Gleðilegan Bolludag

Happy Bun Day everyone! I may not agree with eating salted lamb and split pea soup on Shrove Tuesday rather than pancakes with lemon and sugar, but Bolludagur is clearly an excellent idea. I don't think we do anything in the UK on this day, but here in Iceland everybody stuffs themselves with cream buns in honour of... Jesus? It doesn't matter, cream buns are good. I bought two from Melabúðin and I am feeling pretty full right now.

Tomorrow I was planning on celebrating Pancake Day, but I am also considering attempting the saltkjöt og baunir dish. The problem is it takes a long time to cook, like most stews, and I won't be able to start until at least 7 because I have to work tomorrow. So it may be quite a late dinner. On the other hand, also like most stews, it looks ridiculously easy. If any of you fancy having a go at the traditional Shrove Tuesday Icelandic meal, and you can actually get salted lamb, here's the recipe I was going to use (taken and translated from this site):

Ingredients (serves 4)

250 g yellow split peas (no soaking required)

2 l water

1 onion, chopped

2 tsp dried thyme

1.2 kg salted lamb

500 g swedes, peeled and chopped

500 g potatoes, peeled and chopped

250 g carrots, peeled and chopped

ground pepper to taste

Instructions

Put the split peas in a pot with the water, thyme and onion and bring to the boil. Allow to simmer with the lid on for 45 minutes. Then add one or two chunks of lamb; boil the rest separately in another pot. Allow to boil for a further half hour. Check the peas every now and again, stir them and see if they need more water. Add the vegetables and boil for another 20-30 minutes, or until everything is tender. Taste and, if required, season with salt and pepper.

It is also possible to boil all of the lamb separately, but then the peas will need salting, or boil it all in the main soup pot, but then the soup can be too salty. Or all the lamb may be boiled separately and a little bacon or salted pork used to flavour the soup instead. 

Clearly this will not be as good as pancakes, but you can always have them for pudding, and I've had this meal before and it is delicious. Maybe you could also use ordinary lamb and just salt the soup yourself? I'm not sure.

Post Code Deterioraton

I am pleased to announce that I will, in a few weeks, be making the move from 107, the second coolest post code in Iceland, to 105, the third coolest. This following my heady beginnings in 101, it is looking like I am gradually becoming less cool. I'll be moving to Kópavogur before you know it. Haha jokes, obviously I am never moving to Kópavogur. There seems to be some sort of chemical reaction that takes place in people when they either have children or reach a certain age here - suddenly, they are filled with a burning desire to move to Kópavogur or Garðabær. This is obviously a terrible idea, because the suburbs are lame and really far away from all the good stuff in the town. But 105 I can reconcile myself with. For those of you unfamiliar with the geography of Reykjavík, 107 is what is known as Vesturbær, because it is to the west of 101. 105 is also right next to 101, but on the east side (Austurbær). It is actually about the same distance to downtown as it is from here, although significantly further from the university which is currently right on my doorstep.

I thought maybe when I moved into this flat that this would be the time I would stay somewhere for more than a year, but circumstances have changed, yet again. This time I am not moving under compulsion but because I want to go and move in with Grétar in his new place on Skipholt. This is a not-so-beautiful area of Reykjavík, but do I get to live with Grétar and he is pretty good. The plan is to move at the beginning of March (and indeed my room has already been rented out from then), so I will have been in the Grenimelur flat for eleven and a half months - almost made it! This time for sure, guys.

Australia Day

Yesterday I attended the sixth annual Australia Day beach barbecue, organised by my friend Kalli. This is the second year I've been, and the weather was much better than last year. Hardly any wind (it's pretty sheltered down there on the beach in any case) and no rain until right when we were leaving. Of course this is still January in Iceland, so it was freezing cold. I got there at around 3 pm and stayed drinking Kalli's excellent homebrew and eating pylsur and lamingtons until the tide came in and removed the beach. Then we all piled into someone's enormous van and went downtown for some (warm) indoor drinking. I was very glad to get inside. A great afternoon, though.

Kalli addresses the masses.

Me with Mr, Mrs and baby Australian Snowman. Sadly they were later murdered by the incoming tide.

Ewelina takes an inflatable kangaroo for a walk on the beach.

Mother Tongue

A while ago I wrote a bit about the importance of learning Icelandic in Iceland, and some of my experiences in that area. Now I'm going to write a little about the importance of one's mother tongue, especially if you want to be a translator.

This was triggered by my encountering someone (naming no names and linking no links) who had written the most astonishingly arrogant and so obviously affected thing about their language learning experience that I have ever heard. This was that they not only tried to avoid speaking English with Icelanders (surely a good idea) but that they had somehow forged such close links with the Icelandic language, that they could no longer process English when spoken to them by a fellow native English speaker who also spoke Icelandic. Even my ill-fated plan to give up English for Lent back in 2011 did not entail a blanket ban, but only speaking English to Icelanders. Two people, both learning Icelandic, but both having English as a mother tongue, might choose to chat a little in Icelandic for the sake of practice, but to entirely avoid communication in the language that both of you understand and speak best? That is mental. Of course, I don't actually believe this person for one second. That is, I believe they stringently avoid using English. However, any pretence of not processing English directed towards them or of no longer being able to produce instantaneous, fluent English is clearly feigned.

