WR Liturgy served in Iceland

[ROCORWRVUK]

Fr. Alban Waggener, rector of Holy Trinity Orthodox Church in Lynchburg, Virginia, celebrated Holy Mass according to  the Liturgy of St. Tikhon at St. Nicholas Orthodox Church (Russian Orthodox Church — Moscow Patriarchate) in Reykjavik, Iceland on Sunday, September 2.  He was invited to celebrate the Western Rite Liturgy by the rector of the parish Fr. Timothy Zolotuskiy. St. Nicholas parish in Reykjavik is the only Orthodox Church in the city.  Fr. Timothy is a long-time Orthodox priest who was ordained in Russia by Patriarch Pimen of blessed memory.

The Gospel arrived in Iceland in AD 1050, just a few years before the Papal Schism and the falling away of the Roman Patriarchate in 1054. This Mass on September 2, was the first Western Rite Orthodox Mass celebrated in Iceland in nearly a millennium. The congregation of St. Nicholas is made up of Russians, Romanians, Moldavians and Georgians, along with native Icelandic converts. Khouria Nancy, wife of Fr. Alban, served as the cantor for the sung Mass.  The congregation was was very gracious and enthusiastic, and the faithful received Holy Communion in the Western manner. 

In addition to parish rector Fr. Timothy Zolotuskiy, not many spoke very fluent English, and Fr. Alban had a translator for the homily. Everyone in attendance was very kind and appreciative, and it was a wonderful experience for all of the breadth of Orthodoxy.

Source is Fr. Victor Novaks blog, again. I hope there are photos of this somewhere.

 

[Iconodule]

Was the mass in Icelandic?

 

[RaphaCam]

Was the mass in Icelandic?

It's such a hard language, it would be amazing if the priests managed to celebrate on it regardless, while judging from their names none were natives.

 

[biro]

For some reason, I read the place as "Ireland." Oops!

 

[Jetavan]

For some reason, I read the place as "Ireland." Oops!

An understandable mistake:

From The Irish Times

Why people in Iceland look just like us

The Irish were there in numbers when the settlement of Iceland got underway some time around 800AD. Genetic analysis has shown that a quarter of the men and up to half of the women among the founding population would have been of "Gaelic" origin.

 

[Alpo]

Was the mass in Icelandic?

It's such a hard language, it would be amazing if the priests managed to celebrate on it regardless, while judging from their names none were natives.

Why is it a hard language? I agree that it would indeed be amazing if the priest learnt the language enough just to celebrate one mass but I'm still curious why you perceive Icelandic to be hard to learn. Scandinavian languages might sound funny but they are IMO actually easier to learn than English. I thought Icelandic is just a kind of archaic form of Norwegian or something.

 

[Samn!]

Why is it a hard language? I agree that it would indeed be amazing if the priest learnt the language enough just to celebrate one mass but I'm still curious why you perceive Icelandic to be hard to learn. Scandinavian languages might sound funny but they are IMO actually easier to learn than English. I thought Icelandic is just a kind of archaic form of Norwegian or something.

In the same sense that the language of Beowulf is archaic English. Nouns and adjectives have four cases with multiple declensions, verbs conjugate for person, tense and voice with multiple conjugations, plus they avoid loan-words aggressively and theoretically have free word-order. The phonology is also a lot more complicated than Norwegian, though nothing like the nightmare that is Danish. If you know Norwegian, especially Nynorsk, you'll get a lot of Icelandic vocabulary, but that's about it.

 

[Iconodule]

I was visiting my brother in Denmark and someone told me the word for "bird cage" and I spent the next week trying to pronounce it correctly with everyone laughing at me.

 

[RaphaCam]

Was the mass in Icelandic?

It's such a hard language, it would be amazing if the priests managed to celebrate on it regardless, while judging from their names none were natives.

