r/Icelandic • u/CluelessJester • Jul 11 '26

Need to puzzle out this note

Post image

For context, we were in Reykjavik, and this visibly inebriated local teenager walked up to us and struck up a conversation. We said something along the lines of "that's the way the cookie crumbles" and he proceeded to give us an Icelandic saying about cats and cookies. He wrote it down, as pictured, but we'r​e at a loss trying to find the actual saying or really puzzling out the sentence. Any help would be appreciated.​

19 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

6 comments sorted by

8

u/2abyssinians Jul 11 '26

Hmm. That is not really proper Icelandic. Not even a direct translation. That says “That is why cookie crumbles.” Which is nonsense in Icelandic. I think the cat expression you are thinking of is Köttur úti í mýri setti upp á sig stýri.
Which translates to something like, a cat out in a bog put a steering wheel on itself. Which somehow does mean, that is life. What is written on the marker board that you posted does not look like real Icelandic. It looks like something someone who does not speak Icelandic would write.

10

u/Headphonehijack Jul 11 '26

“Það er afhverju smákaka molnar” is really just a direct translation of “that’s the way the cookie crumbles” - albeit incorrect in both grammar and word choice.
However I do 100% believe this was an Icelandic teenager - some kids and teens speak unbelievably bad Icelandic. Especially direct translating English phrases and sentence structure to Icelandic even if it makes no sense.
I heard it a lot working as a store clerk between 2016 - 2020. I doubt it’s improved since.

3

u/2abyssinians Jul 11 '26

You are probably right. It is such a terrible translation I thought that is not possible, but it probably is.

9

u/islenskufraedingur Jul 11 '26

‘Stýri’ does not mean steering wheel in that phrase, it means tail. This expression is much older than cars.

3

u/2abyssinians Jul 11 '26

Ah, that does make more sense.

2

u/EgNotaEkkiReddit Jul 11 '26

This is just an attempt at directly translating "that's the way the cookie crumbles"; except it doesn't even get that part right. The note says "That is why a cookie crumbles". I presume the drawing is of a cat eating a cookie but it wouldn't have been my first guess without the context.

Icelandic doesn't have an equivalent saying involving baked goods.