eyja

In the Creative Anachronist issue on skyr, the author writes about the skyr starter called þettir or þéttir (don't have it with me so don't know which), which she distinguishes from using and older batch of skyr -- it's made from milk and starts the skyr when you run out of your previous batches. She says it works much better than the buttermilk or sour cream alternatives in taste. And it's apparently the traditional way of started a new starter.

Now, as the curious linguist I am, I decided to search for the word (plus, couldn't remember whether it was a long or short vowel). When you type 'þettir' into the search engine, only English skyr recipes pop up. If it's an Icelandic word, Icelandic sites should pop up -- so it's likely not this one. And Cleasby doesn't have it in his Old Norse dictionary. The closest is the word he has is þétti (m.) which he translates to 'curdled milk'. If it's related, there's a long 'e' that the English speakers are missing. But as I've found, þéttir on its own doesn't provide me with the hits that I'm looking for (þéttir can apparently mean 'condenser'). Skyrþéttir (m.sng.) does provide me with the Icelandic hits though. And the corresponding word from Google Translator in English looks right.

I also looked up the skyr recipe on the Icecook blog's previous incarnation, Jo's Icelandic Recipes and found that she references the starter as þéttir. So, the skyr starter (I don't know if this is specifically when you use skyr as the starter or whether its any starter you use to make the skyr) is skyrþéttir or þéttir when its established your talking about skyr.


And here is the declension for skyrþéttir:

nom.sng. skyrþéttir
acc.sng. skyrþétti
dat.sng. skyrþétti
gen.sng. skyrþéttis

nom.pl. skyrþéttar
acc.pl. skyrþétta
dat.pl. skyrþéttum
gen.pl. skyrþétta


And other skyr-related words that I found in the Cleasby:

skyraskr (m.) 'curd bowl'
skyrbúr (n.) 'curd-bower,' dairy
skyrhnakki (m.) a nickname (hnakki is the nape of the neck)
skyrker (n.) 'curd vessel'
skyrkyllir (m.) 'curd bag' (which from the ON that follows it, skyr í húðum ok bundit fyrir, þat kölluðu menn skyrkylla, the bag is made out of hide -- húð (f.) 'a hide' (of cattle) -- a sheep has skinn (n.))
skyrkýll (m.) = skyrkyllir

berjaskyr (n.) 'blackberries and skyr'

And also, related, but not quite:

skyr-bjúgr (m.) -- bjúgr being any tumor that sinks when touched. Other types of bjúgar are vindbjúgr and vatnsbjúgr. The English cognate listed is scurvy, and this is what Cleasby translates it to.


And since it's a by-product, here's two words with whey:

mysa (f.) "whey"
mysuostr (m.) "whey-cheese" = cheese made from whey