The Grapevine’s guide to sounding Icelandic, one word at a time
As you’ve gathered from our beautiful cover photo by Timothée Lambrecq (and our Editorial and On The Cover, which we’re sure you’ve diligently read), we’re talking about travelling the Ring Road this issue. Generally, every travel blogger and worker in need of a vacation will tell you that travel can only be good.
In English, being “well-travelled” can describe a quality greater than just having visited many countries. A well-travelled person is knowledgeable, informed, experienced; they’ve seen some shit, and grown from it.
While a similar word, heimsborgari, does exist in Icelandic (literally meaning man-of-the-world), there’s also an antonym that I’m more interested in. It’s worth quickly pointing out also — the word heimur, which you might be able to catch the word “home” in, is the word for universe, world, earth. Honestly, I don’t have much to say on that. I just think it’s cute. I digress.
Heimskur is an adjective meaning idiotic, stupid, dumb, or dense. It literally means someone who has never left home. Similar to the idea of someone who “lives under a rock,” a heimskur man (or a heimsk woman or heimskt non-binary person) hasn’t learned a thing — they must have been just sitting at home and staring at the wall.
But let’s say you’re wanting to insult someone even more. What if they’re really, really dumb? We know Icelandic likes a compound word — maybe the word they’ve made for this is “super-dumb”? Something like that?
Wrong.
It’s tröllheimskur. Troll-dumb.
Now, go forth, read our Ring Road stories and consider doing it yourself — else, be fated to a life of troll-like stupidity.
Learn more Icelandic words hér.
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