Tag Archives: intermediate
Vatnsenda-Rósa: a legendary poet. Posted by hulda on Apr 9, 2015
The most famous love poem of Iceland is written by a woman. Though little is actually known of her the amount of legends that circle around Rósa Guðmundsdóttir, also known as Skáld-Rósa (= Rósa the poet) or Vatnsenda-Rósa (= Rósa of Vatnsendi), would suggest she was a striking and noteworthy person in her time just the same…
Fyrir, or four uses for ‘for’. Posted by hulda on Apr 2, 2015
I’ve recently received two comments regarding the use of the preposition fyrir and since the topic needs quite a bit of elaborating I decided to write a whole blog entry for it. Fyrir is one of those sneaky words that look deceptively easy to use. It’s like the English “for”, right? Yes – and no – and then…
Non-binary pronouns in Icelandic. Posted by hulda on Feb 26, 2015
Icelandic grammar offers a gender neutral option for personal pronouns. Does that therefore mean that referring to non-binary people is easy and straight-forward? Alas, no. Icelandic gender structure is very strict and merciless and the local non-binary folk have had to give this matter a great deal of thought. When the whole world of Icelandic…
How to romance a viking. Posted by hulda on Feb 11, 2015
You know what day is just around the corner, so let’s get prepared with some relevant vocabulary! The important days Valentínusardagur = Valentine’s Day. The tradition caught on in Iceland perhaps a little earlier than the rest of the Nordics, but since the country was occupied by the USA since the WW2 it may not be too surprising…
An Icelander walked past a bar. Posted by hulda on Jan 29, 2015
It happened years ago on an evening in May. I had just met my SO and we were sitting together in a garden swing talking of this and that, and eventually started telling each other jokes. This was the first one he told me. (To understand the following you’ll have to know that reipi means rope, and…
When the dead wash buses. Posted by hulda on Jan 21, 2015
The funniest traps that the declensions of Icelandic create are the words with different meanings that have a few identical forms. You’ll no doubt see this when you use the BÍN because often when you look up a word you’ll get a long list of different options that all apply, only they rarely mean the same. It’s then…
Dative in Icelandic: throw that ball! Posted by hulda on Jan 14, 2015
Genitive was covered in Holy genitive case in Icelandic, Batman! and I touched upon accusative in Prepositions + accusative, so let’s now look at the third one, the dative. Before we go on, one warning: Icelandic dative does not work exactly as dative is described to. For the most part þágufall closely resembles dative but…