There’s enough information of interest about Iceland that is not part of the Atlantic Isles trip that it’s advisable to have this separate posting in advance of the next Atlantic Isles posting, which will also update Norse Expansion to Iceland.

Patronyms   We’ll start discussing Iceland by completing discussion of a topic started in Danish England, a topic that’s very important to understand Icelanders, the subject of patronyms (sometimes called patronymics, short for “patronymic names”). It’s a custom in many cultures and languages, such as with Arab names using “ibn”, or Hebrew names using “ben”. Closer to home are Celtic names like FitzGerald or MacDonald, now family names that started as patronyms.

It’s a matter of identifying just who you are by saying who your father is, in other words, “I’m David, son of Michael. The David you’re looking for is David, son of Peter.” There’s an implicit implication in using patronyms that it’s the given name that’s important, and the patronym just clarifies it, as in this example. If the culture uses family names, you don’t need patronyms, as in “I’m David Brown. The David you’re looking for is David Green.” There are then three possibilities that can be used along with a given name, a patronym, a family name, or both, although using both is obviously redundant.

Most western cultures that have used patronyms have dropped them, as in the above example, where, if a person is named FitzGerald it no longer means his father is Gerald, or with MacDonald, Donald. These are now family names instead, essentially without special meaning. As we said earlier, this is what happened to the patronymic system introduced in English under Scandinavian influence--today, if you’re a Peterson, it no longer means your father is Peter. As a matter of fact, except for Iceland, the system has been dropped in all of Scandinavia, former patronyms having been frozen into family names. I know in Sweden, this only happened in the 20C, and I remember reading that, at least at one point, the government offered tax incentives to people with names like Gustavson or Johanson to adopt new names that weren’t derived from patronyms.

So of the three possibilities, most Western cultures stick just to family names (even if some developed out of patronyms), but let’s look at one that redundantly uses both, Russian, and then the holdout that stays just with patronyms, Icelandic.

Pëtr Ilyich Tchaikovsky is a good example. You see his given name up front, his family name at the end, and the essential patronym in the middle, telling all that his father was Ilya. Let’s look at a hypothetical brother and sister, Maksim Petrovich Sokolov and Oksana Petrovna Sokolova. Both the masculine and feminine patronyms tell you that their father is Pëtr. (Also note that her family name has a feminine form.) And Russians use patronyms regularly. While calling him Mr Sokolov is as formal as it would be anywhere, at a meeting it’s very common, and almost as formal, to ask “And what does Maksim Petrovich think about this matter?”. It’s not overly familiar, like using just his given name would be. In other words, you can make use of the redundancy, and address people either way, since this redundancy thrives in Russian culture.

Icelanders use given names followed by patronyms, and nothing else. (Caveat: immigrants and their descendants might keep family names, and occasionally, Icelanders may adopt a family name, but these are all exceptional to the standard system.) This can be illustrated by this chart. Jón’s father was Einar, but Jón’s son and daughter’s patronyms each reflect Jón’s name, in a masculine and feminine form, respectively. Let’s say the mother was Doris Magnusdóttir (an in-joke--that was the name of our tour guide on the day trip in Iceland). Then you can see that all four would have totally different names, with nothing to reflect a family relationship. Only if there were a second son or daughter would there be another Jónsson or Jónsdottir in the family. This can reflect problems for Icelanders traveling abroad, where customs officials don’t understand this system and wonder why everyone claiming to be in the same family has a “different name”.

We are bound to wonder how a culture exists without family names. How could you refer to the Rothschilds, Romanovs, Kennedys, Roosevelts? We already had a problem with this in trying to name the family that Leif Ericson, Erik the Red, and the others belonged to. How could the Capulets and Montagues disdain each other? How could the Hatfields and McCoys feud? (Well, maybe there IS an advantage or two.) On the other hand, a woman getting married would have no family name to change, although nowadays, more and more women in our culture don’t do that, anyway.

