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Knit a puffin. Posted by hulda on Jul 25, 2012
Things are not always black and white, not even if you’re a puffin. Quite the contraty in fact – there are many possible colours for puffins and Icelandic has a specific name for each type. The pufflings, pysja (also known as pésja, kofa and lundungi), are almost like adult puffins in colour by the time…
Road rage! Posted by hulda on Jul 23, 2012
Welcome to Iceland where the roads may be passable for driving or not, depending on the season and weather conditions. There may also be sheep on them, ice, volcanic ash or as a worst case scenario a large section of a road or even a whole bridge may be swept away by a jökulhlaup, a…
There once was a puffin, just the shape of a muffin Posted by hulda on Jul 19, 2012
…And he lived on and island in the bright blue sea! ~Florence Page Jaques Few birds are as iconic to Iceland as lundi, Atlantic puffin. They live in large colonies all around the shorelines of Iceland but especially in the Vestmannaeyjar (= Westman Isles) where the largest puffin colony of the world is located. Often they…
The trolls. Posted by hulda on Jul 16, 2012
Perhaps the most variable of all supernatural creatures of Iceland is tröll, a troll. Stories of them describe their size alone ranging from the size of a mountain to something resembling a very large human. Their behaviour varies likewise from friendly and loyal to solitary, hermit-like sages to beastly and violent man eaters. Sometimes trolls…
Falling Fall and Mountain Moo. Posted by hulda on Jul 13, 2012
Despite that it’s föstudagurinn þrettándi (= the Friday 13th) I hope you’re all doing well! One of the quickest and the most effective ways of widening your vocabulary in any foreign language is to pick up a map and begin to translate the names of places. It’s not only easy – the repetition of certain…
A hot dog for Mr. Clinton. Posted by hulda on Jul 9, 2012
Today I put together a short grammar lesson with some easy rules on the use of hjá, við and með, three prepositions that can all be translated as “with”. The difficulty lies in the different nuances and usage of all three, and getting them mixed up will hardly ever work in a grammatical sense. And…
Where the wild Moomins are. Posted by hulda on Jul 5, 2012
One thing you’ll notice quickly when you live in Iceland is that when the locals talk about something they’re much more prone to using a nickname than a real name. This is perhaps related to the way some names tend to be extremely common throughout the history: if you want to talk about Jón instead…