The other day I ordered some books from this used bookstore, and I remembered how confusing some online shopping terms might be (doing this particular one I learned a new term too). I chose to show you this bookstore because unlike a lot of sites, while this one does openly ship outside of Iceland and doesn’t require a kennitala (SSN), the entire website is still in Icelandic. There’s probably mistakes somewhere in this post, as always, so don’t take everything to heart – but it’s good enough to help you navigate anyway.
This bookstore sells old books, not just from Iceland but from other countries as well (including the Faroe Islands) and they also ship abroad. Here’s a messy image I made to help you figure things out:
(The image has been corrected by icelandiclanguage – they’ve helped me out more than anyone else on Icelandic actually, no one else has ever regularly corrected me!)
After registering:
Staðfesting á aðgangi hefur verið send á netfangið þitt. / Confirmation of registration has been sent to your Email address.
Ef staðfesting kemur ekki innan fárra mínútna, hafðu þá samband við okkur. / If the confirmation doesn’t come in the following (a few) minutes, get in contact with us.
The following list of words is taken directly from the site, I didn’t put them in nominative (dictionary) case or change them in any way. This is only to make your shopping experience easier.
Óbundin – This looks like it means “unbound”, but I bought a book from them with this label and it was actually staple-bound. Perhaps it means “not hard-bound”, as the other two books I bought were labeled as bound but were both hard-bound.
Forlagsband – bound (physically) by a publisher. The staple-bound book I talked about above seems to have been hand-bound by someone who printed the book himself, and no publisher, editor, or translator is listed even though a date, city, and store is – this gives the impression that it was just the owner of the store who bound it. The hard-bound books were done properly by a publishing company, though.
Kápa – dustjacket
Verð – price
kr. – “krónur”, crowns (ISK).
Afgreiðslutími – handling time
1-3 dagar (1-3 days)
Tungumál – language
Íslenska – Icelandic
Enska – English
Ástand – condition/status
Sem nýtt eintak í góðu rexínbandi – like-new copy in good rexine-binding. (Thanks to Alex for figuring out what rexine is!)
Gott eintak – good copy/edition
Ágætt eintak – “fine”/okay copy
Þokkalegast eintak – fairly good copy
Gott eintak í ágætu samtíma bandi – good copy in okay binding
Lesið og lúð eintak – read and worn-out copy
Bandið er lélegt – the binding is poor
vantar annað spjaldið og titilsíða er aðeins rífin – it needs another/new cover and the title-page (alone?) is ripped
Vörunúmer – item number
Pöntun – order
nr. – “númer”, number
Skoða reikning – see invoice
Pantað dags. – “dagsetning”, order date
Parts from the Email they give you after they receive payment:
(Name) þakka þér fyrir að versla hjá okkur á www.bokin.is. / (Name,) thank you for shopping with us at bokin.is.
Pöntun þin hefur verið uppfærð. / Your order (information) has been updated.
Vinsamlegast svaraðu þessum pósti ef þú hefur spurningar um pöntunina. / Please answer (reply to) this (e)mail if you have questions about the order.
Hopefully this helps you to order some things on some other sites as well, as at least the checkout vocabulary is often the same. As always, I have no idea what you want to read about or your Icelandic level either, so if you ever have any ideas or comments just let me know.