Why is it a hard language? I agree that it would indeed be amazing if the priest learnt the language enough just to celebrate one mass but I'm still curious why you perceive Icelandic to be hard to learn. Scandinavian languages might sound funny but they are IMO actually easier to learn than English. I thought Icelandic is just a kind of archaic form of Norwegian or something.

Very difficult orthography and pronounciation (regular under its own extremely complex and particular logics, like Irish), a well-preserved four-cases system (this may sound like a joke for you Finns, but it's weird for Germanic languages) and very complex umlaut rules (German shares such almost unpredictable umlaut, but since it's grammar is so simple, it becomes a mere matter of memorising exceptions).

The scariest thing in Icelandic pronounciation, which makes it specially hard even for a priest just to hypothetically learn a text, is the fact it distinguishes phonemically between voiced and voiceless sonorants (that is, you can change a word's meaning if you pronounce "r" vibrating your vocal chords or not), but not for plosives, which instead distinguish aspiration (that is, there's no "b", but there is plain "p" and puffy "p").

Perhaps Danish is indeed harder in the sense of pronounciation nightmares, but at least it doesn't have these voiceless sonorants that are pretty much my haunting fear ever since I started getting deep down interested in languages with a very disappointing first choice: Welsh, which has the accursed distinction.

 

[Alpo]

Fair enough. I guess I'm biased since my own native language might be even more obscure than Icelandic.

 

[Samn!]

Perhaps Danish is indeed harder in the sense of pronounciation nightmares, but at least it doesn't have these voiceless sonorants that are pretty much my haunting fear ever since I started getting deep down interested in languages with a very disappointing first choice: Welsh, which has the accursed distinction.

What Danish does have, in addition to a surprisingly unhelpful orthography and more vowel phonemes than probably any other language, is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%B8d

Then there's the prosody, which doesn't segment on the basis of word (like English, German or Russian) or phrase (like French and most kinds of Spanish) but on the basis of... there's no clear answer. Apparently, it's so bad that Danish children learn to understand normal speech at a measurably slower rate than other children.

(I promise not to further hijack this thread for the cause of Nordic phonology).

 

[RaphaCam]

What Danish does have, in addition to a surprisingly unhelpful orthography and more vowel phonemes than probably any other language, is this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%B8d

Then there's the prosody, which doesn't segment on the basis of word (like English, German or Russian) or phrase (like French and most kinds of Spanish) but on the basis of... there's no clear answer. Apparently, it's so bad that Danish children learn to understand normal speech at a measurably slower rate than other children.

(I promise not to further hijack this thread for the cause of Nordic phonology).

Wow, I knew about the God-forsaken stöd, but not about prosody. Interesting.

 

[juliogb]

I wonder if in the icelandic text of the divine liturgy there is a prayer for Eyjafjallajökull volcano be non-erupting and quiet.

 

[Alpo]

Eyjafjallajökull

LOL. Sounds like a makes for a Folk Metal band.

 

[Iconodule]

I wonder if in the icelandic text of the divine liturgy there is a prayer for Eyjafjallajökull volcano be non-erupting and quiet.

Saint Thorlac's Eldgosdjöfullinnróandilag (roughly translated, song for pacifying volcanic demons) might be just the thing.

 

[RaphaCam]

I wonder if in the icelandic text of the divine liturgy there is a prayer for Eyjafjallajökull volcano be non-erupting and quiet.

Saint Thorlac's Eldgosdjöfullinnróandilag (roughly translated, song for pacifying volcanic demons) might be just the thing.

Now this is a black metal band name.

 

[juliogb]

I wonder if in the icelandic text of the divine liturgy there is a prayer for Eyjafjallajökull volcano be non-erupting and quiet.

Saint Thorlac's Eldgosdjöfullinnróandilag (roughly translated, song for pacifying volcanic demons) might be just the thing.

Maybe adding something about the volcano on the ''for seasonable weather...'' part of the initial prayers.

 

[ROCORWRVUK]

Was the mass in Icelandic?

I'll assume that it was served in English, maybe with some Latin.