Íslenzka.net ~ An Icelandic Journey

Police were called out to help with a bird stuck in a chimney…it was a mean and nasty bird with a very irregular declension…

You have to hand it to them though, whether it’s biker gangs, naked tourists or just a bird in a chimney, they are there to render assistance. 🙂

Lögregla kölluð út vegna þrastar
Police called out for a thrush

I think I’ve learned more about birds from studying Icelandic than I have from anything else 🙂 Here it’s a thrush, specifically a Redwing (Turdus iliacus), if I’ve looked up the correct one. The article mentions a skógarþröstur, which you can read about here. The declension is pretty irregular as well:

Lögreglan fjarlægði óvelkominn gest úr húsi í Fossvogi í nótt. Gesturinn hafði fest sig í skorsteini hússins.

The police removed an unwelcome guest from a house in Fossvogur tonight. The guest had gotten stuck in the house’s chimney.

One thing that occasionally confuses me is the prefix fjar-, which adds a meaning of distance. I sometimes mix it up with fjár-, which has to do with money/budget ideas. Some related words are fjar·lægð (distance) and its adjective fjar·lægur (remote, distant).

Lögregla var kölluð út í hús í Fossvoginum í nótt til að aðstoða húsráðanda við að koma skógarþresti út úr skorsteini hússins. Húsráðandi var uppiskroppa með ráð, búinn að leita til nágranna en ekkert gekk. Þrösturinn hafði flögrað niður í skorsteininn og sat sem fastast. Í tilkynningu lögreglu segir að fuglinn hafi ekki virst ætla að yfirgefa hin nýju heimkynni sín og heldur ekki ætlað lengra inn í íbúðina. Allt fór þó vel að lokum og lögreglu tókst að losa fuglinn úr prísundinni.

Police were called to a house in Fossvogur tonight to assist a landlord with removal of a redwing from the chimney. The landlord was out of ideas, had already turned to his neighbors for help, but nothing worked. The thrush had flown down into the chimney and sat as though stuck. In the police report is said that the bird didn’t seem to want to abandon its new home, but didn’t want to stay in the house any longer either. Everything turned out well in the end and the police managed to free the bird from the prison.

The phrase uppiskroppa með (eitthvað) means to run short of or run out of something.

There’s probably a better way to translate flögra, but fly seemed the most straightforward here. It is different from fljúga though.

While leita means look for, the preposition til adds the meaning of turn to, as in to someone for help, assistance.

þröstur m             thrush
fjar·lægja v (acc)    remove 
skor·steinn m         chimney
leita til             turn to someone
flögra v              flutter, flit
festa v (acc)         fasten, fix
yfirgefa v (acc)      abandon, forsake, leave
prísund f             prison