(Note: This diary is being written after a return from my first week at my new job in Iceland, currently as a contractor until my work and residence permits go through. Everything you read happened one week prior.)
Diaries in this series: Iceland Calls :: The Icelandic Language :: Tvær Vikur Til Reykjavíkur :: Reykjavík, A City of Lights :: Reykjavík, A City of Drizzle and Dancing Clouds :: Reykjavík, A City of Cats and Gods :: Reykjavík, A City of a Storied Tongue :: Reykjavík, A City of Yuletide :: Reykjavík, A City of Hope :: Frá Reykjavík, Til Hjartans Heimveldisins :: Doldrums and Storms :: Til Kaliforníu, Til Iowa, Til Íslands
Miðvíkudagur. I arrive at the office, starting to get the hang of the routine. Ýta this door, draga this door, nota the digital id card here, pressa this button there. Everything I do, I try to think of it in Icelandic. A guy sees me in the hall and smiles. "Góðan daginn." -- Góðan dag." -- "Hvað segirðu?" I freeze. I had just been asked, "What say you?", the Icelandic equivalent of "How are you?" or "What's up?" How could I not have a canned response for that? I could tell you the Icelandic words for "presumptuous" or "geothermal greenhouse", but not answer "How are you"? Yet I draw a blank. He smiles and suggests, "Allt fint?" -- "Já, allt fint!" I smile sheepishly and walk away.
It's almost as though I hadn't learned the language at all. And why? Because virtually all of my practice has been online -- Youtube comments, emails (work, reservations, etc), answering questions online, etc, generally managing to communicate just fine. But you're simply not exposed to the standard niceties that make up the backbone of everyday conversation in this manner, and so the canned replies don't get drilled into your head. I know bestu kveðjur (best regards) and takk fyrir svarið (thanks for the reply) like the back of my hand, but apparently can be thrown by a simple "How are you?" and other trivial phrases. Hmm. My later realization that today is dagar íslenskrar tungu ("Day of the Icelandic Tongue"), the one day a year set aside for the appreciation and preservation of the language, makes me all the more disappointed with this interaction.
(Note: You can find an Icelandic pronunciation guide here. I'll try to work a little Icelandic vocabulary into the text where it shouldn't distract from the diary.)
Work proceeds slowly. I'm frustrated by how delicate the system is; normally you just hook your debugging tools in and off you go, but with this software, it's pretty much, "you look at it wrong, it breaks". It runs fine on its own but highly resists changes due to the complexity of its internal interactions. But I push ahead against it, each difficulty making me more determined to make it better. My boss, S., stops in at regular intervals with tips and suggestions, hardly seeming to care that my progress hasn't been very fast. Huh.
Everyone here drinks coffee. All the time. Trips to and from the cafe in the building are like clockwork, and a chance for employees to just sit around chatting with each other. Or reading, or knitting, or whatnot. I make do with tea from the packet dispenser, trying a different flavor with each cup all week.
Lunchtime comes. The one of the cooks behind the counter goes up to me to try to explain what's available, in rough English. I gesture and respond, "Ég ætla að fá þetta" (fig, "I'd like some of that."). She looks surprised. "Þú talar íslensku?" -- "Já, ég tala smá íslensku. Ég er búin að læra síðan í vor." -- "Flótt!" -- "Takk fyrir! Ég er að reyna." Strangely, the more complicated conversations are coming easier than the simpler ones today.
In the "evening", as the workday nears its end, I'm treated to a slow, long sunset out my window that speckles the awesome Icelandic clouds in a rainbow of colors. I get some initial debugging data in, and send it out to S, along with a more formal bug report and fix for something I had found on Monday, then head out. Two tasks on the agenda this evening. #2: Another Icelandic course with the same teacher from Monday. #1: Meet with an Icelandic Kossack and her friend.
(Above: Similar clouds to those of this day.)
I drive downtown and again meander through the streets until I find Cafe Babalú, a small, cozy place not far from the Hallgrímskirkja. I had previously thought I had never been there before, but I soon recognize it from a trip to Iceland in July. A. is already there, and I. arrives shortly thereafter. We at first try speaking in Icelandic, but after about 30 seconds, due to the difficulty, I. offers to speak in English. I accept, but disappointed with myself, especially given the date. I make a small promise to myself to be sure that the next dagur íslenskrar tungu, I'll speak only Icelandic.
We first have a laugh about a miscommunication in setting up the meeting. I. had asked me, "hvernig þekki ég þig?" -- literally, "How know I you?" I'm sitting there thinking to myself, "Gee, you could just read the email history...", but calmly explain (in Icelandic) that she had messaged me after one of my diaries and we had agreed to meet over dinner. Well, there's that issue that in Icelandic, there are lots of ways to form a future tense, and one of them is to simply use the present -- hence, "How will I recognize you?" Æ...
I fetch my panini and sit down at the table, where we proceed to spend an hour chatting, mainly about politics -- both American and Icelandic. At one point I stumble over mispronouncing Sjálfstæðisflokkurinn, the conservative (by Icelandic standards, at least) Independence Party who has dominated Iceland's political scene pretty much since Iceland became its own country. Despite having actively encouraged banking deregulation and doing little to prevent the catastrophic Icelandic banking collapse that ushered in the kreppa, polls show them rising in support once again. No matter where you are in the world, people's memories are short.
On the subject of America, I miss no opportunity to bring up things like the pro-death-penalty culture that's common over here, the opposition to universal healthcare being screamed out at debates, etc. Both A. and I. bring up the issue of torture -- something that almost every Icelander I've discussed American politics with has done during this trip, shaking their heads in frustration. And this is in Iceland, which is sometimes considered by some of the other Nordic countries to be "too Americanized." To Americans reading this who don't already understand this: please realize how badly this issue has hurt America's reputation in the world.
I realize that I'm going to be late for the night's Icelandic lesson, so I quickly say my goodbyes, we exchange email addresses so we can add each other on Facebook, and I rush out to the car to head down to Hafnarfjörður.
I arrive late -- less than last time, however. I pull out the 1.000kr which I owed but didn't have on hand last time, walk up to the teacher, and whisper to her quietly as I try to discretely hand it to her, "Fyrst og fremst...". She refuses to take it, so I make a point of putting it in her bag. She gives up on protesting.
I'm disappointed in my performance in class this time around. I freeze up again, early on, in the same "acting out" exercise that involves having to make up questions and answers using certain verbs (making stuff up and translating at the same time was totally stressing my brain). I wasn't familiar with a number of the verbs this time. I had some troublesome moments when trying to translate certain sentences, like when I deliberately went for a literal translation of "I froze my butt off", only to discover that my word ("skott") which I was using for "butt" -- which I'd gotten from an Icelandic-teaching video where the teacher had mentioned that it means the trunk of a car, then gestured at her rear-end and said "Og þið vitið að þetta er sama orðið, eins og skott á dýrunum." ("And you know that this is the same word, like a 'skott' of animals.") It actually means "tail". So yes, I was disappointed by my performance, on this of all days, but the teacher didn't seem to be; in fact, I was later to have some interesting discussions from her triggered by an out-of-the-blue email. But that is a story for another time.
Late at night. Time for sleep. Tomorrow is another day.