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  <title>The Icelandic Web of Science</title>
  <link>http://www.why.is</link>
  <description></description>
  <lastBuildDate>Mon, 6 Feb 2012 16:32:28 GMT</lastBuildDate>
  <item>
   <title>Why do male last names in Icelandic end with -son instead of  -sonur?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=58065</link>
   <pubDate>Fri, 8 Apr 2011 10:32:57 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[In Old Icelandic, when the word sonr formed the second part of a compound, i.e. Magnús-son, Sigurðs-son, the final -r (-ur) was dropped in nominative singular, and the same morphology is used in Modern Icelandic. E.g.:

Nom. Magnús Sigurðsson     	(son(u)r)
Acc. Magnús Sigurðson         	(son)
Dat. Magnúsi Sigurðsyni       	 (syni)
Gen.Magnúsar Sigurðssonar    (sonar)
In the word dóttir on the other hand, no change of this sort occurred. In Old Icelandic the ending was -er (-ir) in nominat...]]></description>
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   <title>Are portmanteau words frequent in Icelandic?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=54491</link>
   <pubDate>Thu, 10 Dec 2009 10:50:07 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[Portmanteau words are quite rare in Icelandic, and that kind of word formation is not a part of the regular way of making new words for the Icelandic vocabulary. I have asked quite many people, e.g. the lexicographers at the lexicographical department of the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies and some linguists, and we have only come to two words that have already found their place in dictionaries, þreykur 'smog' for þoka 'fog' and reykur 'smoke', which is to be found in the Íslensk ...]]></description>
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  <item>
   <title>How far into the sky does the light from Yoko Ono's Peace Tower travel?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=47440</link>
   <pubDate>Wed, 30 Apr 2008 11:40:03 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[The short answer is that there is no particular limit to the distance it travels.  If we were out in space and inside the ray of light, and there were no clouds between us and the light source, we could see it, either with the naked eye or with the appropriate equipment.  With sufficiently good equipment, we would be able to "see" or detect the light quite far out in space.  The distance at which it is detectable depends on the quality of the equipment used, and increases as it gets better.

S...]]></description>
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   <title>How many different Sudoku's is it possible to make?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=7220</link>
   <pubDate>Wed, 12 Mar 2008 11:57:27 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[The number of Sudoku grids on a 9×9 board is 6,670,903,752,021,072,936,960.  This number is given in Felgenhauer and Jarvis' article Enumerating possible Sudoku grids.  To calculate this number the authors first made several observations on the configurations that needed to be checked, and then used a computer to find those configurations that produced a valid Sudoku grid.

There is no known formula for the number of Sudoku grids on a n×n board.  Sudoku grids are a special case of what are ter...]]></description>
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  <item>
   <title>Why do people have written language?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=6380</link>
   <pubDate>Wed, 15 Nov 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[We know of many cultures where writing was unknown, but whose people lived rich and fulfilling lives. Even now, in an age when virtually every person in the world has at least come into contact with writing, there are many happy people who cannot read and write, including millions of small children. 

