The Icelandic Canadian - 01.03.2003, Blaðsíða 44

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THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
Vol. 57 #4
Book Reviews
Learning Icelandic
By Audur Einarsdottir, Gudrun
Theodorsdottir, Maria Gardarsdottir and
Sigrldur Forvaldsdottir.
Mai og Menning
160 pages, $38 USD
Reviewed by Christina Sunley
Several years ago I took my first trip to
Iceland, and found myself instantly
enchanted by the language. My Icelandic-
Canadian grandparents had both died
before I was born, so this trip provided my
first exposure to the language. Completely
innocent of Icelandic’s grammatical com-
plexities, I gamely attempted to pick up
words and phrases while talking with rela-
tives during the course of the ten-day trip.
My cousin Agusta encouraged me in my
efforts. “You should come back next sum-
mer,” she offered. “Live with us for a
month, and take the Icelandic course for
foreign students at the university.”
I remember the moment well. We were
standing by the salmon river that runs
through Reykjavik; a light rain was falling,
the grass was emerald green, and the sun in
its northern magic was shining - despite the
rain, despite the fact that it was just past 11
o’clock in the evening. I nodded enthusias-
tically; anything seemed possible. If a rain-
bow could appear at night, why couldn’t I
undertake the study of Icelandic?
There were many reasons, as it turned
out. To begin with, I couldn’t find a single
Icelandic class offered in the entire San
Francisco Bay Area. The materials I pur-
chased for self study - and I think I’ve
bought nearly everything that exists - rely
either on overly simplistic, phrase-memo-
rization methods, or present every rule of
grammar (with its multiple exceptions) in
mind-numbing detail. Other languages I’d
studied (French, Danish, Spanish) had pro-
vided me with much quicker rewards -
although I never achieved fluency, I was
able to put together simple and reasonably
correct sentences fairly quickly. At least in
my case, Icelandic’s complex inflectional
system made such instant gratification
nearly impossible. To make a long and dis-
couraging story short, I abandoned my
attempts after just a few months, convinced
that even a minimal grasp of this difficult
language was probably beyond my grasp.
Yet like all worthwhile dreams, this
one refused to succumb to a premature
death, and a few years later I found myself
applying to the Sigurdur Nordal Institute’s
summer 2001 Icelandic program. Although
I hoped to learn as much as I could before
arriving, I knew better than to tackle the
difficult grammar on my own, so I adopted
the method of watching subtitled Icelandic
films on video. (The best I discovered for
this purpose was “Hrafninn Flygur,” by
FIrafn Gunnlaugsson; it’s a wonderful film