And if you do play EVE, what is your name - there are a few of us in the dome that play …
You are confusing the Icelanders with the Finns. They are the Cosmo Kramers of Scandinavia.
I hear it’s expensive in Iceland. How much is it for a pound (or kg) of tomatoes in the dead of winter?
Have you seen *Gódir gestir *(Family Reunion)? I thought it was a charming little movie. Does it reflect life in Iceland accurately?
I can only wonder if the mainlanders said the same thing about the Greenlanders way back when. They left them there to freeze and die, after all.
Consciously or not, they’re observing that Icelandic has remained essentially in its Medieval state, with most of the cases and declensions (classes of nouns) shared by the ancestor of all the North Germanic languages; other Norse languages today are far less inflected, even less than English in the case of Danish (quoth Wikipedia). Usually, a higher degree of inflection liberates a language from the constraints of word order, so I can imagine that other Scandinavians listening to Icelandic hear word-roots that are mostly familiar to them, but are confounded by never knowing what the order of words will be in a sentence, and by the use of all the grammatical inflections which Icelandic has retained.
Do immigrants usually learn Icelandic and become reasonably adept at using and understanding its myriad inflections?
I’ve been wanting to mention I love your user name.
bump because subscribe ain’t working
The mothers name is only put behind if the father is “unknown”.
So (to continue with you example) if Bjork were single and didn’t want people to know about her relationship with Karl (or if he’s just a jerk*) her daughter would be Ilda Bjorksdaughter.
*There’s some other legal stuff there as well, but that’s the basics.
Surtsey is a national park, quite forbidden to visit unless you have research to do there.
It’s basically used to see how life takes on new ground. First, there was nothing but rocks - but this summer a family of ravens succeeded there.
So it only takes 40 years (give or take a few) for an island to go from barren rock to being able to sustain predators.
That’s kinda cool.
Both are beautiful - but you know which I’d recommend if I had to choose 
(I imagine Flodnak wouldn’t agree with me though )
Biking in Iceland is something we usually save for the tourists, as they’re the only ones crazy enough to do it. It’s always windy, always uphill and not that many bike-tracks (getting better) - so you’re driving on the side of the road, which isn’t that nice. If you visit Reykjavik you can walk almost everywhere you’d want to go, as most of the sights and “touristy stuff” is centered down-town (there’s nothing to see in the suburbs).
Spas we do have! The most famous being The Blue Lagoon - that ones pretty darn cool if I say so myself.
And of course we’re all very attractive - actually Godlike in our appearance (I’m kinda like Ganesha myself - without the trunk) 
Artsy as well. A bit to artsy for my taste, but the tourist tend to think its quite charming
But what can you do? All these things you mentioned as well as pretty much anything else you want to do. There’s everything from horse-back-riding and white-water rafting to sea kayaking, to nice hikes in the countryside, to treks in the highlands. Or you can enjoy most of it from the safety of your rental car. I also found this list from Icelandair, with 70 tips on it.
Apart from the visiting Polar-Beer (that gets shot on sight) we only have foxes. So you don’t have to be afraid of any animals you might encounter when hiking.
And nope, no snakes (they wouldn’t survive in this climate).
Also, no ants - which I appreciate a lot
Some areas eat seal, most do not. I, personally have not tried it.
Instead, I have eaten whale (ducks and runs from the Greenpeace crowd) - which is quite tasty and something you should try if/when you get here.
Had a trial-account, which I let lapse.
My cousin is Croesus - you might know who that is?
Another movie I haven’t seen (I need to have a marathon this weekend to catch up on these), so I can’t say. I wrote some movies in a previous post.
Most fruit and veggies are pretty much the same price all year round - we need to grow them in greenhouses here anyway, or import them. A kg of Icelandic tomatoes would be something like $ 1,5-2.
Nah, they just didn’t want to leave. Conservative bastards the whole lot of them 
The jury is still out on what happened to them, but loads of theories are up in the air.
That sounds really good, so I’m going with that.
It does make sense.
Reasonably adept, yes. I have yet to hear a foreigner (who moved here when adult) to speak it fluently.
Even I (after quite a few years abroad) have problems at times. Hell, I have problems loads of times, but I still sound like an Icelander.
Well I do thank you very much 
Just trying to help
Sure. But even if you speak Faroese, an almost identical language, with the same medieval gramar retained, you still can’t understand what the hell they’re saying.
