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…
7 Icelandic monsters: survival guide. Posted by hulda on Oct 22, 2015
Halloween is almost here so let’s continue with the spooky theme! Today’s post will teach you something about the most famous Icelandic monsters and how to survive them, should you come across one. Trolls Description: size ranges from large human to very, very big but nowhere near as big as the Norwegian ones can get…
Run for your life! Posted by hulda on Oct 15, 2015
The autumn nights are growing colder and we’re heading for the long dark season, so let’s talk about spooky things! Icelanders of old thought that the only safe place in the world was within the walls of a house (and occasionally not even there, but more on that later on) and well, they were right…
When women are men and men women. Posted by hulda on Oct 8, 2015
Recently I found a question about feminine nouns in Icelandic: the person asking had found many masculine and neuter nouns that could apply to either gender, but no feminine ones that would have worked for non-females. Do they even exist? The short answer would be yes, they do exist and there’s plenty of them! The…
Catastrophic floods in Iceland. Posted by hulda on Oct 1, 2015
Living in a volcanic country is never predictable. When we’re talking about volcanoes and the dangers they bring along many people would probably get a very Pompeiian idea of what that means, but actually the real threat is not fire at all. It’s water. Many of Iceland’s volcanoes are situated under glaciers, and when they…