If you’re into Icelandic and astronomy (and hey, who isn’t? :)) there’s a cool site at http://www.stjornufraedi.is/ filled with news, podcasts and all sorts of astronomy-related information. Right on the front page is a survey of the solar system, with short blurbs about each celestial body, and links to more in-depth material. It’s actually not too hard to follow, since it’s all basic material that most everyone already knows in their own language, so give it a shot.
For reference here are the Icelandic words for the 9 planets in our solar system, and no, I don’t care what the IAU thinks, Pluto is a planet! 🙂
| reikistjörnur – planets | |
|---|---|
| Mercury | Merkúríus |
| Venus | Venus |
| Earth | Jörðin |
| Mars | Mars |
| Jupiter | Júpíter |
| Saturn | Satúrnus |
| Uranus | Úranus |
| Neptune | Neptúnus |
| Pluto | Plútó |
Menn eru frá Mars, konur eru frá Venus?
Solar system in Icelandic is sólkerfi. The word kerfi by itself means “system”, and you may see it as a suffix in many words describing types of “systems”, like:
hag·kerfi – economic system
peninga·kerfi – monetary system
vega·kerfi – road system
rafmagns·kerfi – electrical system
öryggis·kerfi – security system
og svo framvegis… 🙂 So when you see -kerfi, it’s a clue to some sort of system.
| kerfi (n) – system | ||
|---|---|---|
| singular | plural | |
| nom | kerfi | kerfi |
| acc | kerfi | kerfi |
| dat | kerfi | kerfum |
| gen | kerfis | kerfa |
A couple other space-related words:
himingeim/ur m (-s, -ar) – outer space
al·heim/ur m (-s) – universe, cosmos
geimskip n (-s, -) – space ship
The thumbnail for this post is taken from a section of the web page called Mynd vikunnar – Photo of the Week. This week’s photo is an amazing shot of the Milky Way taken by Ómar Örn Smith near Hafnarfjörður on September 18th of last year, which is funny because I was actually in Iceland at that time 🙂 I came back with some good photos, but nothing quite like this. This page is titled Vegurinn til Valhallar – The Road to Valhalla.
From the first paragraph:
“Ef þú ferð út fyrir borgarljósin á stjörnubjartri og tunglskinslausri vetrarnóttu, kemur þú fljótt auga á daufa, ljósleita slæðu sem liggur þvert yfir himinhvolfið. Þetta er Vetrarbrautin okkar og allar stjörnurnar sem við sjáum á stjörnubjörtu kvöldi tilheyra henni.”
My hopefully pretty close translation:
“If you travel out beyond the city lights on a starry and moonless winter night, your eyes quickly settle on a faintly lit veil that lays right across the vault of the heavens. This is our Milky Way galaxy, and all the stars we see on a starry night belong to it.”
stjarna f (stjörnu, stjörnur) star tungl n (-s, -) moon daufur adj faint, dull him/inn m (-ins, -nar) sky, the heavens slæð/a f (-u, -ur) veil vetrar·braut f (-ar, -ir) Milky Way, galaxy til·heyr/a v (dat) belong
One interesting verb, tilheyra, which takes the dative:
| til·heyr/a v (dat) – belong | ||
|---|---|---|
| present | past | |
| ég | tilheyri | tilheyrði |
| þú | tilheyrir | tilheyrðir |
| það | tilheyrir | tilheyrði |
| við | tilheyrum | tilheyrðum |
| þið | tilheyrið | tilheyrðuð |
| þau | tilheyra | tilheyrðu |
Þessi bók tilheyra bókasafninu. – This book belongs to the library.
It’s not looking too good for Seattle, but I hope you have some nice clear skies this weekend to marvel at the stars. If you happen to be in Iceland I’m especially jealous 🙂