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<\/p>\nWhen Snj\u00f3fl\u00f3\u00f0 2017 (\u201cavalanche\u201d) hit Reykjavik this past weekend, I started to think about a blog I\u2019d prepared but not published this past December. And I decided to resurrect it from the pile. The weekend felt odd to me \u2013 like the snow had come too late. And then I remembered the Icelandic saying, rau\u00f0 j\u00f3l, hv\u00edtir p\u00e1skar (red Christmas, white Easter) and suddenly the snowstorm made sense! The adage held its own: for most of the Christmas season, we didn\u2019t see snow \u2013 barring a few days before and after Christmas.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
You\u2018ve probably heard the (perhaps dreaded) utterance \u201cgreen Christmas,\u201c in your lifetime. Or felt delight at the prospect of a \u201cwhite Christmas\u201c that\u2018ll greet you in the morning. In Icelandic, I look forward to the whitened landscape as well \u2013 \u00a0the mountains covered in a downy blanket \u2013 but this year in Reykjavik, we missed out on the coveted \u201ehv\u00edt j\u00f3l\u201d and ended up with the less-compelling and certainly less fun \u201crau\u00f0 j\u00f3l\u201d.<\/p>\n
That wasn\u2019t a typo. What we\u2019d call a green Christmas in the States is called a \u201cred Christmas\u201d in Iceland. Three things immediately came to mind when I first heard this phrase:<\/p>\n
–Something Stephen King-esque<\/p>\n
–The \u201cred\u201d part of \u201cred and green,\u201d thus yuletide cheer<\/p>\n
–Red basalt, volcanic eruption, et al.<\/p>\n
But the phrase isn\u2019t any of the usual suspects (well, my usual suspects), obviously, because it indicates the likelihood of a Christmas without snow. Perhaps unsurprisingly \u2013 because Icelandic is such a rich language, astounding in its multiplicity of meaning\u2014the leap from red to snowless isn\u2019t very far. The Icelandic etymological dictionary and a bit of sleuthing mostly cleared up the mystery behind this seemingly misleading turn of phrase.<\/p>\n
Rau\u00f0ur, <\/em>the nominative masculine form of the adjective, lists the expected relationships \u2013 me\u00f0 lit bl\u00f3\u00f0s <\/em>(with the color of blood); r<\/em>au\u00f0leitur<\/em> (ruddy, reddish); rau\u00f0br\u00fann<\/em> (auburn). But as we travel along the lineage of this word, we come upon \u201esnj\u00f3laus<\/em>\u201d<\/em> \u2013snow-less \u2013 and \u201c<\/em>au\u00f0ur<\/em>,\u201d which in this case is an adjective meaning \u201cbarren, deserted, empty\u201d (and not the masculine noun meaning \u201criches, wealth\u201d \u2013 a nice twist of irony, if I do say so myself). Au<\/em>\u00f0 j\u00f6r\u00f0<\/em> is a phrase used to describe bare ground, and thus the rau\u00f0 <\/em>of rau\u00f0 j\u00f3l<\/em> has a rather direct\u2013 and not merely a sonic– connection to the au\u00f0 <\/em>of au\u00f0 j\u00f6r\u00f0<\/em>. There\u2018s a sort of paralellism to the terms. Along these lines, this sort of interchangeability between rau\u00f0ur<\/em> and au\u00f0ur<\/em> pops up in Icelandic writing from the mid-nineteenth century in the line \u201c\u00f6\u00f0ru megin \u00e1rinnar var rau\u00f0 j\u00f6r\u00f0, en hinu megin alhv\u00edt af snj\u00f3\u201d<\/em> (On one side of the river was bare earth, on the other, the [all]white of snow).\u00a0 The usages of au\u00f0 j\u00f6r\u00f0 <\/em>are fewer and farther between \u2013 and younger \u2013 than rau\u00f0 <\/em>j\u00f6r\u00f0, as an aside.<\/p>\n There\u2019s been some minimal disagreement about the usage of rau\u00f0ur to describe the snowless Christmas, with some dissidents arguing that perhaps rau\u00f0ur <\/em>is in fact a typo meant to be au\u00f0ur<\/em>. But I\u2018ve seen no evidence of this. Back in the mid-nineteenth century, you can also find the phrase \u201cEf j\u00f3l eru rau\u00f0, ver\u00f0a hv\u00edtir p\u00e1skar<\/em>\u201d (if Christmastime is \u2018red\u2019, then a white Easter will follow). And in 1904, the phrase rau\u00f0 j\u00f3l, hv\u00edtir p\u00e1skar<\/em>\u00a0also made an appearance.<\/p>\n Tree-snow fort this weekend in the woods around Perlan<\/p><\/div>\n And the saying has expanded over the years to rau\u00f0 j\u00f3l, hv\u00edtir p\u00e1skar, hv\u00edt j\u00f3l, rau\u00f0ir p\u00e1skar. <\/em>The Icelandic-linguistic laws of causality, as immutable as any I\u2019ve ever seen, say that not only will the red Christmas will lead to a white Easter, but the white Christmas to the red Easter.<\/p>\n And since we\u2019re only seen proof-positive so far, which do you think it\u2019ll be? A snow-covered Easter, or a rather more temperate one?<\/p>\n (As an aside, yesterday was bolludagur<\/em> and tomorrow is \u00d6skudagur<\/em>, <\/em>Ash Wednesday, when all the kids get dressed up in costumes and sing songs for candy.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When Snj\u00f3fl\u00f3\u00f0 2017 (\u201cavalanche\u201d) hit Reykjavik this past weekend, I started to think about a blog I\u2019d prepared but not published this past December. And I decided to resurrect it from the pile. The weekend felt odd to me \u2013 like the snow had come too late. And then I remembered the Icelandic saying, rau\u00f0…<\/p>\n![](\"https:\/\/blogs.transparent.com\/icelandic\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/29\/2017\/02\/16996378_10154166112601050_5666856150608916175_n.jpg\")
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