The Little Book of Icelandic "family relations" edition

Letter from Iceland #103

Hæ hvað segist?*

I hope you are ready for a run-through of the ridiculously confusing words Icelanders use to describe various nuanced relationships within the family.

This post, of course, is from my Little Book of Icelandic. 😁

Photo by Pascal Mauerhofer on Unsplash

Family relations

Icelanders tend to be fanatically precise when it comes to describing family connections. It is not enough to say, for example, “this is my uncle” or “this is my niece”. That doesn’t tell a typical Icelander anything. Instead, if referring to your uncle you would have to say “this is my _______”:

móðurbróðir = mother’s brother
föðurbróðir = father’s brother
móðursystir = mother’s sister
föðursystir = father’s sister

The above refers to an aunt or uncle that is connected to you by blood. Icelandic does not have an “aunt and uncle” term for the spouse of your mother’s brother, or the spouse of your father’s sister. In that case it would simply be “my mother’s brother’s wife”, “my father’s sister’s husband”, or similar.

*Colloquial: “hey, how are you doing?”

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