Word Of The Issue: Ægisif

The Grapevine’s guide to sounding Icelandic, one word at a time

For 1,000 years, Iceland has given its own names to various places and geographic locations. Some of these names have stuck. In most cases, they are Icelandic renditions of place names — such as Dyflin for Dublin, or Rúða for Rouen in Normandy — while others are a little further fetched, like Jórvík (which is York in England) or Mikilgarður (great garden or great wall) for Constantinople, that is, modern-day Istanbul.

Many of the words have since fallen out of use and been replaced by more direct renditions of the current place names. However, as far as we can gather, only one building on the European continent was blessed with a specific Icelandic name, making it an outlier in the tradition of Icelandifying words. But what building was so impressive to 12th-century Icelanders that they felt obliged to give it an Icelandic name? Hint. It is in Mikilgarður. Another hint. It’s a place of worship. And not just any place of worship, it is called Ægisif, or Hagia Sophia, which in the 12th century was what the Church of God’s Holy Wisdom in Constantinople was called. Now serving as a mosque, this impressive feat of architecture from Late Antiquity was built by Byzantine emperor Justinian I as the Christian cathedral of the city — at the time the greatest city in all of Christendom.

The fact that Icelandic has a specific word for the church speaks to how impressive it was to behold to those who managed to travel all the way there, and subsequently describe it to someone in Iceland. And do we have any proof that was the case? The Icelandic sagas tell us that Icelanders — along with other Scandinavians — served in the emperor’s bodyguard in the Middle Ages, which is also attested to by Byzantine sources. These were known as the Varangians, whose most famous member, Haraldur Hardrada, later became king of Norway and failed to conquer England in 1066. Hagia Sophia also features 9th-century Norse rune graffiti on its walls. It says “Hálfdán was here.” Something a bored kid would write on their desk in class. But I digress.

Learn more Icelandic words hér.