patronymic icelandic

(No, that's not Latin in the title of this post).

All surnames in Iceland, to this day, are made up of the name of your father plus the suffix "son" or "dottir" depending on your sex. This is according to Rebecca Solnit's Harper's article (Oct) about her trip to Iceland. The implications of this seem rather far-reaching. 

Imagine if John F. Kennedy's son had survived and run for president under the name John Johnson. Not quite the same punch as John Kennedy Jr. Plus it increases, especially in a country with 1/1000th the population of the United States, accidental incest, although there must be safeguards, if nothing other than you can know a much higher percentage of families in the country because there are so many fewer families. But with the surname changing with every generation, it seems like it would be much more difficult to track which ancestors were yours, although I'd probably have to take a trip to Salt Lake City to confirm this suspicion. It might actually make it easier because of the domino like connectedness of all the names.

Some of the greatest and most overlooked works of world literature are the Icelandic Sagas which were written from about 1100 to about the time of Chaucer, 1400 or thereabouts. I've heard particularly great things about Njal's Saga, but have yet to read it. 

As languages go, Icelandic is one of the most hermetically sealed languages, mostly due to geography, of course. Northern Englanders who have more of an Old Norse pronunciation and vocabulary than Londoners have actually gone to Iceland and used what they consider to be antiquated English words and have been understood in Iceland by people who don't speak English.