Archive for 'Icelandic history'
Can Folklore Express Iceland’s ‘National Soul’? Posted by Meg on Apr 8, 2018
These past few months, I’ve had the interesting challenge of reading Icelandic folktales in Icelandic. The use of language is, as one might imagine, slightly different than reading a contemporary text – terminology and spelling conventions vary, as does prosody and phraseology. But those changes don’t preclude a deeper understanding of Icelandic culture through a…
Icelandic Literary History In a Nutshell Posted by Meg on Aug 31, 2017
As many of you know, I study Icelandic language in Reykjavik, and I am a translator by trade. I work with a number of languages, but Icelandic is chief among them. I lived in New York for several years, growing my talents as a translator and laying the groundwork for a fruitful life of literature…
Menntun, Menning, Minning: Education, Culture, Memory Posted by Meg on Aug 25, 2017
Last Saturday, a friend and colleague (who I’d never met before) arrived in Reykjavik. Belgian by birth, she is a world traveler, entrepreneur, artist, and yoga teacher. She’d just returned from a trip to the desert, where she finds poetry, and was on her way to produce and direct an event in Antwerp called Poëziebordeel…
It Started With Donald Duck…And Became a Revolution. Posted by Meg on May 26, 2017
My initial intention with the somewhat winding road of a blog entry below started out as a look at translations of the names of storybook and fable characters – like Donald Duck (as below) – but my research and persistent questions took me down a rabbit hole that I couldn’t bring myself to climb out…
The First Day of Summer, Icelandic-Style (and a Knuckle-Calendar, Just For Fun) Posted by Meg on Apr 20, 2017
Today in Reykjavik, it was a whopping 3 degrees (C), even though it is, according to the Icelanders, the first day of summer. The old Icelandic calendar is called the misseristal, or semester-count, and it’s been used since the Settlement Age. It emphasizes the two “semesters” of the year – summer and weather – with…
Haunting Images Of Iceland’s Abandoned Farms Posted by Meg on Mar 9, 2017
In 2004, poet and publisher Aðalsteinn Ásberg Sigurðsson and photographer Nökkvi Elíasson paired up with one goal in mind: assembling Nökkvi’s twenty-years’ worth of photographs of Iceland’s abandoned farms and publishing them alongside Sigurðsson’s poetry. The resulting collection reveals the ways that Icelandic lifestyles have changed overtime: details as meager as the shape and size…
Red Christmas, Ergo White Easter: Snjóflóð 2017 Posted by Meg on Feb 28, 2017
When Snjóflóð 2017 (“avalanche”) hit Reykjavik this past weekend, I started to think about a blog I’d prepared but not published this past December. And I decided to resurrect it from the pile. The weekend felt odd to me – like the snow had come too late. And then I remembered the Icelandic saying, rauð…