#asks: icelandic

[hatari-translations]

hi! i study scandinavian languages in university, but we haven't started icelandic yet.. i just wanted to ask you if it makes sense to tattoo "dansið eða deyið" on myself, because when i search "dance or die" in icelandic it always comes up as "dansa eða deyja" and i don't know what's the difference 😭😭

Good question! English is a language that relies on context and helper words more than different forms of words, and this can often mean other languages such as Icelandic have many different word forms used differently that all appear to translate to the same thing in English.

"Dansa eða deyja" is the infinitive form: to dance or die, but without the to. It's the neutral dictionary form of a verb. It doesn't make much sense on its own; you probably wouldn't tattoo "to dance" on yourself unless perhaps it was some sort of reference to a longer quote. It's a perfectly correct translation of "dance or die" with zero context, but it's not what the song is called or what the lyric is.

"Dansið eða deyið" is the plural imperative: Matthías is commanding the masses (multiple people) to dance or die. The plural imperative ending -ið is effectively short for "þið", or plural you. Imperatives can function perfectly well on their own as a statement. So that's what the song is called and how the lyrics go. It's probably what you want as the tattoo, if you want to reference the song.

Other possible forms of this phrase that also make sense on their own but with different nuances:

"Dansaðu eða deyðu" is the singular imperative: commanding one person to dance or die. The -ðu (sometimes -du or -tu) ending is derived from "þú", singular you.

"Dönsum eða deyjum" is the first person plural, which when stated on its own without a subject implies Let's dance or die: effectively it's like the imperative, except that if that was the line, Matthías would be saying we should all do this, him included.

[greykolla-art]

Can you draw urban fantasy?

Just a little bit, curious.

Love your art, by the way.

What an interesting question. 😂

I do have a KIND OF urban fantasy graphic novel, that I’ve been working on for 4 years with my writer buddy.

It’s got a lot of houses.

And sewer vampires.

And magic and blood.

That’s kind of urban fantasy at least.😂

[ask-hetalia-dennor]

Denmark, please enlighten us on some of the stupidest things Norway has done.

[reality-detective]

Iceland was named Iceland so people would travel to Greenland which is actually ice land. But what do I know? 🤔

[ifindus]

Who do you ship denmark with? If anyone?

I don't really have a specific go-to ship for him, but I like seeing exploration of his relationship with nations that aren't Norway ✨

I think he'd be very close to the BeNeLux siblings, and both Nethlands and Belgium can be good ship options for him in my opinion.

Ireland is also an option ofc, but then leaning more towards a nyo!Ireland for Denmark. He does strike me as the token straight brother of the Scandis 😅

[hjartasalt]

No offense but as an American learning Icelandic, anytime I attempt to say a word in Danish I almost throw up. Something about the consonants but I’m not trying to offend.

Why are you speaking Danish if your goal is to learn Icelandic

[flipflopgamer01]

Hey @hjartasalt öhm are you named after bikes!?!?

[jamtland]

After seeing your post about Sweden's human name, do you mind explaining what your favorite human names for the other Nordics are and your reasoning?

Especially Norway -- I'm still rather fond of Lukas for familiarity's sake, but would love to have a better alternative! I understand why people don't like Bondevik after a quick search. I've seen people use Thomassen recently and have started using that instead

Sure! I'll also add links to posts made by users from these countries if you need a more reliable source (except Iceland, I haven't seen an Icelandic Hetalian on Tumblr yet).

Norway

If you're looking for infomation about anything relating to Norway, not limited to names but also history, traditions and modern culture, YOU NEED TO TALK TO OUR RESIDENT NORWEGIAN @ifindus. They have done university-level research in Norwegian history and I am constantly learning new things about Norway from their posts, which says a lot as someone who has half his family from Norway. It's thanks to Findus that I learned about a very common misconception about Norwegian names that I will explain below!

