April 21st, Third Sunday of Easter.

Recently I was in an industrial area just outside Reykjavik, factories and the rest. Usually such places have smokestacks yet there were none because of the geothermal energy. Several exceptions: stacks used to expel excess heat which looks like smoke but is steam. This absence of smokestacks, even on houses, strikes a first-time visitor as odd but reveals the real treasure of Iceland.

Drizzly weather, not untypical. When it’s like this, often I think of the Gulf Stream…just a few degrees alteration, and we’d be like nearby Greenland, permanently locked in ice. However, that seems to be changing with global warming. Then again, global warming can do strange things and really screw up Iceland’s privileged place in the North Atlantic, transforming it into an icebox (virtually overnight).

I enjoy listening in on children speaking Icelandic. More often than not they don’t get the grammar right. By that I don’t mean the usual grammatical errors of such a young age but something more specific to the Icelandic language. It has four declensions. Add to that the singular and plural as well as four additional ways an adjective modifies a noun with the definite case. You hear parents constantly correcting their children as to the proper endings which to the untrained observer seems excessive, but it’s done from a desire to get the grammar used correctly. As for grammar applied to adults, there’s what is called “dative case sickness.” It reflects a tendency to throw many nouns into the dative case despite the fact that some prepositions govern other cases. This is natural and often railed against by purists or the grammar police who meet once a week to discuss formation of new Icelandic words and finer points of grammar. Their results are published in the main paper and followed with considerable attention, unique among modern cultures.

“Then Joshua gathered all the tribes of Israel to Shechem”…and they presented themselves to the Lord” [Jos 24.1]. On occasion we come across such statements and wonder about the nature of this presenting. The verb is natsav which means appointing, stationing or to be set. I.e., it has no specific religious connotation, more military in nature which fits in with the Joshua context. Chapter 24 brings to conclusion this book, Israel having gotten established in their new land, so it’s time to natsav and take stock before Joshua died and a new generation of leaders come on the scene. Natsav seems related to a recapitulation of Israel’s deliverance from Egypt and establishment in Canaan as we see here. The people are gathered to listen to this account, here delivered by Joshua. As for the passage at hand, it struck me how often the Red Sea event is recounted, that Israel must remember it. Such emphasis is important in a culture where hearing is the prime means of preserving heritage over the written word.