upp á stól stendur mín kanna

I am soðgreifi today, and the making of coffee falls thus to me, and I fall into the familiar motions automatically. I recognize the weight of the full kanna and the smell of the black coffee, the unsecure-feeling twist-lid of the metal can housing the coffee grounds, the sound of the water kettle for the tea just before it clicks done. The coffee makes itself while my mind is out in the hallway.

Soð- is a boiling word. The verb to boil, sjóða, is cognate to English seethe. (Etymologically speaking, sheep, sauðir or sauðkindur, are animals for boiling, but thankfully this does not prevent one from roasting them quite crisp in practice.) Greifi corresponds to German graf, Danish greve; it's unclear when it got borrowed in. I'm used to thinking of the soðgreifi as the Count of Boiling, but it occurs to me now that the title is better cast as Seethe Reeve. Somewhere along the way, the ge- of Old English gerefa got lost, freeing up refa to become reeve and shire-reeve, later sheriff. The gerefa and refa must have been leaders of men, liners-up of those men into a secgróf (OE), orderly like letters in the alphabet, staves in the stafróf (Icel.).

The cups clink together, held by the loops, on the way from the cabinet to the tables. Then they are set out in rows, two abreast, eight to a table. Then the bell is rung.