On Learning Icelandic by Immersion

I was not quite five years old when my mother and I and sister-to-be, Loa, arrived in Iceland sometime near the end of the year. We lived, at first, in a small house with my grandparents and assorted other members of the family. One of these was my cousin Sigrún, just over a year younger than I was.

Sigrún (SIGG’roon) spoke no Swedish. I spoke no Icelandic. So, as kids are wont to do, we very simply both magically learned each other’s language. I don’t think we ever considered how we did. Eventually, my uncle Jón recently told me, we would decide with language we’d play in that day. No matter what we did that day, it was in the language we had decided on earlier that day.

I remember my younger cousin as always being the quiet and calm one while I was the active one. Later on I learned why she was calm – she was a "blue baby" and would have heart surgery in Denmark, when she was about eight or nine years old to repair an imperfect heart.

Mischief was mutually perpetuated; neither of us ever blamed the other when we were caught in the act. One time, I don’t remember what we got into that time, Sigrún’s father caught us, and each of us covered for the other. He calmly told us "If you don’t tell me the truth, then I guess you’ll just have to walk around with black tongues and everyone will know you’ve told a lie."

We looked at each other and headed straight for a mirror and stuck our tongues out as far as we could to check for black tongues. "I guess my dad will have the black tongue, ours are both pink!" And we triumphantly marched up to my Uncle Gudmundur (Guth-MUN-der) to let him know that he didn’t have to worry about us. Our tongues were obviously pink. "Well, it takes a little bit to develop those black tongues." First thing the next few mornings, we’d study our tongues for any signs of the dreaded "black tongue."

Then we lost interest. Nothing was happening after all. Until the licorice sticks turned up. OUR TONGUES WERE ALL BLACK! Of course, we didn’t connect that to the licorice. We still covered for each other, but carefully, very carefully.