Faroese and Icelandic, so it's actually very helpful if you ask me questions because then it forces me to write various parts of the book.
If you find it useful, it would be fantastic if you made something similar for Gaelic and submitted it to the blog (or send it to me here on livejournal). There's usually no credit given because people are scared of copyright, but you can have it if you want. You would take a Gaelic text, translate it as directly as still makes sense to English, adding grammar/vocab notes when you feel it's necessary. And we try to find a native speaker to record themselves reading the text, so there is matching audio (I always just post on rhinospike if I don't personally know anyone).
I've lived in Iceland and learnt some Icelandic, so I can help you out.
Since you're European, you can get lots of opportunities through ERASMUS or whatever it's called. From what I've seen, most of the working opportunities through that sort of thing will be beheading sheep for slaughter time. It's very difficult to get jobs in Iceland when you don't speak very good Icelandic, unless you have contacts who can help you get a job (in which case... it's rather easy to get a job).
As for them not being open to learners, it's basically that Icelanders are not at all used to foreigners or bad Icelandic. They are very much an "in-group" that you do not belong to. You will definitely not be treated the same as an Icelander's Icelandic friend, unless you're extremely lucky (an easy example is that your Icelandic friend will simply have a lot more "time" to meet with their Icelandic freinds, but none to meet you with). When you try to speak Icelandic with someone, they'll tolerate you for a few minutes and then leave or switch to English. This isn't just strangers, this is also friends, spouses, etc. So for example, it's easy to speak Icelandic at the cashier but very difficult to find someone who will speak to you all night in it (unless they're extremely drunk and trying to pick you up). The ones who will speak Icelandic to you no matter what are Icelanders who hate English, Icelanders who desperately want to move and live abroad (and even then it's iffy), people who don't know any English (such as little kids), and other foreigners.
Plus Icelanders are TERRIBLE at teaching their own language, even if that is their job - for example, I asked someone what cases were and when you use them, and they replied "Cases! Well that's hestur, hest, hesti, hests". Okay, that helps someone who has never heard of a case before an awful lot... I've had teachers make fun of me for bad pronunciation, teachers refusing to answer students' questions, teachers refusing to answer Emails, teachers comparing all the foreign students to when their (born and raised in Iceland with Icelandic parents) learnt Icelandic. They often don't give nearly enough examples, you learn tiny parts of grammar but not how to put them all together into long sentences, their translations to English are wrong sometimes, most of the learning material is too outdated (some we didn't even use since it was too old, even though it was made by teachers who still work at the University today), and the teachers expect you to learn an incredible amount (for someone unused to languages like that and having no/little help at home) in a short amount of time. It's perfectly possible to learn Swedish in the amount of time they give you, but I don't think you can learn Icelandic that well at that speed unless you have a lot of help at home (such as living with a native family). All the non-University courses I've heard about were even worse - never moving past basic phrases, or being so difficult they had to take them five times before they passed them, or a mix of both.
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Icelanders might say your Icelandic is terrible, they will ask "why aren't you studying harder", they will automatically say "you said that perfectly!" and "you're almost fluent!" even when it's obvious that's not the case (sometimes as an excuse not to correct your mistakes since they find that annoying), they will think you are lying when you say you are studying since "if you were really studying, you'd be better", they wont understand that you do some things or don't know some things due to cultural differences and not just because you're stupid, and so on... because they are not used to foreigners at all, let alone accented Icelandic etc. However if you are a guest (exchange student, or otherwise only there for a short time) they will treat you a lot better than they treat immigrants, so you might not have these problems.
From what I have seen, you'll have much better luck outside of Reykjavík. People in Reykjavík are more depressed, meaner, and stick with their own friends more, AND speak less clearly. The problem is that the only "good" school in Iceland for Icelandic is in Reykjavík, and the classes there aren't so good either (it's basically a lot of work, all in Icelandic from day one, many many students drop out of the classes or have to retake them).
So then you want to study by yourself. Which materials to use entirely depends on how familiar you are with grammar and with Germanic languages. I don't know anything about Gaelic but it might help you tremendously. I'll read up on Gaelic grammar and then tell you which materials I think you'd learn fastest with.
Oh yes, and the majority of helpful materials for Icelandic grammar and word use.... are entirely in Icelandic. But I can translate those to English for you.
Honestly the Wikipedia for Icelandic grammar has gotten really good over the past few years, it might be good to just read through that. When getting a physical dictionary, the Icelandic-English ones are really bad (tons of missing words) and the only good ones are Icelandic-Icelandic and Icelandic-Danish. So the best idea is to get an Icelandic-Icelandic, and use the free online Icelandic-English dictionary to make sense of the entries (or you can message me with entries and I'll translate them for you).
The declension dictionary is also very useful when writing! If you plan to use Icelandic online, there is an Icelandic dictionary you can install on Firefox that acts as a spell-checker. Be warned that most websites that have Icelandic as a language option have wrong (sometimes REALLY wrong) Icelandic, unless of course it is an originally-Icelandic site. In which case it might not have an English version, or a complete English version.
I felt like I should make wordlists on Memrise for Icelandic (first I was going to do prepositions and which cases they govern). But if there is a grammar topic you want to know about, or a text you want to read and can't understand, message me and I will help you as best I can. In the future I'm going to make a textbook for Faroese and Icelandic, so it's actually very helpful if you ask me questions because then it forces me to write various parts of the book.
I've also made some parallel texts (am taking forever to make some commercial ones) with matching audio. Here is one I made:
http://read-listen-study.tumblr.com/post/51453257176/target-language-icelandic
If you find it useful, it would be fantastic if you made something similar for Gaelic and submitted it to the blog (or send it to me here on livejournal). There's usually no credit given because people are scared of copyright, but you can have it if you want. You would take a Gaelic text, translate it as directly as still makes sense to English, adding grammar/vocab notes when you feel it's necessary. And we try to find a native speaker to record themselves reading the text, so there is matching audio (I always just post on rhinospike if I don't personally know anyone).
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