Archive for 'Icelandic history'
Glíma, the ancient wrestling style. Posted by hulda on May 30, 2012
When it comes to sports in Iceland there probably isn’t any as traditional as glíma, or glima as it’s written outside of Iceland (the only difference is the accent – i / í – that signals correct pronunciation in Icelandic). As a word (að) glíma means (to) wrestle or (to) fight, in some cases also…
Móðir mín í kví, kví. Posted by hulda on May 27, 2012
“Icelandic ghosts are so different from the ones in my homecountry”, a classmate of mine told me once while explaining why she wanted to write her þjóðsögur ritgerð, folk tales essay, about them. Even having a completely different background I had to agree. Icelandic ghosts, draugar, are really a type of their own. They can be…
Kilroy may have been here. Posted by hulda on May 20, 2012
Once you travel outside of Reykjavík you will sooner or later come across certain stone-built landmarks, cairns, also known in Icelandic as varða/vörður. Their use is varied to say the least. Traditionally they marked borders, routes, shorelines, notable places and areas where an important travelling woman had died. Nowadays they also mark the presence of…
When the volcanoes wake up. Posted by hulda on May 16, 2012
As the weather gets warmer yet another very Icelandic feature begins to take place when eldfjöll, the volcanoes, begin to show more signs of life when the layer of ice on top of them grows lighter in weight or disappears altogether depending on whether the volcano is beneath a glacier or not. At the moment the…
Icelandic and Faroese Posted by sequoia on May 15, 2012
Unfortunately we’ve been getting quite a lot of spam comments lately, so if your comment seems to have disappeared it might be because it was caught in the spam filter and we didn’t notice that it wasn’t spam. Sorry! Many people don’t know this (just as many people don’t know about Iceland… some people don’t…
Víkingahátíð, the viking festival. Posted by hulda on May 14, 2012
“Sögumenn, götulistamenn, handverksmenn sem bæði höggva í steina og tré eða berja glóandi járn, bardagamenn og bogmenn, svo eitthvað sé nefnt.” June is nearing and with it the annual festival held at the Viking* Village in Hafnarfjörður: Víkingahátíð, the viking festival. I went there last year and I wholeheartedly recommend paying it a visit in…
The myth of Sæmundur fróði. Posted by hulda on May 7, 2012
In the middle of the clearing, right outside of the old main building of the University of Iceland stands a peculiar statue of a man raising a book against what appears to be a fish of sorts. The fish is actually not a fish but a seal – and the seal is not in fact…