Word Of The Issue: Bergmál

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

Have you ever shouted into the void? More specifically, have you ever heard the void shout back? Maybe you’ve hollered “hello!” into a massive cave and received your greeting back tenfold?

Okay, now that we’ve reacquainted ourselves with the exciting phenomenon that is the echo, let’s learn another Icelandic compound word. “Bergmál” is the Icelandic word for echo. “Berg” is the Icelandic word for rock, but it’s in the second half of bergmál where things get interesting.

If you’ve ever taken an introductory Icelandic course, chances are one of the first questions you learned was “hvaða mál talar þú?” This question means “what language do you speak?” In that question, I’d like you to see the word “mál,” which means language.

From there, you can piece together that “berg” + “mál” = “rock language.” How poetic! No wonder that this was one of the 30 semifinalists for “Most Beautiful Icelandic Word” back in 2013.

Next time you find yourself in an echo chamber, at least you know what language is being spoken.