Dear Jennica,

I cannot believe you posted that final fantasy song on here. i was thinking of that song ALL DAY yesterday. i woke up thinking of the piano in it today! THAT SONG was playing in the kitchen on the farm EVERYDAY!!! I loved that song for more than a year before i even knew what it was called or where it was from! gah.

i was thinking of it yesterday because my Icelandic roomate Freddy went home for Christmas and authorized me to use his electronic keyboard while he's away. pianos make lovely noises. before he went away tho, Freddy taught me about the Icelandic viking sagas and poetry and how to write them. So i wrote a stanza of a poem, being guided by Freddy and all these impossibly complicated viking-saga rules. and it made me feel good. here it is:

Winter brings a withered kiss
windows creak with sorrow
leaves are listing, sunk with bliss
limp and crusted yellow.

and we talked and talked about Icelandic names. the language is only spoken by 300, 000 people(thats their whole country's population!) and they still use viking names and viking name rules. to english speakers, and pretty much the whole non-isolated-atlantic-islands world, their names are crazy-hard to pronounce. they have many syllables, these Rs that climb around your front teeth and pinch your cheeks AND they say them really fast.

but i like them.
reason 1) everyone gets a nickname!
2) the system of name inheritance is different than anywhere else in the world.

it goes like this:(and i am spelling all these names wrong because we were just talking, not writing them so i have no idea how they are written, nor do i know the rules of the icelandic alphabet...)

here is a family:
Father: Joan Benedikktson
son: Johannes Joanson

your last name changes depending on who your father is.
so lets pretend the son has a kid and names it after his grandfather: Benedikkt Johanneson
and then that kid has children and names them after his dad: Johannes Benedikktson

and on and on! they recycle names but each generation gets a new last name derived from their own Dad's name! names are passed down from YOUR father, not from some old person none of us ever knew. you are known as your father's child, and their child only. but lets say you are a woman.

Father: Joan Benedikktson
Daughter: Thelma Joansdottir
(Joansdaughter)
and when she gets married, she keeps that name. always. since viking times, no possession of wife by husbands name. and AND, so what happens if the kid has no dad, right? They still need a last name. so women will give their children names like Thelma Winddottir. or Soldierson. doesnt that sound lovely? Daughter of the wind. the wind got me pregnant! So even you and your siblings have individual last names, made just for you.

and if you have hippy parents, you would be: Maria ThelmaogJoansdottir
(and)

and, by law, you may only change your name once. So if you hate your poppa, or decide to become a man, you can only do it once, honey!

its so fascinating to learn about this culture so far away from the rest of the world, and see which parts are similar to Danish culture (alot) and from that you can tell which parts go back to ancient viking times and which parts have changed... i wonder if our name system in the rest of the world has some Christian rational. someone must have made the rules we use up once upon a time, maybe to keep people tied to their names-- to maintain the status quo. ie: if Hurtigs have always been poor, you are a Hurtig and you will be poor. i dont know, but its something to think about. even our names carry ideas and weight in ways we didnt know we didnt know.

so inspired by all this poetry and wonder, i decided to write a song. thats what i have been doing on that keyboard. its about being homesick and i will let you know when its done. i have the lyrics, but it needs a tune still.

we're off to Christmas in Denmark tomorrow.

Love,
Marie

ps: i have met 6 icelanders here in berlin(and lived with 2). thats one fifty-thousandth of their entire population. that i, personally, have met. in order to meet that many americans i would have to meet 6023 people. ok, so i have met that many americans in my lifetime, but they were never all at one christmas party!