Word Of The Issue: Pope’s Garden

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

On May 8, white smoke emerged from the chimney of the Vatican’s Sistine Chapel, signalling the election of a new Pope. Icelandic has its own spelling of the word Pope, páfi, which, like its English counterpart, derives from the Latin papa or father. However, the Icelandic word for the Vatican, the seat of the Holy See, home to the Sistine Chapel and whoever is Pope, is not just an Icelandic spelling variation to that word, but something completely different — Páfagarður. And what does that mean? Well of course, it means the Pope’s garden, because what, if anything, describes the densely urbanised tiny area of the Vatican better than the word “garden”? Well, it is not that simple. The word garður, or garden, holds more meaning in Old Norse. It can mean a wall made of stone without mortar, that is, a fence. In the medieval period farmsteads would often be delimited by such a structure, and thus the word garður could also refer to a farm. So whichever it actually is — the pope’s garden, his farm or his wall — we’ll go for the garden. It seems more appropriate, more biblical.

The word Páfagerður is likely to have entered Old Norse in the wake of Christianity, in the 10th century at the latest, at a time when urban centers or towns hardly existed in Scandinavia. It is thus more than possible that the 10th-century Scandinavians had no better way of explaining to their friends the seat of the pope — then the whole city of Rome and surrounding areas — than as a farm. Otherwise we’d be talking about Pope-a-vík.

Learn more Icelandic words hér.