(Although, that’s true the other way around as well)
We can comunicate though. One of the parties just needs to be convinced to speak slowly (which can take a while, as that’s an alien concept), or you can substitute booze, singing, and hand-waving. Works fine.
Faroese must be the funniest language around! The only language Icelanders can mock (in a friendly way) 
But like you say, it’s usually quite fine to talk if booze, singing and handwawing is involved - but without those (I have a few at my company who refuse to speak Icelandic), I’m drawing a complete blank.
Excellent. I think I’d like to come for a visit. During the warm season, mind you.
What do you like best about the Icelandic Experience? Politics, pop culture, natural resources, social issues, etc? Why?
I love Iceland. One of my friends got married there 2 or 3 years ago (he lived there for a year or so, and married an Icelandic girl; they now live in the UK).
I was only there for a week, but ended up doing a full circuit of the ring road - we were there in August so had plenty of daylight to cover some ground!
Two questions: have you eaten puffin? And is it true that foreign immigrants have to change their name to an approved Icelandic name if they adopt full Icelandic nationality? My friend told me this. He also said that his name caused a few problems as it starts with the letter “C” which is not part of the Icelandic alphabet. :smack:
And you should visit in summer - it’s a lot better. Even though winter is charming (for a little while) with the Northern Lights and New Years Eve is a blast!
What I like most about Iceland is that my extended family lives here. That trumps everything and that would suck the most if/when I leave for greener pastures.
Politics is petty squabbling and power-plays. Kinda interesting in a car-crash kinda way (we’re on our 5 mayor in 2 years in Reykjavik), but national politics is a (little) bit better. It’s just fascinating how much people can care about these things.
Pop-culture: We’ve got our own rappers, disco-queens, rock-bands and all that and some of them are better than others. My favourites are a band called Baggalútur (hard to translate), who mainly mock everything
Natural Resources: One resource is the cheep energy, which we do our best to utilise as much as possible. This by offering energy-heavy industries (aluminum…) good deals. The goverment is also looking into luring companies to set up “server-parks” (I think that’s what it’s called), but that would require another under-sea cable.
But the main resource is our fantastic scenery and nature! It completely blows me away every time I go into the countryside - just so friggin beautiful.
Social issues: We have a healthy social-network which keeps people from falling to much when bad things happen to them. Hospitals are (almost) free, unemployment benefits are pretty good, childcare doesn’t cost that much, the schools are good and most people get by without to much dependance upon the government. This, obviously, is affected by the 1% unemployment rate as well, as everybody can get a job.
It’ll be interesting to see how things go now when everything’s heading south.
Stealing our women! Not cool
Yeah, June through August would be the best time to visit. But always expect rain and you’ll be really happy if you get a sunny day.
1: I’ve eaten puffin and no, it does not taste like chicken Kinda hard to describe the taste - maybe tougher?
2: Everybody who becomes an Icelandic national has to take an Icelandic name, in addition to your normal name. So you could for example be “Jaques Þorvaldur Custeau”.
And the C does exist, but I can’t remember a word its used in
Wikipedia says it is only used in loan words and isn’t part of the alphabet. Is that right? It also says that the letter Z was abolished in 1974. I love that.
Another question - I’ve heard it said that “everybody knows everybody” in Iceland - obviously that’s not literally true, but in such a small country (population-wise) is it hard to be “anonymous”? Do you constantly bump into people you know, even in distant parts of the country?
Both C and Z are in the alphabet-song :D, but are very rarely used in general. Z is sometimes still used if you want to spell something in an archaic way. (I don’t want to diss wiki, but it is what it is )
7 degrees of separation is probably 2-3 degrees here. You can usually find someone you both know if you talk to a stranger.
And I’ve got family on all sides of Iceland, so I bump into relatives all the time - wherever I go
Also, they put “-ur” at the end of every word. (This is something my friend’s Icelandic boyfriend and I get into every time I see them. He mocks Finnish by going “ikka akka ökkö okko” and I counter with “fildur faldur foldur urrr”. Then we drink more beer.)
Now, something alcohol-related. A few years ago, I was a guest at the Nordiska Ekonomie Studerandes Union conference held in Helsinki, and they held a sitsfest one evening. There, I became acquainted with Brennivin and Eldurís. Brennivin was good. However, there was a song sung at the sitsfest which commended the various hard liquors of every Nordic nation…except for the very last line, which was a very emphatic “Eldurís? NEJ!”
So, does it taste really bad? IS it just too strong? Is it just that the Icelanders have had a nasty habit of getting everyone drunk on Eldurís and drinking them under the table? Why the hate?