So that is nonsense, we're all agreed, yes? But what would be the motivation for making such a claim, for the apparent shame associated with speaking one's mother tongue rather than Icelandic, as an immigrant in Iceland? It can only be an over-extension of the idea that immigrants who speak Icelandic are accorded more value/respect than those who do not, and that immigrants have a certain responsibility to integrate by learning the language. If you take this to extremes I suppose it could end in a desire to reject one's own "foreign" identity entirely. You could decide that you didn't want to be an integrated foreigner and that you'd actually rather not be a foreigner at all. I think that's a little sad. I don't want to stop being English just because I don't live in England. Not that I actually have a choice in the matter. Even if I wanted it really, really hard and I tried to forget my English and speak only Icelandic and just be an Icelander, it wouldn't work. I moved here far too late in my life to actually become an Icelander. 

This all reminded me of something which was pointed out in one of my translation lectures - that the Icelandic students must take pains to always keep reading in Icelandic, and that those of us who are foreign (actually I think it's just me in that module...) must do the same in our languages. The final product of the translation process is not in the 'foreign language', but in the translator's mother tongue. Of course. So it logically follows that, although a good understanding of the source language is important, what is paramount is the ability to express ideas fluently in your native language. If you spend too little time using your own language, it's going to get rusty. Not to the extent that you stop being able to speak it, as I think we've established, but it could well lead to poor phrasing, a harder time finding the right word, a narrower range of words used, etc. Also, if you're not reading new material in your native language, your native vocabulary is going nowhere; you're not going to be learning any new words, and you can keep learning words your whole life long if you care to.

Considering the amount of English I use in my life, reading, writing and speaking, this is extremely unlikely to happen to me. If anything I should probably be using a little less English and a little more Icelandic. But still, I reminded myself the other day that I must not stop reading literature in English. It's probably more important at this stage that I keep reading a lot in Icelandic, but it would definitely be good to throw in the occasional novel in English. Maybe a trip to the library is in order.

Whether you're a translator or not, though, I don't understand how you could reject (or pretend to reject) your mother tongue like that. I love the English language, I love it far more than Icelandic. It's a part of me and I understand it infinitely better, with all its subtleties and nuances. How could anyone with the passion to learn another language not have the same level of passion for their own tongue?

Gleðilegt ár etc

Hey team. I've been back in Iceland for a few days now, since Saturday afternoon. It snowed the day before I got back, and it's still on the ground although we haven't had any more since. Some of it has been compressed and frozen and there are some extremely slippery patches about. We need either a fresh layer or some rain to wash the ice away.

It's good to be back, although the flat is somewhat in turmoil at the moment what with Ahmad moving out and the new tenant (plus cat) moving in and an American friend of ours from last year plus his boyfriend staying over New Year. I haven't actually stayed here these last few nights, been round Grétar's or in Selfoss, but I came home yesterday to give things a bit of a clean and tidy up. It's a bit better now, but there is still stuff everywhere that has yet to be sorted into the right rooms / places. Plus we have all sorts of money transfers and calculations to sort out incurred by the swapping of one tenant for another. Jæja, þetta reddast.

Happy New Year and so forth. I think 2012 was a good year for me, all told, and here's hoping that things will continue in a satisfactory fashion throughout 2013. Yesterday evening we went to Selfoss. Apparently the weather was awful on the heath coming over, drifting snow severely reducing visibility, but I was of course asleep so I didn't notice. It was a good evening with Grétar and his family - another roast turkey with all the trimmings (albeit different trimmings, sweet potato mash instead of roast potatoes and salad instead of sprouts). We watched some of Lord of the Rings, which is always fantastic, and the Áramótaskaup as we ate the chocolate cake Grétar made for pudding, which was not so good. The programme, I mean - the cake was great. Then we went outside for the actual stroke of midnight to watch the fireworks. Grétar's parents had a few, including some sparklers, but there were so many all around that all in all it was quite a display. It must be absolutely incredible in Reykjavík. Back inside for champagne and board games until I fell asleep on Grétar's shoulder at about 2.30 am. I am not the best at staying up late. My first New Year's Eve outside of the UK, and it was a pretty good evening, not so very different from what I'm used to, except more fireworks and a bit less drinking. And Christmas meat.

The spring term starts next week, and then life resumes as normal. Hope you're all enjoying 2013 so far!

Gleðileg jól

Happy Christmas from the land of the midday gloom! It can be quite pretty sometimes. Still quite looking forward to the mad daylight in England when I go back tomorrow.

Reykjavíkurtjörn

Bjórskóli

Recently I went with Grétar and a lot of his friends to the "beer school" in Ölgerðin, in the big building where they actually do the brewing and that. For those of you not familiar with Icelandic beer culture, the two main breweries are Ölgerðin Egill Skallagrímsson (who make Gull and Tuborg, two of the most popular lagers in Iceland) and Vífilfell (who make Víking, the other popular lager). Both companies also make a lot of other drinks, soft drinks and juices and so on, but who cares.

A subsidiary of Ölgerðin is the microbrewery Borg, which was also in the same building. There are various other microbreweries in Iceland (Kaldi and Ölvisholt come to mind... there are probably more?), but basically when you go to the pub, unless you go somewhere fancy like Microbar, the beers on tap are going to be Tuborg and/or Gull or Víking. Nowhere sells lagers from both breweries, it's like a Pepsi / Coke thing going on. Of course there are usually a few bottled Icelandic varieties available also.

Anyway, it was super fun and really interesting. The guy told us a bit about the general history of beer, loads of cool stuff about the history of beer in Iceland and how it came to be banned / re-legalised, about how beer is made, the main ingredients and their varieties, what effect that has on the taste and so on. We got to taste a few different sorts of beer (as well as unlimited-within-reason Gull) and also go to see the brewing equipment (in the microbrewery and the big brewery). A highly recommended evening's entertainment!