Toppling type - Iceland

Image courtesy of Lonely road sign near Askja © Deanna Swaney. Lonely Planet Images.

I was recently talking to Erna Hreinsdóttir, an Icelandic designer-type friend of mine, about something when she mentioned how absurd some signposts look in Iceland.

Over there, place names are not seperated into seperate words, and given the complexity (or perhaps absolute clarity) of the language (look at this supermarket website as an example: 10-11 - the chaps seen on the website are the Icelandic Trinny & Susannah, by the way. It's worth a look just for them), you end up with very long place names.

So imagine the pictured standard signpost pointing you in the direction of Kirkjubæjarklaustur, Hafnarfjarðarvegur or Hallormsstaðaskógur. The sign itself is getting close to the length of the post to which it is fastened. Pure genius.

Finally, here's a snippet from my current online chat window with Erna:

Erna says:
this is actually a word:

Erna says:
vaðlaheiðarvegavinnuverkfærageymsluskúraútidyralyakippuhringur

Erna says:
but it is not used very often

Spencer E Holtaway says:
that's insane


More later.