The flip side of this is seemingly returning to a refreshing way to speak to each other. It may be hard to picture, but Icelanders all address each other by their given (first) name. Isn’t that the way it originally was with names? Even if you were to meet the Icelandic Prime Minister, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, you’d say “Pleased to meet you, Jóhanna”, as would everyone else. Isn’t there a fundamental, sensible logic to that? Furthermore, lists of names in Iceland, such as the phone book, are alphabetized by given (first) names, followed by the patronym, which is obviously--and logically--secondary. Still, to simplify matters because of so much duplication of names, each entry also lists the person’s profession. (In fairness, listing the profession also happens at least in Sweden, if not elsewhere in Scandinavia, since there still are so many family names there that remain patronym-based.)

[Jóhanna is a formidable woman. She has been an MP of the Alþingi for Reykjavik since 1978, winning reelection seven times in a row. She is Iceland’s longest-serving MP. She became Iceland’s first female Prime Minister and the world’s first openly gay head of government in 2009, when Forbes listed her among the 100 Most Powerful Women in the world.]

Probably the only Icelander most people have heard of is the singer and actress Björk. Most people may also assume that’s a contrived stage name, as is the case with, say, Cher and Madonna. But it’s really quite different. Cher and Madonna have family names, but don’t use them. Björk’s full name is Björk Guðmundsdóttir, but she just uses professionally the same name that all Icelanders would address her with under any circumstance, casually or formally.

Human nature being what it is, one can imagine problems arising. What if someone is estranged from his or her father, and doesn’t want to identify with him? Or, not so unusually, what if a person doesn’t know who his or her father is? The system covers that, because one can then use a matronym, based on the mother’s name. I understand there’s a soccer player named Heiðar Helguson, using a matronym meaning “Helga’s son”.

Which quite properly should make us reflect on what we would expect in similar situations. In our culture, children in a fatherless household use the mother’s family name, and as divorcees sometimes go back to their own family (last) name, sometimes estranged children in a divorce legally change their family name to their mother’s, so in many ways, the situations are quite similar.

Finally, there’s a somewhat amusing situation where there is doubt as to how to construct the patronym. This results when the father has two given names, but prefers the second. I can’t cite an Icelandic example, but have a personal one, involving my father-in-law and his two brothers in Sweden in the early 20C, when the patronymic system there was still active. Their father had had two given names, Johan Gustav, but usually went by Gustav. The youngest brother stayed in Sweden, and remained a Johanson, which remained frozen as a newly-formed family name. The oldest brother emigrated to the US, where papers had been prepared for him by sponsors in the name of Gustavson, using the second given name, which he then accepted. When my father-in-law emigrated, they knew that Johan was the first given name, but they translated it, resulting in Johnson, so the family names the three brothers, in age order, ended up with were Gustavson, Johnson, Johanson.

Thing   When is a thing not the thing you think the thing is? When it’s a parliament. English-speaking visitors to Iceland have a tendency to giggle when they hear talk of the Parliament being a thing, but should restrain themselves once they hear of the history behind that word--in both its meanings, parliament and subject/object. Of course it wasn’t funny when you heard that the Faroers established their ting in Tinganes--and that’s the same word--but of course Icelanders enjoy their thorn in calling it a þing, and that is just like the English word. The explanation involves both “travel” and language, travel inasmuch as one learns more about the history of parliaments, and language because one experiences an example of “transfer of meaning”.

A thing (Old Norse, Old English, and Icelandic) or ting (all other North Germanic [Scandinavian] languages) or ding/Ding the other West Germanic languages (Dutch/German) originally meant simply an assembly or meeting to discuss political matters. It then extended to mean a traditional Germanic governing assembly, or parliament, made up from the community, with origins at least a millennium ago, often outdoors. (While I use below the word “Parliament”, literally a “speaking place”, you could also put “Assembly”, a “gathering place”, such as in France’s Parliament, the Assemblée Nationale.) The word “thing” continues as part of the names of Scandinavian national and sub-national parliaments, here with both literal and quality translations:

