My country of birth is the beautiful land of fire and ice that hugs the Arctic circle: Iceland. I often tell Icelandic stories to my friends, and in particular their children. Kids love hearing about all the Elf folklore and legends of Trolls that come from Iceland.
I was telling my friend's youngest child about Iceland, and about visiting my family when I was over there. I was explaining to her that although my Dad is not from Iceland originally, he has in fact lived there for most of his adult life. Children process vast amounts of new information each day, and I could almost see the cogs whirring around in her mind as she listened to what I was telling her. I whittled on for a while..."In Iceland there are elves that live in the rocks....The mountains of Iceland contain families of Trolls....The ground is sometimes covered in several feet of snow in Iceland in the winter...."
Whilst I was talking to her, she turned and looked at me with those gorgeous big brown eyes of hers.
"Yes," she said. "I know all about Iceland."
"Really?" I said, somewhat incredulously. I knew my friend hadn't visited Iceland before, as I would assume she would have mentioned it at some point, and I didn't think the study of Nordic countries was in the syllabus for most pre-schools.
"We've been there," she replied, with a very serious look on her face. "It's red."
My friend and I looked up from the little girl and looked at each other with matching looks of confusion. We both fell into hysterics at exactly the same time when we realised what she was talking about.
"No honey," my friend replied through her giggles to her little girl. "Edda means Iceland the country, not the supermarket!"
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