Icelandic Language Blog

If there is one thing that the Icelanders always excel at without a single flaw it’s partying. Yesterday’s Eurovision song contest was therefore no exception, the partying started well in advance when Iceland’s representative made it into the finals and is still going on as I write this. Well, the aftermath is mostly bitter comments directed towards the winner, Denmark.

To sum up the Eurovision Song Contest, it’s an annual competition that sees participants from every country on the European continent plus Israel, Cyprus and Morocco. There are even more countries outside of the continent that are eligible to enter, but they’ve never sent a representative to the actual competition.

The competition itself has two semifinals, where ten winners are selected from each batch of countries for the finals. This system does not include “The Big Five”, UK, Germany, France, Spain and most recently Italy, who get their representatives to the finals without having to battle in the semifinals first. The host country, being the country that won the previous year, is also automatically in the finals.

Iceland has never won the Eurovision, yet it’s come second twice (1999: Selma/All Out of Luck and 2009: Yohanna/Is It True). It debuted in the competition in 1986 with a song called Gleðibankinn (an excellent mullet ahoy). The song Iceland sends has most often been sung in Icelandic, but there was a long period after Páll Óskar’s Minn hinsti dans in 1997 when the language was changed to English – the songs were sung in Icelandic while in Iceland and then translated into English for the competition. The opinion on how good idea this was varies, but personally I find that the translations leave off so much of the original songs that keeping them in Icelandic shows them more respect. Thankfully this year’s entry Ég á líf was sung again in Icelandic, for the first time since 1997!

Páll Óskar himself. I’m a big fan!

The winner is chosen by both a jury and public vote, 50% each. Unsurprisingly this means that neighbour countries vote each other a lot, one example being the Nordic countries whose habit of hanging together is nothing short of legendary. Looking at Iceland’s points alone makes this strikingly clear: during the whole history of Eurovision Iceland has given the most points to Denmark, followed by Sweden, Norway, France and – Finland. On the other hand Iceland has received the most points from Sweden, followed closely by Norway and Denmark. That’s why it came as a huge shock to Icelanders that Denmark only gave them one point this year. What on earth does this betrayal mean, we thought we had a deal!

However, one’s own country winning is not the main thing about Eurovision celebrations. More importantly it’s a time to spend in good company with good food and -

- drinking games. The rules for a typical drinking game usually state that you have to choose a country or two countries you’re rooting for and whenever they get points, you take a sip. During the performances there are certain Eurovision cliches that mean the whole group has to drink. In the above photo the game is divided into three categories: first the announcers, then rating and thirdly the performers.

The list above goes as follows.

Kynning (= presenting, the announcer/s): skiptir um föt (= changes clothes), segir “Malmö” (= says Malmö), nefnir að hún sé ein (= mentions that she seems to be alone), Segway (hahaha I have no idea why this one is on the list – Eurovision is a strange competition indeed!), þakkar Baku/Azerbaijan (= thanks Baku/Azerbaijan, the place where the last year’s Eurovision was held at), quote-ar (= quotes something: the word ‘quote’ is used here as an English word with an Icelandic verb ending), Eurovision-appið (= Eurovision application gets mentioned), auglýsir DVD/CD (= advertises DVD/CD).

Atriði (= “items”; performers): vindvél (= wind machine), props (= props – an English word), eldur (= fire), reykur (= smoke), Ruslönu trommur (= I’m not entirely certain of what this one means – Ruslana drumming?), fatafokk (= doing something showy with clothes; fokk is yet another English loan word, but it holds a lot less weight than the original, English curse; fokk is often used to describe some kind of unnecessary messing about).

Hálftónshækkun (= semitone higher), augabrúnir (= eyebrows: here used to mean notably large and bushy ones), koss (= kiss), áhorfendasnerting (= contact with the audience, in other words shaking hands with the front line). The next one I’m afraid I cannot really make out… something about the background vocals of Netherlands? Nýr gaur means a new guy, a performer that suddenly appears on stage in the middle of the song, which is a very popular trick in Eurovision. Handafokk, despite of how it sounds like, actually means unnecessarily dramatic gesturing with hands here.

Stigagjöf (= “points giving”; rating): töf á stigagjöf (= delay during the rating), spilling Norðurlanda (= Nordic corruption: when a Nordic country gives points to more than one other Nordic country) and tungumálafokk, which means any clumsy attempt at using a language the announcer does not know.

I’m just happy I stood for Finland and Iceland – Iceland of course got lots of points but my homeland’s failure probably saved me from alcohol poisoning!

