I just spent 2 weeks up in the Western Fjörds of Iceland in Ísafjörður on an intensive Icelandic course at the “Háskólasetur Vestfjarða” (http://www.hsvest.is ). We had instruction every day from 9-17 except Wednesdays, where we had 2 excursions in the area in the afternoon. We had four lectures (in Icelandic!) on Icelandic history, language learning, music, and the economics of the Western Fjords.
On the weekend we had the option of following the Gislisaga with a movie, lectures, and hikes in nearby (by Icelandic standards) fjords.
We learned so many words, and useful Icelandic, like how to buy bread (we practiced this in real stores!) or how to talk about the weather (can you say “bad weather” in 25 different ways?).
I bought a murder mystery (in Icelandic) by Stella Blomquist, the current star of Icelandic writing, a mystery person (something hard to do, keep a secret in such a small country). I hope to be able to read it now, I’m doing pretty well on the free newspapers that are all over the place.
It was worth it, fun, and I will never learn to use the dative plural in normal speech or understand how numbers are inflected (telephone numbers go masculine because a telephone is masculine, money amounts go feminine because kronur is feminine, and counting numbers go neutrum. Just to keep you on your toes, minutes are feminine and hours are neutral. AAAAARGH!).
They will offer the course next summer, in case anyone on this list are interested!
