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You Have To Confirm It With Your Own Hands: Seeing Believing Having Holding Debuts At i8
You might be familiar with a famous motif in visual art, that of Thomas, one of the Biblical disciples, sticking his finger into a wound in his newly resurrected master’s side in order to confirm that what he’s seeing—Jesus, risen from the…
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Something For Everyone: Bike Cave
Located in the Skerjafjörður neighbourhood behind the domestic airport, the Bike Cave is somewhat out of the way for travellers and locals alike. However, given its fleet of rental scooters—parked jauntily outside like Harleys in front of a leather bar—and its proximity…
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One Night Only: In Reykjavík, Pop-Up Restaurants Keep… Popping Up
Walking into the open, dining room at ‘slow-food’ favourite Bergsson’s harbourside satellite location in late September, we knew we were in for a treat. With the sun slowly setting in the background, two long, communal-style tables were laid before us. As they…
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On The Road Again (And Again)
In a wide, grassy meadow where the road to Húsavík breaks off from the Ring Road, you’ll encounter a rather incongruous sight: a tomato red tank truck proclaiming “Over 100 Cars” in bold white letters on its side. An arrow just below…
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Casa Grande: Go Big Or Go Home
Located in a red corrugated iron house overlooking the old harbour, Casa Grande is situated smack-dab in the middle of one of the city’s tourist hubs—whale watching tours, an IcelandAir Hotel—and yet, when we arrived, there wasn’t much Gore-Tex on display. Sure,…
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Misbehaving Nuns, Ancient Ice: Five Seasonal South Iceland Sights
Ideally, all of your travels in Iceland would be accompanied by mild weather and cloudless skies, but waiting for perfect weather in this country is much like waiting for Godot. This shouldn’t faze you, though, because the shoulder seasons (September and October,…
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Feeling Parsley, Hearing Voices At The Iceland Writers Retreat
The second annual Iceland Writers Retreat took place this past weekend, bringing together acclaimed authors from Canada, Iceland, Norway, the UK, the US, to share their craft with both local and international participants. I had the chance to sit in on two…
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Iceland Writers Retreat Redux
Going into its second year, the Iceland Writers Retreat—which, armchair copyeditors take note, is purposely “apostrophe free”—is riding high on the success of its inaugural event. Having already hosted such literary luminaries as Geraldine Brooks and Susan Orlean, organizers Eliza Reid and…
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Yule Year-Round: Visting Jólagarðurinn
This fall, while planning my first trip up North, I messaged a friend of mine who had gone to secondary school in Akureyri and asked him for a few choice recommendations. “The Christmas Garden,” he wrote back almost immediately. “Smells delish. Sounds…
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Kicking Off Iceland Noir 2014
Following the easygoing success of last year’s inaugural Iceland Noir crime lit festival, this year’s event is already off to a good start. The three day festival will involve two jam-packed days of author panels, talks, and readings at the Nordic House,…
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Back To Basics
Although contemporary hip hop culture is undeniably global in its scope, most people wouldn’t think of Iceland as a hotbed for street dance, one of hip hop’s most recognizable and fundamental off-shoots. And honestly, it’s not. Today there are—at a generous estimate—maybe…
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Everyone’s A Chef
I walk into Salt Eldhús (“Salt Kitchen”) on a rainy summer afternoon that feels chilly enough to be fall. Shaking off in the vestibule, I’m met by owner Auður Ögn Árnadóttir, who shakes my hand cheerfully and invites me to help myself…
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The Way We Live Now
Taking its inspiration from idiosyncratic headlines around the globe, ‘News Muse’ by Vala Hafstað combines two very Icelandic interests–the daily news and poetry–and uses them to paint a sometimes amusing, often ridiculous portrait of contemporary life. With a few notable exceptions, the…
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Selling Like Hot (Crab) Cakes
Located further afield than most of Reykjavík’s new brigade of food trucks, Walk the Plank—specializing in crab cake sliders from locally caught Atlantic rock crab—seems right at home in its harbourside location, tucked comfortably between working trawlers and whale-watching boats. Started in…
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Remembrance and Re-Remembrance
Following the astounding success of their last collaboration, “Dansaðu fyrir mig,” (‘Dance for Me’), collaborators (and fiances) Pétur Ármannsson and Brogan Davison have used their new show “Petra” to reapproach some of the former show’s more fertile topics—artistic creation and family—while also dipping into…
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When Dreams Become Realities
In early 2012, 49-year-old Ármann Einarsson, a music school principal with a potbelly that he frequently, fondly, pats, sent a Facebook message to Brogan Davison, his son Pétur’s girlfriend, who is also a choreographer and dancer. “It said, ‘Hæ, Hæ: This is…
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Have You Seen Hidden People?
During her childhood in Flói, a small rural area in Southwest Iceland, author Unnur Jökulsdóttir grew up with stories of the Hidden People. “My grandmother who was born and raised in the north had a great deal of affection for elves and…
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Bárðarbunga Earthquake Visualization
An Icelandic computer scientist has created a data visualization showing all of the Bárðarbunga earthquakes measuring over 1.5 on the Richter scale over the last 48 hours. The data used, he explained, is raw data collected from the Icelandic Met Office (it…
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Hiding in Plain Sight
In early 2014, we at Reykjavík Grapevine were forwarded a hand-drawn image entitled “Huldufolk [sic] of Iceland Remote Viewed.” The simple line drawing surrounded by redacted text was rather unlike any images of huldufólk that we had ever seen, a not at…
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Bárðarbunga Volcano Watch: The Afternoon Edition
Volcano watch is still in full swing, but no eruption yet. In the meantime, here’s a roundup of the day’s Bárðarbunga news so far: 13:23 – The closure of the area north of Vatnajökull glacier has already lead to significant financial losses…
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Readers’ Huldu-fólktales
Since our Hidden People issue came out on Friday, readers have been submitting their own elf-encounter tales left and right. Here are a couple of the submissions we’ve received so far; send us yours at grapevine@grapevine.is and we’ll add to the collection!…
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Hidden People: They’re Just Like Us (Kind Of)
When foreign media outlets report on Iceland and need to add a little local colour, they will invariably throw in a quick, ironical side note about the country’s pervasive belief in elves, or Hidden People. The tone is generally one of indulgence…
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Hidden People Folktales
It is due to the efforts of two men, Jón Árnason (1819-1888) and Magnús Grímsson (1825-1860), that such a large body of 18th and 19th century Icelandic folktales exist today. Jón was a writer and also the first librarian of the National…
