a blog by Peter Leonard
Haraldr konungr Gormsson réð þá fyrir Danmörku.
King Harald Gormsson then ruled over Denmark.
That's the first line of the last Old Icelandic homework I have to do this quarter, and probably for the rest of my life. We only need one quarter for a Master's degree, but the people with whom I took the first quarter all liked the class so much we've continued for a full three quarters -- a whole year. Never thought I'd get through the first quarter, let alone the two that followed, but it actually proved to me one of the more enjoyable parts of grad school so far. All depends on the classmates -- if you have a motivated group of people learning the same material, it makes a big difference.
Still undecided if I'll try and go to Iceland this summer and do a language course to pick up the modern language. What we've learned in Seattle is good for reading 13th-century texts but not as good for casual conversation.
Interestingly enough, that sentence above makes reference to Harald Bluetooth, son of Gorm the Old. I visited the site where Gorm was buried in a heathen ceremony, then dug up by his Christian son and re-intered, last year. Since that time, I've added Google text ads on the site, and amusingly, the algorithms are convinced that entry, about a death in 959AD, will reach those interested in grief counseling today.