Some comments: (1) Sweden is not on this list, since it has the Riksdag (National Parliament) on the model of Germany’s former Reichstag (now Bundestag [Federal Parliament]). (2) With Greenland’s decision to use Greenlandic in place of Danish, which is no longer an official language there, its Landsting now probably uses the Greenlandic name more, in which case this word will be becoming historic. (3) The Isle of Man is Celtic, not Scandinavian, or even Germanic, but still shows this influence. It’s the only name of those above that shows the outdoor nature of the original parliaments (remember the original outdoor ting in Tinganes in the Faroes), and we’ll see in the next posting how Iceland’s Alþingi started outdoors in a field, a major sight to see in Iceland. (4) We already have some uses of the word that are historic. In Scotland, what the Vikings there once called Þingvöllr, again “Parliament Field”, is now the town of Dingwall, NW of Inverness. There was also a Þingvöllr in Shetland, which is now Tingwall, just NW of Lerwick. So let’s take this whole “thing” seriously!

There’s another surprise, and is also related to politics and government. When a politician goes out campaigning, we say he “goes out on the hustings”. In American usage, we also say he “goes out on the stump”. Both terms, which refer to where a politician stands to make his speeches, overflow with historic meaning. Standing on a tree stump to speak to a crowd even reflects the historic outdoor nature of the activity. “Hustings” is today just used in the plural, but a husting is traditionally also a platform to stand on, not only for a politician to make a public speech, but for parliamentary representatives to present their views or cast their votes. Metonymy is using a typical word to describe something larger, as when you talk about “Hollywood” to mean the entire film industry, and by metonymy, a husting now goes beyond the platform to describe an entire political event. So where does the word come from, and why do we bring it up here? The Old Norse version was “húsþing” and the Old English version was “hasting”, both meaning literally “house thing”, or “house assembly”. It was the household assembly of the personal followers of a nobleman or king, as opposed to a public assembly, but by extension, the word referred to any public meeting, or even a court or tribunal. In any case, the “thing/ting” thing still remains with us in this word.

So what came first, the chicken or the egg? The assumption is that the everyday word “thing” came first, but that’s totally backwards. We use “thing”, whether you realize it or not, two ways, to mean both “subject” and “object”: “What thing (subject) are they talking about; Pick up that thing (object) off the floor.” But the everyday use started in meetings, assemblies, and parliaments, and involved “transfer of meaning”.

Like fenders on cars were meant to stop mud and dust from splashing up, coaches had up top at the foot of the driver a board to stop mud from the horses’ hooves and wheels from “dashing” up, or splattering up, all over him. This was called a dashboard. Fast forward to a contemporary automobile, where we have an instrument panel, located at arm’s length, not at foot level, but we still call it a dashboard. This is transfer of meaning. Another example is the word “bark”, referring to a type of ship. It’s contained in the words “embark” and “disembark”, originally meaning to get on or off a ship. But today you can embark a train, plane, or bus, not only a boat. Again, transfer of meaning. Similarly, the subject matter discussed at a thing (meeting) began to be called a thing (subject), and in time, due to this transfer of meaning, any subject or object could be called a thing. Today, we are aware of this child much more than of its parent, as “thing” is far more common in the meaning “subject/object” than “parliament/assembly”.

We’ve been discussing Germanic languages. A similar thing occurred in Latinate languages. The Latin word “causa” had developed the meaning “judicial lawsuit, judicial process, case”, so once again we’re in court, in an assembly. That word developed into Spanish/Italian/Catalán “cosa”, Portuguese “coisa”, French “chose”, all of which mean “thing”!

And one more: the Latin word for “thing” is res (rhymes with “base”). It also means “law case”, so we’re in court once more. Also, when someone interrupts you “in medias res” it happens right “in the middle of the thing”. Now a government that is not royal, but of the people, was called a “public thing” or a res publica, which comes right down to “republic, république, Republik, republiek, república, repubblica”. And I always wondered why there was a C (S) in the Russian word Республика / Respublika (the R in USSR, that is, the P in CCCP), and now I see that it was the only language that adopted the entire word res into its version and not just part of it.