Unlike people from English-speaking countries, Danes, Swedes, and Finns, Norwegians do not use "middle names" in the sense of "alternative first names that are mostly ignored except on official documentation". It's very common for creators to give Norway a name like "Lukas Øyvind Haugland" with the idea that he goes by Lukas in daily life, and Øyvind is a mostly unused middle name. But that's not how it works in Norway! Instead, both Lukas and Øyvind will be recognized as his first names of equal priority, and he will be referred to using the double name Lukas Øyvind. Findus can explain this better than I can, but you cannot simply smash two names together to form a Norwegian double name, as many name combinations, such as Lukas Øyvind, sound ridiculous. Paraphrasing Findus' words, there are no definite rules that make certain double names realistic or silly, it's mostly a feeling that the name "sounds good". There are however common patterns, such as the first half having less than or equal syllables to the second, both names having the same "vibe", and not having too many consecutive consonants.

Thanks to Findus' advice, I recently changed my name for Norway to drop the "middle names", cutting it down to Sigurd Fjellanger. Sigurd, an Old Norse name meaning "victorious guardian", is the most popular first name among Norwegian creators because of its uniqueness to Norway and use in all time periods. Fjellanger is my personal choice, as I want a nature name for Norway that refers to his home region. Nature names in Norway often indicate where a person's ancestors were from as they were historically chosen from names of towns and farmland. Fjellanger means "mountain fjord" and is associated with coastal western Norway, which is where my Sigurd's hometown is. Findus uses the last name Nordvik which means "northern bay" and is not associated with a specific region (their Norway moves around the country and does not have a fixed hometown). Patronymics (names ending in -sen) don't have strong regional associations and Thomassen is a common, neutral-sounding name.

It seems like I have unintentionally written a long post again. Other characters under the cut.

Sweden

The other Nordic countries use "middle names", but like in real life, these extra names will never be seen outside of these name posts. My full name for Sweden is Björn Axel Johan Stjernqvist because he's my country and I can make fun of him. Björn is a very Swedish Old Norse name meaning "bear" while Stjernqvist, meaning "star branch", is a lame reference to his Hetalia name that also contains the word "star". 95jezzica is from Sweden and recommends the classic Svensson as his last name, but I personally avoid giving very common names to characters in case I know or will meet someone with that name. I also prefer to choose nature names unless there is a meaningful (parental) connection to the name in the patronymic. Double names are also used in Sweden, but they are much rarer and are associated with the older generation. Swedish double names are connected with a dash rather than a space, like Lars-Erik.

Denmark

My beloved Denmark has the name Søren Mathias Holgersen. Mathias is not an Old Norse name. It originates from Latin and means "gift from God", which is what he is to me. Holgersen is a reference to the legendary Danish hero Holger Danske. Some creators think that the name Mathias is inaccurate for Denmark in all periods, but that's only true for the pre-Christianization era. There are 22,7k people currently named Mathias in Denmark in 2023 (this is not including the alternate spellings). In fact, none of the popular alternative names for Denmark that begin with M, Mikkel and Magnus, are of Old Norse origin either. But that's alright, because Denmark was the most strongly influenced by continental Europe culturally and has the weakest Norse influence out of the Scandinavians. This post by someone-you-do-not-know from Denmark discusses what's wrong with the Hetalia name suggestions for Denmark and offers additional suggestions. The OP has a personal reason for disliking the name Mathias, but the name is otherwise alright to use.

Finland

I unfortunately don't speak Finnish and don't know much about Finnish naming traditions, so I use a name that has been personally recommended by Finns and is quite close to the Hetalia name: Timo Kalevi Väisänen. The middle name Kalevi was randomly mentioned by ask-finny from Finland and I'm not particularly attached to it either, so I'm open to changing it. Nordickies is also from Finland and has made two very helpful posts about analyzing Finland's Hetalia name and resources for researching Finnish names.

Iceland

Iceland has a very strict naming law which could make choosing his name easier or more difficult depending on how you look at it. The first name Emil is permitted on Iceland, but it's a modern trend name that doesn't have an Icelandic history, its use began after the release of Astrid Lindgren's book Emil i Lönneberga. Steilsson is illegal as it would mean that Iceland's father was named Steil, which is not a permitted name (nor did it ever exist in the Nordic countries). Like Finland, I kept his Hetalia initials and gave him the name Eiríkur Stefánsson.

[patriamrealm]

thank you thank you thank you for the parental/older brother gaeric content 🙏🙏🙏I am eating so well and I love it

I'm glad you are liking that! He's a underutilized character in terms of found family.

