An Orgy in Iceland

At least there was no orgy on board the plane.

I say this with some relief, and also embarrassment, since I should have known better, language-wise.

The message peeking over the top of the seat pocket read ÖRYGGYI UM BORÐ. No need to panic — this was Iceland, and the heading merely announced “Safety on board,” with a card that mimed the familiar visuals — international, wordless — in which imagined persons act out with imagined calm the necessary precautions.

Iceland is a ridiculously beautiful place, but what I had not remembered from a visit more than two decades ago is that the Icelandic language, famously our closest living relative to Old Norse, is mysteriously beautiful, too. Unlike my medievalist friends, I don’t get to play in the world of the early Germanic languages, but if you thought you might become a medievalist, Iceland is the place to visit and Icelandic the language to hear.

There you will discover a small country famous for its literacy, the English-language competence of its inhabitants, the alarming cost of food, fumaroles, glaciers, puffins, the landscape’s rapid-fire delivery of visual stunners, the home of the first European parliament, and the place where the tectonic plates of North America and Eurasia meet.

Also a written language with those two visually appealing dental fricatives, both of which appear in, for instance, the word það (“that”).

Iceland is everywhere a language lesson.

I listened to a guide patiently explaining to our group that Icelandic was a “cousin” of English, none of which immediately helped with mastering an insouciant delivery of “Eyjafjallajökull,” the name of the glacier over the volcano that paralyzed air traffic to Western Europe back in 2010.

In Iceland, the disposal of trash is systematized through categories — no longer a rarity in the U.S. — but there was still something delightful in coming across almost-familiar words. Discarded “papers and cardboard” should be deposited in the bin marked “Pappír og Pappi,” which seemed like an excellent name for a children’s show, possibly with gently misbehaving puppets.

One quickly learns not to misread signs for Háskóli Íslands as “the Haskoli Islands” but as the University of Iceland.

And everywhere the double shadow of the Vikings — the historic past of the peoples who came to this island, and the cinematic northerners of HBO. I asked a cashier where Game of Thrones was filmed, and he obligingly pointed to a spot on a map.

For literature types, the medieval Icelandic Eddas mark one end of the historic spectrum and Halldór Laxness, Iceland’s 1955 Nobel in Literature, the other. Reykjavik’s bookstores have plenty in both Icelandic and English.

I’ve already been telling friends that should a cable-TV series need an extra, possibly one set in the fictional Haskoli Islands, I’ve picked out my name: Bjór Garðurinn. Yes, it means Beer Garden (and was the name of the pub in my hotel), but it just looks so Icelandic. The fanbase would spread, and I might even gain a loveable nickname (the “Thirstquencher”).

I‘m sure það would smarten up my c.v.

[[Image courtesy of Klettur at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=3984002]]