To end with, here’s a quick translation of what I still think of as the best song of this year Ég á líf, sung by Eyþór Ingi Gunnlaugsson (you can also listen to the song here with Icelandic subtitles)(there’s also a small interview on him here – he’s mostly talking about his clothes and jewellery, but at the end he also sings for us – also… is it just me or does he look quite a lot like Thor?):

I’m alive

I left for that long journey
I went forward, lost and restless
I thought of nothing, not further than the next day
Loneliness and tranquility I chose

I’m alive, I’m alive, I glide over hardships
I’m alive, I’m alive because of you
When the winds turn at me I climb over the high mountains
I’m alive, I’m alive, I’m alive

I did not understand the love that moves everything
I did not dare to embrace and stay
I felt I didn’t deserve to open my mind
And let the brightness of love enter

I’m alive…

And I believe, yes I believe
Maybe the beautiful gates of the sky will open
The beauty of love will flood out and over me alone

I’m alive…

Icelanders fighting both on- and offline, faces of the politicians staring at you from all directions, our mayor Jón Gnarr dressed up as a Jedi knight – the Parliamentary Elections of Iceland just happened. By now you all know the end result as well: the right wing won, the same party that caused the economy to collapse in 2008 with their overtly relaxed attitude towards banks. Iceland seems dumbstruck by the result of these elections.

Personally, I’m staying optimistic. One misconception that I’ve read a lot about is that the right wing were somehow “not socialist” but this is not true – the whole country of Iceland is socialist, just like all the other Nordics. This means that Iceland is not going to suddenly throw away all the things that come with a left-side influence such as free/cheap health care and education, minimum wages and unemployment benefits that are survivable-on etc. Besides after making a rather embarrassingly large, world-famous mistake I’m ready to stake some money on that the right wing will be wanting to avoid similar mistakes in the future. And if they don’t, well, Icelanders have forced them out once before with the power of pots and pans and vats of skyr, they can no doubt do it again if needed.

What could have steered the vote this way is the question I hear all around me. Are people so quick to forget?

Back when the right wing was last in power Icelanders certainly felt good about life. Everyone had money and jobs, getting a loan was easy (oh boy how easy indeed!) and by every look of it the paradise was here, except of course that is not how economy works. There can exist no infinite growth but waves, and causing a wave as high as the bubble was inevitably ends up in a huge crash. Fixing that was a lot of work and suddenly no one was happy any longer. Sad as it is, no one ever likes the politicians who have to patch up the economy after it’s collapsed.

But is it really this simple? I don’t think it is. First of all, when a country is saving money the cuts hurt the ones that are the most helpless: the children, students, the ill, unemployed and the elderly. Yet when the economy is on an upward curve again no one somehow thinks of returning them what they lost. When counted together these groups have a rather large number of people in them and the ones old enough to vote may be easily swayed by the most recent treatment that they’ve been receiving.

This is not the only reason to vote for the right, of course. Some of the voters are simply loyal – I for example always vote for a certain party even if I actually prefer a politician that’s from another one. This is due to the voting system that yields the more seats the bigger the percentage of the votes is, so no matter how much I agreed with, say, a politician of the Central party I would never vote for them; chances are they won’t get selected and my vote only goes to give more seats to this a party whose ideas I’m against.

But besides these two – the loyal voters base and the forgetful nostalgists – there is still at least one huge issue that may have turned the tide for the right, and that’s the question about joining the EU. As the national votes proved a majority of Icelanders are not happy about joining. There are numerous reasons to this, tied to the fishing industry, farming, entrepreneurs and just the thought of losing independence that weigh in people’s minds. Do not overlook that last part, Icelanders get pretty fierce at the thought of becoming somebody else’s property again and many view EU to do just that. They fought long and hard for independence and now it looks like the government is considering handing it all away, just like that.

The truth of the matter is far more complicated than this but for most of the time the topic of joining the EU is simplified to this thought. Now let’s see how the parties view this:

Samfylkingin (= Social Democratic Alliance) (XS - this is a “code” for the whole party. I like to think of them as smileys.): strongly for joining the EU.

Vinstri-Græn (= Leftist-Greens)(XV): undecided, somewhat against joining the EU but I haven’t seen them being very vocal about it.

These are the two parties that were hitherto in power. Then for the others:

Sjálfsstæðisflokkurinn (= Independence Party)(XD): strongly against the EU.

Framsókn (= Progressives)(XB): I… have no idea! They aren’t very vocal about the EU but then again this is possibly one of the most misleading names for a party I’ve ever seen, since they rarely seem to actually do very much.