Geography   Given Iceland’s “fire and ice” reputation, geography plays a number of interesting roles here, so let’s look at a map of Iceland. To get oriented, let’s find our favorite words. How many places do you see that end in the word for a cove or bay, vik? No surprise that they’re all on the coast. They’re numerous, but on this map, all your fingers will be enough to count them--you won’t have to take off your socks. I like the one on the central south coast. Now find the one “nose”, nes. The word for “island”, ey, comes up two times of importance, so find both Grimsey and Surtsey, both to be discussed shortly. We found on the Faroes that a fjord was a fjørdur, and that Icelandic had the same word with the alternate spelling of Ö for Ø (same sound), as fjörður. Let’s prove it. Find some on the map. You’ll need more than one hand, and note particularly just south of Reykjavik the town of Hafnarfjörður. That’s where the Deutschland docked, both during the trip and at the end. I’m sure to many on board the name was formidably Icelandic, but if you already know the last half of the word, the first half is a piece o’ cake. Note also that Keflavik International Airport is considerably further to the southwest.

We’ll use this map to learn one new handy word used as an ending in place names, jökull, which is a glacier, or, by extension, an icecap, which is simply a set of interconnected glaciers. While it won’t help you to remember it, it’s interesting that this word is related to the Middle English word ikel, which survives in Modern English only as a suffix to the word “ice”, forming “icicle”.

As to its pronunciation, we’ll all recognize by now that J is Y in all Germanic languages except English, as in “ja”. Now I know precious little about Icelandic and its pronunciation quirks, and don’t profess to, but one thing that’s handy to know is this. Icelandic, like English, likes the combination of T and L, as in “little”, or “bottle”. The only thing is that, while the spelling L does represent an L, the spelling LL represents TL! With a little practice, you can fake (!!!) a proper pronunciation of jökull by making the part after the first syllable an almost-rhyme (!!!) with “kettle”. Good luck.

While we’re at it, make an attempt at also pronouncing realistically the most famous historic site in Iceland, Þingvellir (TL!!), the “Parliamentary Fields” where Iceland’s Alþingi was founded in 930. More in the next posting. For now, we see jökull four times on the map. We can mention Langjökull, first because it will seem so less formidable when we see it’s merely Long Glacier, and second because we can mention that Þingvellir is located not far south of Langjökull, and we were indeed able to see it, not only from Þingvellir, but from our next stop, the amazing Gullfoss waterfall. It’s an illustration of the perfect weather we had that day, that the guide said it’s very unusual to see Langjökull from that distance. She was amazed herself.

We’ll also point out Vatnajökull (“Water Glacier”, therefore "Glacier of Rivers") as being Europe’s largest glacier, covering an area of 8400 km² (3243 mi²). We’ll also point out Mýrdalsjökull, only because at its westernmost panhandle (under the syllable “Mýr”) is where Eyjafjallajökull is. If you like, you can start working on pronouncing that now (TL x 2 !!), but we’ll work on that below when we discuss the volcano.

Finally, some islands. Locate to the south the Vestmannæyjar / Westman Islands. The main island of Heimæy is not shown, but the famous volcanic island of Surtsey is. They are right opposite Eyjafjallajökull, which is named after them, although I don’t know the reason for the variation between the spellings “æy” and “ey” in the four names mentioned in this paragraph.

Iceland lies close to, but entirely south of, the Arctic Circle. Well, almost. Actually, the Circle passes through the small Icelandic island of Grimsey, 41 km (66 mi) to the north of the mainland. This means that, Grimsey experiences a perfect midnight sun in the summer, but the rest of Iceland only comes very close, with just a bit of darkness in the middle of the summer night.

Iceland is the second largest island in Europe after the island of Great Britain. Reykjavik is the northernmost capital of the world, and Iceland’s only city, the metropolitan area containing 60% of the population. While Reykjavik was founded in 874, it only flourished starting in the 17C.

MID-ATLANTIC RIDGE (TECTONIC PLATES) We’ve talked about the glacial “ice” in Iceland, and to talk about the volcanic “fire” we need to complete the discussion we started in 2012/6 in reference to the Azores. We first looked then at the map of the earth’s tectonic plates, and we’ll look again now to see that, while Greenland is clearly on the North American plate, Iceland is actually split in two, geologically with a foot in each of two worlds. We had seen that the Azores, too, were mostly on the European plate, but with two small western islands “in North America”, so to speak. As we saw, the split takes on the form of the Mid-Atlantic Ridge, which the Azores are located on, resulting, for example, in Pico Mountain, but whose most spectacular outcropping is nothing more than Iceland itself. The Ridge is the longest mountain range in the world, but is mostly underwater. In Iceland, though, it shows its face to the world.

