Sky News viewers were in for a shock last week while watching coverage of the closure of Scottish airspace due to the ominous volcanic ash cloud. While the TV presenter interviewed a couple about their delayed flight, an inebriated passenger crashed in yelling: "I hate Iceland." The man, who has since become a YouTube and Twitter sensation, has now earned himself the title Volcano Man. But as the volcano dust settles and the airlines return to normal, I couldn't help wondering how someone could spew venom at an entire nation. When news first came in about the volcanic eruption, my thoughts went back to the time I first pressed my dad into getting a book for me. I remember coming back from the Family Book Shop, Manama, years ago armed with an illustrated, abridged version of Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne and then spending days reading, and years re-reading it. The audacity of Professor von Hardwigg and his nephew Harry to descend into an Icelandic crater in a valiant bid to reach the earth's centre fascinated me. A subterranean underworld peopled by gigantic humans and battles with prehistoric sea monsters - the science that Verne employed to prove their existence was all too believable. I grew with great respect for Verne and his science fiction, as well as a secret desire to visit Iceland, climb inside a crater and discover a strange new world. Science, however, proved Verne wrong - climb inside an active crater and you could end up being roasted. A routine volcanic eruption in a lone northern country effectively put paid to the travel plans of thousands of people, resulting in European air chaos that hasn't been seen since the Second World War and billions of dollars in losses for airlines. But it's not just the active volcanoes that make Iceland the uniquely offbeat country that it is. The Norse mythology associated with the country is reinforced through the language Icelandic, which is based on an archaic alphabet used in Middle English - but which has since passed out of usage. Through the last week I've kept an ear open for any news of the volcano - not because I genuinely cared about it, but because I wanted to know how on earth anyone could pronounce its name: Eyjafjallajškull. The BBC always make it a point to get names right and, even after having appointed the parents to look out for it, I still haven't got round to listening to the pronunciation. A simple search on the Internet, however, seems to do the trick. The word, heavily influenced by North Germanic syllables, is pronounced "ay-yah-FYAH'-plah-yer-kuh-duhl". Now that wasn't too difficult, was it? ¥ Jennifer Gnana is a former Bahrain resident now studying in Mumbai. Her family still lives here. |
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