Tongue of the Viking

In his book Geography of Bliss, Eric Weiner included the following Bill Holm poem in the chapter on Iceland as a description of the Icelandic langauge:

In an air-conditioned room you cannot understand the

Grammar of this language,

The whirring machine drowns out the soft vowels,

But you can hear these vowels in the mountain wind

And in heavy seas breaking over the hull of a small boat.

Old ladies can wind their long hair in this language

And can hum, and knit, and make pancakes.

But you cannot have a cocktail party in this language

And say witty things standing up with a drink in your 

   hand.

You must sit down to speak this language,

It is so heavy you can't be polite or chatter in it.

For once you have begun a sentence, the whole course of

your life is laid out before you