This is the Ridge in Iceland. Reykjavik is close to it, and Þingvellir is right on it. As the arrows show, the plates continue to spread at the ridge, at the average of 2.5 cm (1 in) per year, which means that Iceland is getting wider as we speak. Technically, western Iceland is part of North America, and, even though Iceland is also closer to Greenland than to Europe, all of Iceland is nevertheless considered part of Europe for historical, political, cultural, and practical reasons.

The junction of tectonic plates is more visible in Iceland than anywhere else on earth. This bridge in Iceland “connects North America and Europe”, as it were, just as these visitors “walk in between continents”. Where we saw this phenomenon at Þingvellir it wasn’t quite this spectacular, but visible. In addition, we could only look at it and not walk it, since there had been a collapsing of the pathway and it was being repaired. Still, it’s impressive.

And the Ridge provides the “fire”. This map shows the active volcanic areas in Iceland, and matches the previous map showing the Ridge. Locate the volcanic area around the Westman Islands, where both Surtsey and Heimæy are shown. The brown area between the islands and Katla Volcano is where Eyjafjallajökull is located.

All this volcanism results not only in volcanoes, but (as in the Azores) in hot springs, and particularly in geysers. As our word “fjord” is Norwegian, “geyser” comes from Icelandic, and is a variation of the name of the most famous geyser in Iceland, Geysir (discussed in the next posting). All this “hot water” results in geothermal power being very common for hot water and home heat. 80% of Icelandic buildings are heated with thermal water.

VESTMANNÆYJAR The origin of the name is interesting and goes back to Ireland. (!!!) Once again, the Vikings are involved. You may remember the maps showing Norse influence in Shetland, Orkney, and northern Scotland, which also showed Norse influence in the region of the Irish Sea, including western Scotland and the Isle of Man. The community that evolved there had both Scandinavian and Irish (Gaelic) origins, and these Norse-Gaels dominated the Irish Sea. They called themselves Ostmenn or Austmenn (“East Men”) in contrast to the Celtic Irish living further west, who they called Vestmenn (“West Men”). The dominating Ostmenn captured many Vestmenn into slavery, and brought them to work in these islands, and so the islands are named after them. To really stretch the name, the Westman Islands are the Irish Islands.

A dozen volcanic islands comprise the Vestmannæyjar, which have been erupting over the last 10,000 years. The largest and only inhabited one is Heimæy. The youngest and most famous one, is Surtsey, which emerged as the new southernmost point in Iceland after an eruption that began at 130 m (426 ft) under the sea, starting on 15 November 1963 and lasting until 5 June 1967, when Surtsey reached its maximum size of 2.7 km² (1.0 mi²). Wind and wave erosion have now reduced that to about half, but it was mostly loose material that was eroded, but most of the remaining area is capped by hard lava flows, much more resistant to erosion, so Surtsey is unlikely to disappear entirely. It was declared a nature reserve in 1965 while still erupting, and it remains under constant observation by a small number of scientists, who are the only ones permitted to land on the island in order to allow for natural ecological succession. In 2008, it was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO, because of its great scientific value. In a progression of natural development, plant life has appeared in the form of mosses, as well as bird life, puffins, and sea life, seals. This YouTube video shows Surtsey erupting.

After a day at sea and before arriving in Iceland the next morning, the Deutschland passed the Westman Islands. Fortunately, an announcement was made, and I ran up on deck to get the best view. It was 10 PM, but still twilight. I remember putting down in my notes that what I saw was a rhapsody in shades of blue: blue island silhouettes over a blue sea and under a blue overcast. But there was a white brightness on the western horizon, where the sun was rather low--but not very low--illuminating the scene. A haze blocked the view to the north, where I knew that Eyjafjallajökull lay.

