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.