The above ones are the ones that are now with the most seats. Then there are the newcomer parties:

Píratapartýið (= Pirate Party)(XÞ): they’re more interested in internet freedom and have declared that it’s not the job of a political party to state their opinion on whether or not Iceland should join the EU.

Björt Framtið (= Bright Future)(XA): they’re for joining the EU.

Moon over the Pearl.

All this is but speculation of course, and since every election is a fight for the voters that are undecided the answer will likely differ a lot. The uncertain voters are the ones whole votes matter the most (the loyal ones will be loyal after all) and they’re a largely varied group, and therefore their motivations are impossible to point at, even those few ones’ who chose to take a photo of their ballot, upload it on Facebook and act all surprised when told it was illegal… I would be interested in hearing other people’s theories as well on this matter, if you’re knowledgeable on the subject of Icelandic politics!

Here’s some relevant vocabulary on the subject plus the names of all of the parties that are now in power. Trying to pronounce them correctly takes a bit of work.

Thank you all for April, see you in May!

One way of describing spoken Icelandic is that Icelanders breathe it out. Take this literally: there are many “hidden” extra h-sounds in the language that aren’t written down but nevertheless are there, which give Icelandic its trademark whisper-like sound that’s unlike all the other Nordic languages. I already wrote about some of them in the entry about sharp consonants, the h-sound that follows certain consonants such as “k” and “t”, so let’s now look at a completely other kind of hidden h.

Aðblástur (= pre-aspiration)

Certain double consonants and combinations are pronounced with an extra h-sound between them and the vowels that come right before them. The h is audible and clearly pronounced, and with a couple of exceptions you cannot leave it out, else no one is going to understand what word you’re trying to say. The double consonants that do this are:

kk, pp and tt

For example when reading out aloud the following sentence

“Ekki meira, takk.” (= No more [for me], thank you)

and extra h-sound is added before both double k clusters:

“EHkki meira, taHkk.”

Or:

“Ég er svo heppinn að vera hér.” (= I’m so happy to be here.”

“Ég er svo heHppinn að vera hér.”

“Erum við eHkki á jeHppa?”

Kl, pl, tl, kn, pn, tn

are the consonant combinations that do the same.

“Íslenskt vatn er best í heimi.” (= Icelandic water is the best in the world.)

“Íslenskt vaHtn er best í heimi.”

Sometimes when Icelanders speak quickly they leave some sounds only half pronounced, so it’s not unusual to hear the word vatn (= water, lake) pronounced both vaHtn and vaHn. In compound words where vatn is in the genitive form vatns, it turns into vaHS!

“Hekla er um 1500 metra hátt.” (= Hekla is about 1500 metres tall.”

“HeHkla er um 1500 metra háHtt.”

“Opnaðu augun þín.” (= Open your eyes.)

“OHpnaðu augun þín.”

It’s important to not confuse the aðblástur with önghljóð, a voiceless fricative sound that Icelandic also has. Aðblástur is a clear h-sound, not formed in the back of one’s mouth but in the center. If pronouncing it feels difficult at first, try to make a small pause between the consonant clusters that demand it – f.ex. instead of saying “teHppi” you can say “te-ppi” – the end result sounds very nearly the same.

Photo taken late in the evening last Saturday – Icelandic spring is full of surprises. At least it’s also very light!

Exceptions:

Compound words are naturally an exception. For example any word that begins with út- will rarely get a pre-aspiration between ú and t. Útlendingur (= a foreigner) gets no aðblástur, and neither does útlit (= appearance).

Consonant clusters at the beginning of a word will naturally not get an aðblástur, because it can only happen between vowels and consonants. Klaustur (= monastery, cloister) is not Hklaustur.

If the word has a -lega or a -leysi ending with a k in front of it it will not get an aðblástur. Mjúklega (= gently) and sakleysi (= innocence) neither get an aðblástur.

There’s also one curious exception that may or may not come into action if the vowel before the consonants is either í, ý, ei, ey or æ. Sometimes instead of a h-sound you’ll hear a y-/j-sound instead. Don’t worry too much about which way you pronounce this one, these are the words that Icelanders will easily understand in both forms of pronunciation.

As a common example: ætla (= to plan, to intend) can be pronounced both æHtla and æYtla/æJtla. Technically speaking æHtla is the correct form, but it sounds a little more natural to pronounce it as æYtla/æJtla when talking normally. For example, when Icelanders order food at a restaurant they commonly say “Ég æJtla að fá…” (= I’m going to have/I’d like to have…)

A small audio sample of how aðblástur, or pre-aspiration, sounds like.

Previous pronunciation posts:

Part 1: sharp consonants.

Part 2: vowels. 

Part 3: rhythm.