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Hurricane Diddú Posted by hulda on Dec 10, 2015
Earlier this week Iceland experienced hurricane Diddú. It was the worst storm since the one in 1991 and much, much stronger than a typical winter snow storm that I wrote about last week. You know the situation is dire when the Almannavarnadeild, Civil Protection -web page issues a warning for the whole country! On late…
The great Reykjavík snowcalypse. Posted by hulda on Dec 3, 2015
Snow isn’t a stranger to Reykjavík, much less Iceland in general, but sometimes there’s just way too much of it. I’ve been reminded of this ever since Tuesday when it all began with a massive, day-long snowstorm, and when Iceland has a snowstorm we’re not talking about 10cm with the whole country closed. No, we’re…
5 reasons: visit Iceland in winter Posted by hulda on Nov 26, 2015
What, visit Iceland in the winter? But everyone knows it’s really cold! Even this blog’s writer always recommends summer as the best season to visit, why is she changing her mind now? To be honest I’m not entirely changing my mind about what’s the best season for visiting. Iceland in the summer offers easiest road…
New words for Icelandic Posted by hulda on Nov 19, 2015
On the 4th August this year Samtökin ’78 declared a competition to find new words for the Icelandic language called Hýryrði, Gay Words. By this they meant it was time to find Icelandic equivalents for words that were only used as loanwords from English because – well, as many of you readers probably know already…
Iceland emoticons? Posted by hulda on Nov 12, 2015
In the recent news the foreign ministry of Finland is releasing Finland-specific emoticons as a Christmas calendar. These include scenes and things so Finnish that the current emoticon lists don’t have anything even remotely similar on them such as a Nokia phone and people having sauna. Naturally it struck me that it’s unfair to let…
Leifur’s Icelandic, thanks Obama. Posted by hulda on Nov 5, 2015
The president of the United States has recently insulted the whole nation of Iceland, at least if going by the public outcry. His offence? He recently referred to Leifur Eiríksson, also known as Leif Eriksson in the English-speaking world, as a Norwegian. Leifur was born to an Icelandic mother in Iceland and grew up here…
Halloween or Hrekkjavaka? Posted by hulda on Oct 29, 2015
The end of October is almost at hand now so what better time to learn some spooky vocabulary! Hrekkjavaka = Halloween Grasker = pumpkin Kónguló = spider. Spiderman is naturally Kóngulóarmaðurinn. Kölski = the devil. He can also be called f.ex. andskoti, ári, fjandinn, flugnahöfðingi (= lord of flies), myrkrahöfðingi (= lord of darakness), óvinur…