A different kind of New Year’s travel resolution?
There’ll be plenty in the travel media over the next week or so about travel resolutions and if last year was anything to go by (who knows after the year we’ve had?) sustainability will feature heavily. I’m not a one for making New Year’s resolutions anymore, having broken so many in the past, but if I’m forced to come up with something I’d say that next year I’d like to learn to speak Icelandic.
Having spent a blissful eleven days in Iceland in the summer, it wasn’t until I returned home that I realised just how little Icelandic I had heard. Many of the hotel and restaurant staff I came into contact with were foreign nationals and those who weren’t spoke almost faultless English. That’s understandable: tourism numbers have grown exponentially in recent years and with such a small population, I guess it was inevitable that they might have to look beyond the border to fill some of the jobs that had been created.
I’m usually more of a fan of unspoilt nature, particularly in a place where the landscape is as ruggedly handsome as in Iceland. But the beautiful East Fjords port of Seyðisfjörður challenged that somewhat. Sadly it’s been in the news the last few days as there has been a terrible landslide which has caused significant damage to property. Luckily the authorities evacuated everyone in good time but they have been left with one hell of a cleanup task.
I thought it was a pretty little place: my guesthouse was right on the water’s edge and I could walk to the church – an Instagrammers’ favourite thanks to the rainbow path that leads up to it – in a couple of minutes. Travelling in August, the village was just busy enough not to feel like a ghost town yet not so overcrowded that it was overrun. I might have had a different opinion about that rainbow path if it had been. Instead, I ambled along it in a very good mood indeed having just purchased a pair of equally colourful knitted-by-nanas socks. I was enticed away only by the thought of a beer in the sunshine; in my defence the temperatures were uncharacteristically warm.
And so I have fond memories of Seyðisfjörður. When I got home, I was itching to watch the exceptional crime drama Trapped, which actually premiered back in 2015 under its Icelandic title Ófærð. The action in the first series centres on Seyðisfjörður and its ferry. So, I was excited to reminisce and “share” the place with my husband, though it turned out a lot of the scenes were shot in the North Iceland village of Siglufjörður which I had bypassed. Honestly, though, if there’s even the slimmest of chances I’d get to see Trapped’s detective Andri Ólafsson, then a repeat visit is most definitely on the cards. Season 3 is currently in production and due to air sometime in 2021.
But I digress. The show is subtitled for international audiences, rather than dubbed, so it was only then that I became aware of what I had missed. Icelandic is a delightfully melodic language and one that I could listen to just for the sake of the sound. But it’s also fiendishly difficult to pronounce, as we found out when the volcano Eyjafjallajökull blew its top a decade ago. It doesn’t help that the Icelandic alphabet has 32 characters: no c, q, w or z but letters like æ, pronounced i and þ, pronounced th.
There are even whole words where we don’t have an equivalent – like dalalæða (valley-sneak fog) or sólarfrí (an unexpected day off when it’s sunny). Others are literal translations that just wouldn’t work in most places. Take Sauðljóst, for instance, which describes the pre-dawn haze as “the time of day when there is just enough light to see your sheep.” There are phrases too, such as Þetta reddast, which strictly speaking means it will all work out fine, but more often is used when the exact opposite is the case.
All is not lost, however. Fortunately for those who intend to stick to their resolutions (not saying whether that will be me), there are similarities between some words. Fiskur means fish, hús can only be house, dóttir is not dissimilar to daughter, fjall and fell (as in our northern hills) are obviously connected and vegur (which you’ll see on numerous road signs) translates as way. And as we quickly learned from Trapped – not to mention another gripping Nordic noir series The Valhalla Murders – there are plenty of English words that Icelanders have adopted. One of these loanwords (þriller) even means thriller.
So check back in next December and see how I’m getting on. After all, it doesn’t look like I’ll be travelling for a while, so I may as well make use of the time.
Julia's Travels 