Iceland Adventures

The language here is hard and Icelandic is not an easy language to learn. It is a very old language and it has not evolved too much over the years. My teacher has been to Iceland eight times for weeks at a time, but she still cannot speak much of the language. The translations are very basic though. Icelandic is not a very creative language, for example Jökulsárlón is the name of the famous glacier lagoon. Broken down the word means glacial river lagoon: jökuls (from jökull) – glacial (glacier’s) + ár (from á) – river’s + lón – lagoon – lagoon.

However, almost all Icelanders speak English. They learn English in school growing up. This is for a couple of reasons- first of all, no other countries speak Icelandic and secondly, tourism is one of the biggest industries in the country. Because of this, I really haven’t had any major problems communicating in the country.

When we got to Thingeyri, there was this painting on the wall of one of the buildings that caught our eye. The painting had cartoon mountains saying the word “Yow” in different forms (pictured below). A group of us thought the artwork was cool and kept on coming up with different ideas for what it could say. However, when we looked it up it is actually just a slang word for “yes.” It is used when wanting to express satisfaction and exuberance. So, while I haven’t picked up on much Icelandic, communication here is fairly easy. Almost everyone is eager to help and very accommodating.