EYJAFJALLAJÖKULL Let’s first see why we’ve all read and heard about the volcano with the “unpronounceable” name, and then discuss what the name means. Eyjafjallajökull is a volcano completely covered by an ice cap, actually one of Iceland’s smaller ones, covering an area of about 100 km² (39 mi²). On 20 March 2010, Eyjafjallajökull began to erupt for the first time since 1821. This happened about 8 km (5 mi) east of the top crater, and was smaller in scale than what was to come. On 14 April, it resumed erupting, but this time from the top crater in the center of the glacier, and was explosive in nature due to meltwater getting into the vent. This second eruption was estimated to be ten to twenty times larger than the previous one. It threw volcanic ash several kilometers up into the atmosphere, which spread across Europe causing major disruptions, especially of air travel, and particularly for the first six days, from 15 to 21 April. This map shows the estimated ash cloud at 18:00 (6 PM) GMT on 15 April 2010, and this is a composite map of the ash cloud spanning 14-25 April 2010. On both maps, the red dot is the volcano.

Eyjafjallajökull is now considered dormant. Still, consider nature’s air pollution as compared to man’s: the amount of carbon dioxide the grounded European flights would have added to the atmosphere would have been 2.3 times the amount Eyjafjallajökull added.

Now for the name, which is very interesting, not only for the way it’s constructed, but for what has to be a major informational error committed at the time. I hope something has been bothering you as it had me when I first started looking into this. There’s a defect in what we’ve been told, and I haven’t seen anyone trying to point it out, so why don’t we do it right here. We know that a jökull is a glacier. They’ve told us that Eyjafjallajökull erupted. How can a glacier erupt? Volcanoes erupt, not glaciers. Why were we given bad information?

Let’s take it in pieces, eyja + fjalla + jökull, and even this long name of the glacier becomes less formidable when seen as the three words that are written together. Now here’s the lie. The name of the volcano is actually Eyjafjöll, quite a bit simpler and shorter than the name of the glacier. I still do not understand how the long name of the glacier was released as erupting rather than the shorter name of the volcano itself. Aside from the notoriety Iceland got for the natural event that wasn’t its fault, the word sent out to the world made Iceland a laughingstock for its complexity--and it wasn’t necessary, which is more than ironic. At very least, the t-shirt and coffee mug makers made some money based on the complexity of the longer word. I saw a couple for sale in Reykjavik, but this humorously defiant one in English stuck in my memory:

We know that the volcano, actually named Eyjafjöll, along with its glacier, faces the Westman Islands (plural), so the first part, eyja, is the plural of ey, “island”, but in the genitive (possessive) case, so it means “of the islands”.

We then reflect back to our discussion of northern England where Scandinavian influence caused the introduction of the word “fell” for “mountain”, and we recall the fells of that region. The volcano is also considered in Icelandic a cluster of fells (plural), which is fjöll, so the actual name of the volcano, Eyjafjöll, means “Fells of the Islands”, a beautiful name.

But when we move to the name of the glacier, fjöll, the plural word, also has to go into the genitive to mean “of the fells”, and that is an irregular form, so it becomes fjalla. Therefore, Eyja+fjalla+jökull, in pieces, is “of the islands” + “of the fells” + “glacier”, so the name of the glacier is “Glacier of the Fells of the Islands”. So, as the t-shirt says, what part of Eyjafjallajökull don’t you understand?

I finally found written proof of what I saw. which was obvious in this cross section through the volcanic area. From right to left (east to west), we have that neighboring Katla volcano, underneath that Mýrdalsjökull we saw on the Iceland map; then the earlier, less violent vent of the first eruption in March; and then the top crater of the violent eruptions of April. The volcano is clearly labeled the Eyjafjöll, and its glacier is the Eyjafjallajökull.

We can now pronounce both, as long as we remember LL = TL each time we see it. I actually had no contact with the volcano or glacier, and couldn’t even spot it in the mists to the north of the ship passing the Westman Islands, but I did have one last “goodbye Iceland” encounter with the name. While ships are always named, airliners only seldom have names painted on their side, but as I boarded the Icelandair jet at Keflavik ready to fly back to Boston, I spotted from the jetway that the name of the plane taking me back was Eyjafjallajökull! I suppose you just can’t keep a good name down.