When Sigur Rós released ( ) last October, they enclosed no lyrics, instead encouraging fans to send in their own interpretation of singer Jón Thor Birgisson’s self-invented Hopelandish tongue. On sigurros.com, the band has gathered common lyrical interpretations and mashed them together using a computer program that constantly scrolls new stanzas while the music streams in the background. We’ve compiled some of the notable combinations that turned up for the album’s opening song.
The most common interpretations were something like this:
You sigh a lot
Your soul reply
Your soul
You suffer, no
The more entertaining ones incorporated foreign or invented languages, such as these:
U saidalow uwamas
Your song
You saw
You’re so low
Blaas de modder
Uit je groven
I know you’re slow
You saw the light
Among the more imaginative ones:
The pleasure pain of skin
You suffer
No.
You sew the line
Now I bend the light in your eyes
You sat along the Rhine
You sign so long
You’re alive
My personal translation?
You sidealow
No fi
You so lie (you so)
Yusafoun lo
With, of course, room for variance …
This article appears in March 28 • 2003.