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Tag Archives: outdoors

Icelandic blog’s competition! Posted by on May 31, 2013

As the busy month of May is almost over now I was hoping you might have the time for a small competition! Here’s what you may win: – Xenophobe’s guide to the Icelanders, a book that looks at Icelanders through the eyes of a foreigner. Quite a bestseller among Icelanders themselves too! Here’s a review…

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The wonderful accident called Blue Lagoon. Posted by on May 27, 2013

Sitting in the middle of an empty desert of lava and moss somewhere between Keflavík and Reykjavík is one of the most interesting sights to see in Iceland. You take a turn off the main road and then another one, and all of a sudden you see a thick column of white smoke rising up…

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A 5 step guide to rhythm. Posted by on Feb 6, 2013

Like I promised last month, here’s the entry on the length of vowels and what determines whether a vowel is long or short. For example, why is the name Vala pronounced with a long first “a” but the name Valla with a short one? Why do the words gata (= street) and hús (= house)…

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A naked tourist on the Prime Minister’s lawn. Posted by on Jan 31, 2013

One of our current classes is now focusing on what makes written text difficult to read. The most obvious causes are very topic specific vocabulary (that can make the text hard even for the locals), proverbs and idioms that are impossible to understand unless you already know what they mean etc. Then there’s the word…

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Getting understood in Iceland, part 1. Posted by on Jan 9, 2013

A typical problem, when trying to use Icelandic to speak with the locals, is that for some reason they look at you quizzically and go “ha”* and you end up repeating yourself over and over again. Yet in the classroom or when talking with your teachers you never run into this same problem. Why is…

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Snæfellsness, Iceland in miniature. Posted by on Nov 30, 2012

If you look over Faxaflói (= Horse mane bay) on a clear day you can see the white peak of Snæfellsjökull (= Snow mountain glacier) on Snæfellsnes (= Snow mountain cape) over a hundred kilometres away. It’s the tallest mountain of the peninsula, rising over 1400 m from the sea, and considered the most beautiful glacier…

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Star signs, Christmas preparations. Posted by on Nov 26, 2012

Today, according to the old Norse calendar, begins Ýlir, the second month of winter. It’s the month of Jól (= Yule) and some scholars have suggested that the month either gets its name from the holiday or possibly from old English month names Ærra Géola (= December) and Æfterra Géola (= January). Ýlir always begins on…

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