William wrote:

>How about Akavit (Aquavit sp.). A fine northern spirit, chilled ice cold, and tossed back. Those were the good old days!

Interesting ! Have you tried "Absolute Vodka" from Finland?
It was advertized quite a bit some years ago !

Hm.. you say "Aquavit" ??
That is actually from Latin: » Aqua Vitae «, meaning "Water of Life".
But in Norway we simply say "akevitt", which is a good example of
how foreign words are made to fit into the language. (by changing
the spelling in conformity with the folkish pronunciation)

In Sweden too, they have done the same thing, but the Swedish
result is not the same as in Norway, since the Swedes write it
as "akvavit". And in Iceland it seems to be "ákavíti" ??
Does that, btw, have any folk-etymological associations in
Iceland? I hope you can explain it Haukur.
In fact, to me, it seems as if it can be read as "ákafavíti" ?

This example, in fact also ties quite well in with
our previous discussion. Re: "Water of Life", being
quite analogous to "Spirit of Life", which is quite of
the same structure as "Spirit of the North". (or even Charles
Lindenbergh's "Spirit of St. Louis")

If I now go to Norwegian, I shall have a
word "livsånd"-> Icelandic "lífsandi" or "andi lífsins".

By analogy, one might then think that a construction
"andi norðurlandanna" would be possible in Icelandic.

> William at Cragmere hedgehog@...
> hedgehog1@...
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: mdehners@...
> To: norse_course@yahoogroups.com
> Sent: Thursday, February 28, 2002 7:17 AM
> Subject: Re: [norse_course] Hail :-)
>
>
> In a message dated 2/28/02 3:40:54 AM Pacific Standard Time, haukurth@... writes:
>
> What is this running
> joke about a word "norondr" which I've never heard of
> and doesn't look like it should exist? :-)
>
>
> Someone was trying to find a Norse equivalent to the English ´´´Spirit of the North´´...

What would Lindenbergh's aeroplane be called in Icelandic?

Best,
Keth