In cultures without writing, certain people tend to become skilled in the oral transmission of stories and information. This type of skill seems rarer in cultures with writing, and it helps devel...]]></description>
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   <title>What can you tell me about diving sea birds?  </title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=5696</link>
   <pubDate>Thu, 9 Mar 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[The term sea birds means birds whose habitat is closely related to the sea. Their food is mostly or excluslively from the sea and they usually nest by the coast. Sea birds can be divided into three groups depending on whether they use their feet, wings or both when swimming (Storer, 1960b). Birds that use their wings to swim are usually ocean birds while those that use their feet are a majority in coastal regions or lakes. The reason is thought to include the fact that coastal environments and l...]]></description>
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   <title>Did Icelandic outlaws live alone in the mountains or did they gather into bands?  Were people generally frightened of them?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=5636</link>
   <pubDate>Fri, 10 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[Our knowledge of outlaws in Iceland comes first and foremost from folktales and so it is hard to talk about outlaws other than as folktale characters - of which we have examples going all the way back to medieval times in the stories about Grettir the Strong found in Grettis saga. In oral tales from the 17th century we hear of hidden valleys in the unpopulated wastes of central Iceland. But in these cases the valleys are not the haunts of outlaws who strike fear into the hearts of law-abiding fo...]]></description>
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   <title>When were rats first known in Iceland?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=5634</link>
   <pubDate>Fri, 10 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[Archaeological excavations at Bessastaðir, the presidential residence outside Reykjavík, have unearthed rat bones in a layer of habitation believed to date from the 17th century, although it may be of 18th-century date. In a sense the rat in question is more likely to have lived in the 18th century, as it is a brown rat (Rattus norvegicus), which was almost unknown in Europe before that time. This is a single rat, in an unusual location, adjacent to a port where foreign ships called; hence the b...]]></description>
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   <title>What changes in education can we expect in the next few years or decades and what effect might these changes have on teaching and learning?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=5620</link>
   <pubDate>Mon, 6 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[Education as an activity occurs at several levels. Educational policy makers at national level make decisions about the themes and content of what is to be learnt. At local level decisions are made about the way in which resources are allocated to schools and the education and skills of teachers to be employed by those schools. Principals and other leaders in schools make decisions about the timetable and the choice of materials to be used and the way in which teachers should carry out their wor...]]></description>
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   <title>What is geothermal heat?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=5616</link>
   <pubDate>Fri, 3 Feb 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[The literal meaning of geothermal heat is the heat in the earth that exceeds the heat on the surface of the earth. It has long been known that the temperature increases the deeper we go under the earth's surface. Phenomena such as volcanic eruptions and hot springs have always been irrefutable proof of this fact. With increased harnessing of geothermal power in the 20th century, the term has become more strictly defined and is now primarily used in connection with locations where hot water and s...]]></description>
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   <title>How did our ancestors make use of geothermal energy?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=5596</link>
   <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[Most of Iceland's first settlers were certainly unfamiliar with geothermal energy, so Iceland's hot springs must have astonished them. Placenames indicate that they tended to mistake the steam of hot springs for smoke; many geothermal sites have the element reyk- (smoke) in their names, while the element gufu- (steam) occurs in few placenames, and they rarely have anything to do with geothermal energy; Landnámabók (the Book of Settlements) explains the derivation of such names from settlers whos...]]></description>
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   <title>Do elves exist?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=5597</link>
   <pubDate>Fri, 27 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[There have been beliefs in other types of people inhabiting the earth alongside mankind but invisible to their eyes ever since stories began. Stories about how they lived, their dwellings and dealings with the human world have been passed down from generation to generation. Those who are endowed with special gifts may even be able to catch an occasional glimpse of these mysterious fellow-travellers of ours.

Ideas of this kind were formerly widespread throughout the world, the beings in questi...]]></description>
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   <title>When did the first Icelandic mass medium come into existence, and when was it launched?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=5581</link>
   <pubDate>Fri, 20 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[In order to answer the question, we must consider what we mean by mass media. We might say, for instance, that the vagabond women we meet in Njáls saga, who carried news from farm to farm, were the mass media of their time, or that the golden plover is the mass medium which tells the Icelanders that spring is on its way. But then we would be speaking metaphorically; in fact we use the term "mass media" only of those means invented by man to disseminate information to large numbers of people, whi...]]></description>
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   <title>Why are people in Iceland not named after fish like Bleikja (arctic char) or Urriði (trout)?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=5579</link>
   <pubDate>Fri, 20 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[The custom of giving people names from natural phenomena, particularly from the animal kingdom, is ancient, maybe going all the way back to the Indo-European origins of the language. Words like this appear in old Icelandic sources, many still being used today, with quite a number having been added during the last decades. Most are compound names where either a suffix or prefix is an animal name, e.g. Bjarndís (Bjarn=bear), Hrafnkell (Hrafn=raven), Hallbjörn (björn=bear), Björgúlfur (úlfur=wolf) ...]]></description>
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   <title>Is there any proof of the existence of ghosts or other such spirits?</title>
   <link>http://www.why.is/?id=5578</link>
   <pubDate>Fri, 20 Jan 2006 00:00:00 GMT</pubDate>
   <description><![CDATA[All ghost stories are event stories, stories of specific instances. Ghost stories tend to shrink when attempts are made to capture the spirit using scientific methods. Ghosts do not appear regularly as the result of a specific causal relationship. There is no uncontradictible scientific research that indicates the existence of ghosts.  Most people believe that stories of ghosts can be explained by illusions, exaggeration or trickery of various kinds, though the stories themselves may well have a...]]></description>
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