Word Of The Issue: Everything Is Geggjað

The Grapevine’s Guide To Sounding Icelandic, One Word At A Time

Learning Icelandic is hard. There are all these cases and genders and rules that even the Icelandic teachers can’t explain the reasoning for. It can be frustrating. And it all feels more frustrating when you’re learning long and verbose sentences to order coffee, ask for receipts or express your emotions, only to hear Icelanders having full conversations with a single word in a specific intonation.

One word that’s good to know (or, at the very least, fun to know) is geggjað. It’s awesome. No, really, it literally means “awesome.”

Are you looking at something cool or amazing or impressive? Exclaim, “Vá! Geggjað!”

Did you ask someone at work a question and they actually gave you a helpful answer? Thank them with a “Geggjað! Takk!”

Got some bad or annoying news? Grumble out a sarcastic “Ugh. Geggjað.”

It works in so many scenarios.

What’s more, toss a “ur” to the end of the word and you’ve got “crazy”. Just think of all the conversations you can single-wordedly react to with geggjaður in your arsenal. Entire worlds are opening. Your life is about to change. Geggjað!