{"id":4930,"date":"2014-09-18T00:13:08","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T00:13:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/islenzka.net\/?p=4930"},"modified":"2014-09-18T00:13:08","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T00:13:08","slug":"witches-rings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/islenzka.net\/witches-rings\/","title":{"rendered":"Witches’ Rings"},"content":{"rendered":"

I always love when I find stories that not only teach me new Icelandic words, but also something new in general. I had never heard of these “Witches’ Rings” as I translated it from Icelandic. They apparently have many names in English, like Fairy Ring\/Circle, Elf Ring\/Circle or Pixie Ring<\/a>. It also turned into a mini botany lesson, specifically centered on mushrooms \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

The article that first caught my attention was this one from R\u00daV<\/a>. It contained pictures as well as a link to a page on V\u00edsindavefurinn<\/a>, a very cool site which has featured in previous posts, which explained how these rings form. I took the first paragraph from this to translate, and if you click through to the R\u00daV article the first paragraph of that is very similar, and the rest of the article not too tough. It talks about how a farmer took the pictures while on a sheep round-up, and thought it might have been caused by the sulfur pollution from Holahraun.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This excerpt is from the article on V\u00edsindavefurinn which answers the question: Hvernig myndast nornabaugar e\u00f0a nornahringir \u00ed mosa?<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

Svokalla\u00f0ir nornabaugar e\u00f0a sveppabaugar ver\u00f0a til vegna \u00e1hrifa fr\u00e1 \u00fer\u00e1\u00f0um svepps sem liggur \u00ed jar\u00f0vegi undir mosanum og ver\u00f0ur til \u00feess a\u00f0 mosinn yfir sveppnum vex illa e\u00f0a jafnvel drepst. \u00de\u00e1 s\u00e9st hringur af dau\u00f0um e\u00f0a veiklu\u00f0um mosa \u00ed mosabrei\u00f0unni. \u00c1 baugnum e\u00f0a vi\u00f0 hann ber sveppurinn s\u00ed\u00f0an aldin s\u00edn og eru \u00feau eini hluti sveppsins sem er s\u00fdnilegur. Hins vegar sj\u00e1st \u00feau oftast a\u00f0eins \u00ed stuttan t\u00edma og baugurinn \u00fev\u00ed oftar en ekki aldinlaus. \u00dev\u00ed getur veri\u00f0 erfitt a\u00f0 gera s\u00e9r grein fyrir um hva\u00f0a svepp er a\u00f0 r\u00e6\u00f0a.<\/strong><\/p>\n

So-called witches’ rings or mushroom rings form due to the influence from mushroom hyphae which lie in the soil under the moss, and cause the moss over the mushroom to grow poorly or even die. Then a ring of dead or sick moss is seen in the moss patch. On the ring or by it grows the long mushroom cap and is the only part of the mushroom visible. However it is usually only seen for a short time, and so the ring is usually capless. Thus it can be difficult to determine the type of mushroom in question.<\/em><\/p>\n

The verb vaxa<\/strong> is wonderfully irregular, if you’ve never seen it before \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
a\u00f0 vaxa – to grow<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/th>\npresent<\/th>\npast<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
\u00e9g<\/th>\nvex<\/td>\n\u00f3x<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u00fe\u00fa<\/th>\nvext<\/td>\n\u00f3xt<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u00fea\u00f0<\/th>\nvex<\/td>\n\u00f3x<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
vi\u00f0<\/th>\nv\u00f6xum<\/td>\nuxum<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u00fei\u00f0<\/th>\nvaxi\u00f0<\/td>\nuxu\u00f0<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
\u00feau<\/th>\nvaxa<\/td>\nuxu<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n  <\/td>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
baugur (m) – circle, ring<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
<\/th>\nsingular<\/th>\nplural<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n
nom<\/th>\nbaugur<\/td>\nbaugar<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
acc<\/th>\nbaug<\/td>\nbauga<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
dat<\/th>\nbaugi<\/td>\nbaugum<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
gen<\/th>\nbaugs<\/td>\nbauga<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/table>\n

When referring to the parts of the mushroom, I discovered that \u00fer\u00e1\u00f0ur<\/strong> referred to something called a hypha<\/em>, a filament-like structure that emerges from a spore during the mushroom life cycle. A spore, by the way, is gr\u00f3<\/strong> in Icelandic. The cap of the mushroom is aldin<\/strong> in Icelandic, which is also a word for fruit<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Here is some vocabulary for the above, as well as for the R\u00daV article:<\/p>\n

\r\nnorn (f)               witch\r\nbaugur (m)             circle, ring\r\nsveppur (m)            mushroom\r\n\u00fer\u00e1\u00f0ur (m)             thread\r\njar\u00f0\u00b7vegur (m)         earth, soil\r\nmosi (m)               moss\r\ndrepa (v)              kill\r\nveikla\u00f0ur (adj)        weak, sickly\r\naldin (n)              fruit\r\ns\u00fdni\u00b7legur (adj)       visible\r\n\r\ns\u00f6lna (v)              wither\r\nsmala\u00b7mennska (f)      rounding up of sheep\r\nvald (n)               cause\r\nbrenni\u00b7steinn (m)      sulfur\r\nmengun (f)             pollution\r\nv\u00eds\u00b7bending (f)        clue, hint, indication\r\n<\/pre>\n\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I always love when I find stories that not only teach me new Icelandic words, but also something new in…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4954,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[11,13],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/islenzka.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/islenzka.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/islenzka.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/islenzka.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/islenzka.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4930"}],"version-history":[{"count":22,"href":"https:\/\/islenzka.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4955,"href":"https:\/\/islenzka.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4930\/revisions\/4955"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/islenzka.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4954"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/islenzka.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/islenzka.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/islenzka.net\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}