Góðan daginn!
Today in our gander at the Little Book of Icelandic we’re going to briefly geek out on the similarities—and differences—between Icelandic and English. After all, these two languages hail from the same root, and even share a branch on a linguistic tree.
But first: did you know that the “vík” in Reykjavík means “bay”, and the word Reykjavík literally means “Smoky Bay”? (Smoke, in Icelandic, is “reykur”, and “reykja” is the genitive plural of that word.)
You just know there has to be a story. According to Landnámabók (Book of Settlements), when Iceland’s first settler (recorded—it is debated) Ingólfur Arnarson sailed over from Norway in AD 874, he used a traditional Norse method to determine the location to settle. This entailed throwing overboard two high seat pillars once land was spotted, then having his slaves search the coastline to find where they washed up. It ended up taking them three years to find the pillars! Not sure what they were doing for those three years, but they were probably relieved once they could finally start settling in. 😆
On the site, they discovered what appeared to be smoke rising from the ground, so Ingólfur named his new home Reykjavík, meaning “Smoky Bay”. That “smoke” was actually geothermal heat, which to this day is a most valuable resource for Iceland as a whole.
A bit of trivia for your next dinner party!
And now, on to íslenska, the Icelandic name for the Icelandic language. Made up of the morpheme “ísl” (signifying Icelandic) and “enska” meaning … English.
(Also: Icelandic is not as keen to capitalize things as English is. For instance, it does not capitalize languages, like “íslenska” or “enska”.)
Ísl-Enska
Click on the audio if you would like to hear me read the following excerpt.
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Letter from Iceland to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.