Homosexuality in the viking era. Posted by hulda on Aug 16, 2012
Last weekend’s Gay Pride reminded me of another topic that I’ve been thinking of writing about for a while now: homosexuality in viking era Iceland. Despite of what some of the legends of the Norse gods such as Ása-Þór, Loki and Ódinn suggest, attitudes seemed to have been somewhat against it in everyday life and…
Sequins, confetti, our mayor in a pink dress… Posted by hulda on Aug 12, 2012
Yesterday was the annual Gay Pride Parade in Reykjavík and as you would guess it rained cats and dogs. As if that wasn’t bad enough it was windy as well, meaning that the rain was the typical horizontal Reykjavík rain against which you can’t really do much. Most people don’t usually even try to use…
Welcome home. Posted by hulda on Aug 8, 2012
“Dömur mínar og herrar, velkomin heim.” The friendly voice of the announcement you hear soon as the plane lands on Iceland welcomes you first in Icelandic and then English, and listening to it carefully you may catch the small difference in the message. The English one welcomes you to Iceland, the Icelandic one – home…
Parking like you just don’t care. Posted by hulda on Aug 1, 2012
It’s again that time of the year when Iceland has relatively little snow. This ought to mean that certain things would not be very hard to accomplish, parking for example. However, there are always those to whom markings on the ground are but estimates that can either be ignored if necessary or used to one’s…
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…
Personal Pronouns Posted by sequoia on Jul 24, 2012
Here is a topic for complete beginners, something called “personal pronouns”. Words like “our”, and “yours” are also types of pronouns, but we’ll cover those later. *m (male), f (female), n (neuter). “Þið” is used as “you (multiple people)”, just as you would use “you guys/you all” in English. When talking to an individual, unknown…
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…