Iceland's language as tough as its challenging landscape

Iceland's challenges include boiling hot springs, frigid waters and vast wildernesses where sudden fogs leave you terribly alone. For me, the most daunting challenge was the tungumalanamskeidid - a course in trying to learn the language.

On the three-week course, I found Icelandic deserves its nickname "Latin of the North" with a complicated skein of six noun classifications, each with up to 16 different suffixes; five families of verbs; an archaic and insular vocabulary and a penchant for serpentine words.

Also like Latin, it's only marginally useful, spoken by just 0.005 percent of the planet. My aim wasn't pragmatic.