Like, he's second oldest of the pearl wardens if you ingore Ingo, cannonically Irida's mentor and with his personality, he is prime parent/older brother material.

However there is one other potential relationship that I never see taken advantage of.

Sabi is little, of the diamond clan which has been proven to be very unknowing and unused to the cold of the icelands. Gaeric is truly the closest adult figure that would be even remotely friendly to her.

(I like to headcanon that due to their iolation and duties it is expected for wardens to get along at least enough to work together but it's not unusual if they wind up freinds)

[kraeki]

GIRL CONGRATS 🫡🇮🇸

Thank you!! I don’t usually like this lot very much but today I’m very proud of them 🙏 they had never won a game against Israel before and they had a horrendous Euro qualifiers campaign so I really didn’t expect them to pull this off!! But Israel flopped so hard tonight, their only goal was a penalty, they missed another penalty and a player got a straight red card.

Nobody was feeling comfortable about playing Israel, the commentators kept mentioning their discomfort because how much tension was in the air and they were trying to be diplomatic but one of them implied heavily that he sensed a lot of hostility. Iceland has for a long time been a generally pro-Palestine nation and Israel is very aware of that fact, there is no love lost between us.

So, I’m really happy about the win! Not only for my country that now still has a chance of a Euro spot, but mostly because Israel being at the Euros this summer while they actively commit war crimes would’ve been so wrong in so many ways.

[hatari-translations]

Is Faroese intelligible to Icelandic speakers? If so, how much can be understood?

When spoken, it sort of straddles a line where it alternates between sounding like someone speaking Danish or Norwegian and someone speaking eccentrically worded Icelandic with a Danish or Norwegian accent. You'll get entire sentences that are perfectly intelligible sometimes, and then something unintelligible in between.

Reading Faroese as an Icelander is a somewhat surreal experience because it's basically entirely intelligible; it just reads like Icelandic written by a tipsy eccentric who either likes to invent their own words for things or else doesn't quite remember a lot of words and makes quirky but logical substitutions in the vein of like, calling a stool a butt-table.

For example, if I go to the front page of the Faroese Wikipedia right now, it has a featured article about North America. The section is titled "Mánaðargreinin". In Icelandic people would conventionally use "grein mánaðarins" for "article of the month", but "mánaðargreinin" wouldn't be wrong so much as just a little quirky.

The first sentence of the article is "Norðuramerika er ein heimspartur." In Icelandic we'd hyphenate it as "Norður-Ameríka", but Norðuramerika just sounds like, you know, what someone not super concerned about correct orthography might write in a casual Facebook comment. We call continents "heimsálfa", but "heimspartur" is literally just "world part", so that'd be like, a logical spontaneous compound for your brain to pull up instead if you forgot that word. In Icelandic that would be masculine so you'd write "einn" rather than the feminine "ein", and for us that's the word one rather than an article so it's a bit quirky to write that in an introductory sentence for a Wikipedia article (as if you'd written "North America is one continent" instead of "North America is a continent"). But it all still makes sense if you treat it as quirky Icelandic!

It goes on like that, words that are either identical or near-identical with a slightly different spelling that parses as if it could be a typo or mistake, grammar that's a little funky but still perfectly understandable, compounds made of parts that are identical or almost identical to Icelandic but just happen to have chosen different words to smush together than we did (they use ístíð ("ice time") rather than the Icelandic ísöld ("ice age"), for instance, and hjáland ("side country") instead of "nýlenda" ("new country") for a colony). The occasional ø gives the game away, but it's basically completely understandable - a word here and there that I'd have to look up, but I can read it just fine, deduce the meaning of almost all the compounds from their constituent parts and the context.

It often reads somewhat humorously casual or slangy, though, because the Faroese uses words or component words that in Icelandic have more formal equivalents that would generally be used in something like an encyclopedia - "partur" is a word people absolutely use in modern Icelandic all the time but in formal Icelandic writing you'd rather see "hluti".

I imagine Icelandic probably reads similarly eccentric/weird/humorous to a Faroese speaker, of course! Close resemblance but not quite is a fun relationship for languages to have with each other.

