Iceland Culture & Language

Icelanders use patronymics rather than family names: Jón's daughter is Jónsdóttir, his son Jónsson. The phone book is alphabetised by first name, and people are addressed by it — including the president.

The sagas are read rather than revered, and the country publishes and buys more books per head than almost anywhere. The Christmas Eve book flood — jólabókaflóð — is a genuine publishing season.

The swimming pool is the social centre of every town: geothermally heated, open year-round, and used daily in all weather. The hot pots beside the pool are where conversation happens.

Belief in the huldufólk is often overstated abroad, but road projects have genuinely been rerouted around rocks, which Icelanders discuss with some amusement.

The sagas

Iceland produced one of the great bodies of medieval European literature: prose narratives written in the thirteenth century about the settlement period and the feuds of the families who lived it, told in a spare, unsentimental style that reads startlingly modern. They are a national inheritance rather than an academic subject, the farms and valleys they describe can be visited, and the language has changed little enough that Icelanders can read them without translation.

Language and naming

Icelandic has stayed close to Old Norse, partly by deliberate policy: new words are coined from native roots rather than borrowed, so a computer is a tolva, from the words for number and prophetess. Icelanders also use patronymics rather than family surnames — a name records whose son or daughter you are — and the telephone directory is alphabetised by first name.

Books and music

Iceland publishes and reads more books per head than almost anywhere, with a flood of new titles before Christmas, and it has produced an outsized number of internationally known musicians.

Icelandic has changed little in a thousand years, which is why modern Icelanders can read the medieval sagas without translation. It is grammatically complex and not expected of visitors.

English is spoken almost universally and to a high standard.

Useful: takk for thanks, góðan daginn for good day. Place names are long but regular — foss is waterfall, jökull glacier, vík bay, fjörður fjord — and knowing those four makes the map far more legible.

The letters þ and ð are the two "th" sounds, unvoiced and voiced respectively.