Letter from Iceland, the "ice rink" edition
#115
Komið þið sæl!
This week our lovely country has been nothing if not living up to its name. There has been a permanent sheet of ice on the ground, following a snowfall, then brief thaw, then frost again. Tuesday and Wednesday were awful, people were literally in mortal danger if they so much as stepped outside, as the entire country was an ice rink. I’m surmising the ER at the national hospital was packed on those two days. The only thing to do on such days is wear cleats under your shoes—something I would not have been caught dead in when younger, as I considered them deeply uncool and for old people only. And now here we are! Deeply uncool and … no, not going to say old because old is a state of mind and quite honestly I feel younger now in my sixties than I did in my twenties. But my bones are undeniably more brittle … so, cleats it is!
Anyway, we continue with our oh-so sententious idioms from the Little Book of Icelandic. Today’s topics: cows … and lice.
Idiom: Að sletta úr klaufunum
Translation: To splash from your cloven hooves
Meaning: To have a great time
The English equivalent of this idiom would probably be “paint the town red”. In Iceland we say: “I’m going to splash from my cloven hooves.”
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