Stumbling Through Strong Masculine Nouns, Or: There’s More Than One Good Way To Decline Posted by Meg on Jan 25, 2017
Today I’d like to introduce you to a new noun class. They’re generally called “strong” nouns, or masculine, feminine, and neuter II and III. I’m just going to go into masculine II and III nouns today. Fair warning: it’s a little dry. So the declension pattern you’ve likely seen so far is follows nouns…
Quirks of the Old Icelandic Calendar: Þorri, Bóndadagur, and Hopping On One Foot Posted by Meg on Jan 16, 2017
Þorri is the name of the fourth month of winter, according to the old Icelandic calendar (more on this later). It starts on a Friday – falling between the 19th and 26th of January, this year the 20th – and ends on the Saturday before the month known as Góa commences. Many of you may…
New Year, New Blogger, and Some Icelandic Poetry Posted by Meg on Jan 10, 2017
Hi everyone! I’m Meg, and I’ll be taking over the Transparent Icelandic blog in the new year (by the way, [síðbúið] gleðilegt ár!). And I decided I’d start this new blog with an introduction – a little about who I am and how I ended up in love with Icelandic. I’m currently on Fulbright in…
Gleðileg jól! Posted by hulda on Dec 19, 2016
The nights are dark and full of trolls, there’s Björk singing about how horrifying the Christmas Cat is and grocery stores have an overpowering smell of smoked meat – that’s what the real Christmas spirit is made of, right? Be prepared for the parts of Icelandic Christmas that are not like what you’re used to!…
6 signs of Icelandic Christmas Posted by hulda on Dec 8, 2016
Icelandic Christmas traditions – I bet you’ve heard of the trolls by now! You might also have heard of the monster cat that devours everyone who doesn’t get at least one new item of clothing for the holidays, that Iceland has 13 “Santas” or more correctly put Yule Lads, mountain trolls that arrive to the…
Starter pack for living in Iceland. Posted by hulda on Nov 24, 2016
Remember the post that I made some months ago where I put together an Icelandic language starter pack? I thought it a fun idea to make another starter pack for those who dream of moving, or perhaps plan already to one day move to Iceland. What is Iceland? Iceland compass explores different areas of Iceland and…
Ready, steady, rhyme! Posted by hulda on Nov 10, 2016
This blog post won’t have anything political in it. Instead I’m going to fill it with poetry and cute animals, because every now and then everyone needs at least a few moments of something calming, harmless and good in their lives. Besides, I believe that looking at pictures of cute animals is good for the…