Did your lang afi and amma laugh? Did they smile? Did they have a sense of humour? Have you heard the rumour that Icelanders have no sense of humour? If you have seen Nelson’s pictures of the first settlers, they look dour, serious, like serious, serious but I know that my lang amma had a sense of humour, knew how to laugh. She needed to. She had thirteen kids.

Here’s a series of pictures and texts from the Almanak of 1892. I’ll post two pictures today, then two more each day until the entire series is complete. Here’s what those lang lang ammas and afis were reading in 1892.

I’ll put my pathetic translation below. If some readers would help by translating the captions properly, it would be appreciated by everyone who reads my blog. What is great about blogs is that it is easy to make corrections.

Picture 1 The goose saw that the brennivin barrel had a leak. She had a good taste of it.

Picture 2 After she’d been drinking for awhile, she began to stagger and sing and became unusually cheerful.

Here is Vi