Ahh winter, when the Icelandic news seems to be filled with stories about cars going off the road in terrible driving conditions, and sometimes seemingly normal conditions. There is apparently a special Icelandic breed of black ice that takes great pleasure in flinging cars off the road and into bodies of water, as this story is not all that unique 🙂 The following news blurb caught my eye because it was short and simple, only five sentences, and seemed like it would be a good article for a beginner post.
Missti bíl sinn úti í tjörn í hálku
Lost car in pond due to ice
Ökumaður á ferð um Leiruveg á Akureyri missti stjórn á bíl sínum í hálku og hafnaði í tjörn við veginn, sex til átta metrum utan við veg. Maðurinn var einn í bílnum og náði að komast í land að sjálfsdáðum og hafði samband við lögreglu.
A driver traveling near Leiruvegur in Akureyri lost control of his car and ended up in the pond by the road, 6 or 8 meters off the road. The man was alone in the car and made it back onshore on his own and called the police.
When saying to lose control of something, like a car, you’ll see að missa stjórn á frequently.
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Another interesting thing in this article was the use of the verb hafna – the meaning I was most familiar with was refuse, or reject. However it has another use similar to lenda, meaning to end up somewhere. Another example from my dictionary is
Boltinn hafnaði í netinu. – The ball ended up in the net.
The other odd thing was seeing the phrase að sjálfsdáðum again – I just learned it in my last post, and here it is again, although last time it was with the preposition af, so not sure if they are interchangeable here. It always seems like when you learn a new word, you suddenly start seeing it everywhere 🙂
Bíllinn var nærri því á kafi þegar lögreglan kom að og var kranabíll fenginn til að draga bílinn á land. Það tókst um tveimur klukkustundum síðar. Að sögn lögreglu var maðurinn kaldur og var fluttur á slysadeild til skoðunar.
The car was nearly submerged when police arrived, and a tow truck was called to pull the car back onshore. This was completed approximately two hours later. According to police the man was cold and was taken to the emergency room for examination.
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The word kaf appears in many different forms, but usually meaning to be buried/covered/submerged in something (á kafi í snjó – buried/covered in snow). I don’t really know what a simple translation of the word itself would be, all the examples I have are with it as a part of a phrase.
If you’ve never seen it before, the reflexive form of taka (to take) has the meaning of succeeding or managing to do something. Here it’s in the past tense form tókst, referring to succeeding in pulling the car out of the pond.
ökumaður m motorist, driver hálka f slippery ice (or snow) hafa samband contact, call krana·bíll m tow truck slysa·deild f emergency room (casualty ward)