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Outside Of Reykjavík: Mountains, Sagas And… Goats
Here are a few interesting spots to star on your Google Map for your next Iceland road trip. Place: Borg Situated outside the town of Borgarnes north of Reykjavík is this hillock where notorious Viking Skalla-Grímr Kveldúlfsson supposedly settled in the late…
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Witching Hour: The Femininity & Magic Of Wiola Ujazdowska’s Art
Tiny glass vials filled with saliva, nail clippings, eyelashes and menstrual blood hung from a wall in Kaffibarinn this past week, not as a sacrificial offering but as something to attune us to the husks our own bodies leave behind. “I am…
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Quirky Culture: Where Vikings Still Rule
Run for your halberd and prepare to hack your way to Valhalla: the days of Viking rule in Iceland are apparently not over. An Icelandic high court recently handed down a ruling based on a 13th century book of law known as…
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Hour Of The Wolf: Late Nights At 10/11
Working nights as a security guard at 10-11 isn’t for the faint of heart. Iceland’s 24-hour grocery chain sees all sorts of debauchery and turpitude once the clock hits midnight, from drunks slurping slushies by the shampoo shelf to drug dealers pedaling…
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New In Town: Perlan Kaffitár
Perlan, the iconic dome overlooking Reykjavík, may be officially closed for renovations, but that hasn’t stopped a Kaffitár coffee shop from opening by its viewing deck. Mind the construction debris on the way up, but this may be the only spot where…
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Quirky Culture: The Dookie Dropper
Tourists, think twice before you drop your drawers on a farmer’s lawn while galavanting around this magical, elf-filled haven. Þorkell Daníel Eiríksson of Fljótsdalur recently caught a tourist doing just that and rightfully berated him, Morgunblaðið reports. “This shithead decided to do…
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The Eccentric Trad Society of Ölsmiðjan
Once a week, after schoolyards fall quiet and workdays end, a handful of musicians climb the stairs of a whitewashed Reykjavík pub. They hail from England, Scotland, France, the United States, and Iceland too, and the cases under their arms hold guitars,…
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Chris Foster’s ‘Hadelin’: English Folk Hits Reykjavík
English folk ballads don’t get much attention these days on a musical stage saturated with grunge-hip-techno-disco-pop. But here to give them the attention they deserve is Chris Foster, a Somerset native who has lived in Reykjavík since 2004. Chris’s work preserving and…
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Pedal to the Metal: Just Don’t Say ‘Hillary’ and Don’t Say ‘Clinton’
Imagine hundreds of Icelanders descending upon rural America to partake in what seems a very American pastime: racing, crashing and rapidly rebuilding oversized vehicles. Though this sounds like a cultural exchange program gone awry, it’s entirely authentic—so authentic that this Nordic escapade…
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Vulnerable Beings: Emilie Dalum Explores Cancer and Healing in Photo Memoir
One day last February, Emilie Dalum was getting ready to go to lunch when her doctor called. “I was only dressed in my underwear,” she recalls, “when he told me I had lymphoma.” Emilie, a photographer, was 26 years old. Over the…
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Fake News! No, There’s No Football-Fueled Baby Boom in Iceland
A single tweet from an obscure Reykjavík anesthesiologist on Monday suggested that a spike in the number of hospital epidurals last week was correlated to Iceland’s berserk victory over England in last year’s EuroCup. The doctor, Ásgeir Pétur Þorvaldsson, noted that exactly…
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Ask an Icelander: What the Last Thing You Bought?
Name: Þyri Árnadóttir Age: 29 Job: Dancer at Íslenski Dansflokkurinn (Iceland Dance Company) Last Thing I Bought: Coriander
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Quirky Culture: The President’s Socks
Forget speeches, foreign tours and bureaucratic preamble. Iceland’s president, Guðni Th. Jóhannnesson, is now addressing the nation through his socks. On 21 March, World Down Syndrome Day, Guðni joined thousands of individuals across the world to raise awareness for the condition by…
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Iceland’s Environmental Paradox
The average tourist is primed to think of Iceland as the greenest nation on earth. Advertisements endlessly yammer on about “pure nature,” and shots from ‘Game of Thrones’ and popular movies portray Iceland as a vast, cold wilderness untouched by humans. Every…
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Churches, Skyr & A Surprise Plastic Cow: Reykjavík Sightseeing’s Walking Tour
Reykjavík is thronging with tours these days. Everywhere you look, there are biking tours, walking tours, boating tours, helicopter tours—and as soon as you choose your method of transit, a thousand new options seem to open up. It could be all too…
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The Smoky City: Air Pollution in Reykjavík Soars
Early risers may have noticed that Reykjavík looks a little more sulphuric than normal recently. Yesterday morning, as city-dwellers rushed to work, smog blanketed the capital in a yellowish film. Reykjavík—whose name means “Bay of Smokes” in Icelandic, reportedly because the first…
