Club Activities

Book Club Book List
A listing of the books the SRSCA (formerly Seattle Friends of Iceland) Book Club has read, since 2015

Leadership (2018)

• Adam Allan-Spencer, President
• Margaret Hlastala, Vice President
  
• Carolyn Carlstrom, Tresurer
• Justin Allan-Spencer, Secretary
• Arnfríður Sigurðardóttir, Member at Large
  
• Alicia Craven, Member at Large
• Eric Nelson, Member at Large

Sister Cities and Related Organizations

Seattle Sister Cities: Seattle has 21 international sister cities total, including Reykjavík, Bergen (NO), Kobe (JP), and Tashkent (UZ).

Sister Cities International: The Sister City program was created in 1956 by President Eisenhower. This organization oversees the national program, facilitating US partnerships with over 2,000 international cities.

Iceland Club of Greater Seattle:  Focusing on heritage and community events, the Iceland Club boasts a robust membership and actives calendar.

Nordic Museum: Serving the community for over 40 years, the Nordic Museum houses an impressive collection of artifacts and features a gallery of rotating exhibits, a permanent exhibit gallery focusing on Nordic history, and a permanent exhibit gallery focusing on the contributions of Nordic emigrants on the building of Seattle.

Travel to Iceland

IcelandAir is the de facto airline in and out of Keflavík International Airport. The direct flight from Seattle to Iceland is only seven hours. If you are traveling to other parts of Europe, take advantage of IcelandAir´s stop-over plan which allows you to stop over in Iceland for up to five days to and from your final European destination.

Iceland Naturally is the Icelandic board of tourism. Their website is chock full of information. They also organize the annual Taste of Iceland events.

In 2013, Justin and Adam traveled to Iceland for three weeks; when they returned, they assembled what they learned into a quick reference guide with tips and tricks. It isn't entirely complete, but has enough to get you started.

Icelandic Language Learning

Icelandic Online: Developed by the University of Iceland, this interactive website is used to teach Icelandic to emigrants and new residents. It is intuitive and inventive, but the user interface is a bit clunky.

Íslenska Fyrir Alla (Icelandic for All) is a free work-book style teaching tool with downloadable PDFs and linked sound clips. The website and most of the PDFs are entirely in Icelandic which poses a challenge.

Learning Icelandic is a compact yet comprehensive workbook-style book-and-CD combo. One book contains grammar exercises, the other grammar explanations and reading exercises. It is a good book for beginners; while the grammar explanations are sufficient, they are not as in-depth as this grammar-heavy language needs. It is also very expensive.

Online Dictionary: searchable; the basis for the Íslensk-Ensk pocket dictionary published by Forlagið.

Modern Icelandic Inflections database (BÍN): The trickiest part of Icelandic is the declension of nouns and adjectives and the conjugation of verbs (so, pretty much the entire language). This database is a collection of all this information, for almost any word in the Icelandic dictionary. Maintained by the Arni Magnusson Institute of Icelandic Studies. The only drawback is the entire website is in Icelandic and no definitions are included.

More to Come!

There are many resources available online about Iceland and Seattle and we are always working to make the best information available. If you have a resource you would like to share -- or if you are looking for specific information about Iceland or Seattle -- please contact us!