Tag Archives: so icelandic
Icelandic blog’s competition! Posted by hulda 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…
The wonderful accident called Blue Lagoon. Posted by hulda 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…
Iceland: the most successful loser of Eurovision? Posted by hulda on May 19, 2013
If there is one thing that the Icelanders always excel at without a single flaw it’s partying. Yesterday’s Eurovision song contest was therefore no exception, the partying started well in advance when Iceland’s representative made it into the finals and is still going on as I write this. Well, the aftermath is mostly bitter comments…
You say hello, I say excuse me I’m a woman. Posted by hulda on May 8, 2013
Greetings and goodbyes – the simplest form of any language? Not always and definitely not in Icelandic! To begin with Icelandic has roughly speaking three different levels of formality in greetings. These overlap generously and often the level you should be using may be difficult to figure out, so let’s look at them and the…
Parliamentary Elections in Iceland – who won? Posted by hulda on Apr 30, 2013
Icelanders fighting both on- and offline, faces of the politicians staring at you from all directions, our mayor Jón Gnarr dressed up as a Jedi knight – the Parliamentary Elections of Iceland just happened. By now you all know the end result as well: the right wing won, the same party that caused the economy…
Getting understood in Iceland: pre-aspiration. Posted by hulda on Apr 23, 2013
One way of describing spoken Icelandic is that Icelanders breathe it out. Take this literally: there are many “hidden” extra h-sounds in the language that aren’t written down but nevertheless are there, which give Icelandic its trademark whisper-like sound that’s unlike all the other Nordic languages. I already wrote about some of them in the…
The wisdom of the vikings – Hávamál Posted by hulda on Apr 16, 2013
What was life like in the Medieval times? How did people view the world they lived in, how did they value it and what were their moral codes? When it comes to Iceland we know much more than for most of the now known world because so many Icelandic texts have survived all through the…