[mueritos]

harvey from sdv with his boyfriend, oscar (my farmer) ^-^

patreon

[lietpolski]

when you have the chance, could you do a mischaraterization analysis on iceland?

sure!! i think the difference between him and nor is that people are more aware of the liberties they're taking with his characterization, so, disclaimer: i don't care how you characterize him and i don't think i'm better for sticking to canon. but let's talk about canon iceland!!

one thing that's a personal pet peeve is his age, and when he's portrayed as an adult. i've seen people saying that they don't even know if he's meant to be a teenager or not! but:

he's meant to be 16-17, as hima has said! now, i think it's fine to take creative liberties with most characters' ages. however, with iceland it's such a core element of his personality that aging him up just,, entirely changes him as a character!

iceland is meant to be a teenager. no, not in the emo tumblr user who loves memes sense (that interpretation was 90% of iceland content in 2015 haha), but like a teenager who because of his age can be immature, and struggle with his emotions, connections to others, and a lot of insecurity. you can see some of that insecurity in his need to be seen as mature, but also his embarrassment over his accent & being hot-headed (another aspect of him that's underexplored! people forget that side of him!)

"According to Himaruya (in a Comic Birz interview), Iceland tends to feel uncomfortable with his thick accent and hard to understand language, opting to speak in English when he can. This was further instated when it was mentioned in his Volume 5 profile that he tries his best to hide his accent.[17]"

but more specifically, i'd say that iceland's main internal struggle & driving force is his want to connect with and be close to others. but in response to him always been forgotten, being an afterthought, and falling behind, he's put up a front of indifference about it - "i don't care if people don't care about me"

but here's the thing! although he tries to act uncaring and fine being alone, he loves his overbearing family :,) and values the connections they give him so much!! in my opinion, him disliking how the other nordics act is just a front (except when he's being babied, which is understandable haha) and i think this gets kinda lost in fanon. just look at these interactions! (image order is left to right)

this one below makes me especially sad :,)

the other nordics being what stops him from being lonely is huge when you consider iceland's origins:

he was all alone, for years and years and years, with no one like himself to explain to him who he was, what he was, a little kid all alone and he was so lonely. that is, until his big brothers finally came over to his island to bring him home!

so yes, iceland does care about his family and does want them close, and he's not as indifferent to everything as he wants to act. he's a character with some deeply rooted insecurities, and he feels the need to hide them

and some quick thoughts: i don't have a lot of obvious examples, but iceland is an old-fashioned person! he's not as in touch with the rest of the world, he wears grandpa sweaters and cravats, he has an old ass phone, he doesn't at all strike me as internet savvy and i don't like that characterization of him

i've covered this in more detail with my denmark & norway rants, but he's super close to both of them, likes both of them, and sees both of them as brothers! in fact, he sees sweden & finland as brothers too!

(+ that image i showed earlier saying that he looks up to sweden as an adult, and how he calls them all nicknames! dan, svi, fin, nor!)

one last thing about his relationships!! people seem to think that him and hong kong are an entirely fanon thing, when actually they have at least 2 manga chapters where they interact and seem to be friendly! here's one of them :)

i hope you found this long rant interesting, he's one of my favourites!

[reality-detective]

🚨BREAKING: Iceland Volcano has just Erupted Near the town of Grindavík After Months of powerful Earthquake Swarms

Grindavík, Iceland 🇮🇸

After months of powerful earthquakes shaking the country's southwestern Reykjanes peninsula, a volcano has just started to erupt, unleashing large amounts of lava flows near the village of Grindavik. The village, housing around 4,000 people, has been evacuated. Officials are closely monitoring the Blue Lagoon, along with its geothermal plant near Grindavik, which serves as the primary provider of electricity and water to 30,000 residents.

[ask-vida-in-the-hetalia-world]

Another Iceland drawing and also I got a new pencil it is a 0.3 mechanical pencil that I just got and tried it with I'm also waiting for the refills for it and also my washi tape!!

[ifindus]

I don't wanna bother you, but do you ever think you could draw norway taking care of sick iceland (when you got the time)?❤️

Digging out this old ask from almost a year ago ✨ Thank you for the ask, I finally got the time 😅💖