Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.07.2016, Page 72

L I F E , T R AV E L & E N T E R TA I N M E N T I N I C E L A N D
Issue 11 × 2016
July 29 - August 11
www.grapevine.is
“Schmuck?”
Piss-warm Gull was
beginning to dull my
taste buds and whet my
tongue. I was at a house
party, debating organized
religion. Someone found
it distasteful in all of its
manifestations. I begged
to differ. He seemed to
think religion was faith.
“That’s very Lutheran of you,” I said, “but I
think it’s bigger, vaguer than that.” “Are you
Catholic?” someone asked.
••• ••• ••• •••
“Nei,” I switched to Icelandic. I’d returned to
Iceland to study the language; why not flaunt
my fancy lexicon? “Ég er gæðingur.” Everyone
snickered. Someone changed the subject. What
was so funny about Jews? I feared the worst.
••• ••• ••• •••
Days later, the exchange had gone the way
of all my tipsy debates with Hitchens and
Dawkins acolytes; that is to say, I’d almost for-
gotten it. But this word “gæðingur” popped up
in my head again—a weird word, an etymo-
logical anomaly. Most of the world’s languages
derive their word for “Jew” from the Hebrew
“y’hudi.” Sounds and spellings change as
the word crossed languages, yet the Hebrew
origin generally remains clear enough. But
gæðingur? The fuck did all these consonants
come from?
••• ••• ••• •••
Trusting the Internet’s tendency to answer
questions promptly, I searched the word in
an online dictionary. “Gæðingur: a good rid-
ing horse.” As it turns out, you have to ask the
right questions. The word for “Jew,” I subse-
quently discovered, was gyðingur, a com-
pound formed from the word Guð (“God”) and
-ingur, a suffix used to denote an inhabitant
of a place or a follower of a tradition. Gyðin-
gur, a person of God.
••• ••• ••• •••
But nope. I am a gæðingur. A good riding
horse, a stallion, a stud. Not a bad thing to be,
of course, except that the double meaning isn’t
there in Icelandic. It means “horse.” Yes, an ex-
ceptionally well-trained, well-groomed, and
reliably rideable horse, but a horse nonetheless.
••• ••• ••• •••
There are a few dozen Jews and 80,000 horses
in Iceland. It took some time for us to settle
our theological differences, but the studs
agree that it’s bigger, vaguer than that. “Ul-
timately,” one of them told me, “It’s all about
schmuck.” “Schmuck?” I asked. “I meant
schmoozing.”
••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• ••• •••
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Elijah Petzold
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