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BEYOND NORMAL THINKING: The Possibilities And Impossibilities Of Kaupthinking
By Snorri Páll Jónsson Úlfhildarson A popular 19th century murder-ballad entitled “Banks Of The Ohio” relays a story of the enamored Willy, who takes his love for a walk “down besides where the water floats.” Lyrical details vary between performers, but most…
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Of Minks And Men
In one of their best-loved hits, the members of Icelandic pop outfit FM Belfast refer to their natural habitat as a place where nothing ever happens. Thereby, the lyrics tell us, the sole way to spend the days is to count them,…
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Ground Zero
ZEN Ring the bells! Ring the repetitive alarms—the irresistibly itching reminders of circular memories! Pull the triggers! Ignite the fuzes of colourful calorie bombs—the highly explosive redeemers of repressive histories! Entrepreneurs of all progressive Lebensraums, reunite! Artfully insert your edgy index fingers…
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Down To The Dog Den
Anyone familiar with the vertical structure of just about all workplaces—from old school industries and services to the arts, to the innovation and public sectors—understands the universal logic of The Boss. No matter how pleasant it might feel to fulfil one’s working…
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Mirror, Mirror, On The Wall…
In a world where size certainly matters, David doesn’t defeat Goliath so often. But so he did—and in great style—one recent Reykjavík morning when the regular guests of a popular swimming pool had to flee to the safety of locker rooms due…
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There Is Definitely, Definitely, Definitely No Logic…
Long before the opening of his exhibition in Mexico City last year—the aim of which was to print out the entire internet—artist and poet Kenneth Goldsmith received fierce criticism from fellow creatives. Along with exclamations about his goal being ultimately impossible, Kenneth…
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Below The Promotional Realm
Now, in the midst of the repercussions of Edward Snowden’s exposé of mass-surveillance directed against individuals and institutions worldwide, it’s far beyond funny—in all its Orwellian irony—to see the moguls of Iceland’s tourism-industrial complex launch a campaign fuelled by the imperative slogan:…
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When There Will Be No Seagull…
“The seagulls claim the site, the pigeons vanished from the city, no one knows where to or if they were murdered, if they even escaped, but the seagulls get better and fatter on the scraps of Reykjavík residents, hot dogs and bread.”…
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The Mark Kennedy Saga Chapter Iceland
Each time a free-floating rumour gets confirmed, and past political behaviour becomes a scandalous spectacle, one cannot resist wondering if such conduct might be going on today. This was the case in 2006, after a grand exposure of espionage the Icelandic state…
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Cold War Espionage In Iceland
“Wire-tapping has commenced,” stated a front-page headline in socialist newspaper Þjóðviljinn (“The People’s Will”) on March 27, 1949. The paper claimed to possess confirmed intelligence proving extensive tapping of the newspaper’s office phones, as well as the home phones of individuals considered…
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Enter The 6th Volume
How is history written? And by who? Is just anyone capable of writing it? Or should the task be left in the hands of specific individuals and entities: historians, institutions, the authorities and the markets? These are some of the questions raised—directly…
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Preserving The Laxá Explosion
It’s dark and silent—nothing unusual around midnight by the river Laxá and lake Mývatn in the north of Iceland. But somewhere behind the darkness, beneath the silence, something extraordinary is about to happen. Suddenly, a dynamite explosion disturbs the silence—in what has…
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An End To The Neverending Nightmare?
“The nation has been unburdened of a nightmare,” Ólafur Jóhannesson, then Minister of Justice, proudly stated in parliament on February 3, 1977, at the end of a three-year investigation into the disappearance of two men. At a press conference in the Criminal…
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Not The Knee-Jerk Reaction – Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl on Illska
Raised in Iceland by Lithuanian parents, Agnes is a history student writing her thesis on today’s right wing populism and its resemblance to the Nazi’s Third Reich. Her boyfriend Ómar carries with him all of his problems from youth, unsolved and silenced,…
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Listening Becomes The Key Factor
Together, Albert Finnbogason and Tumi Árnason don’t only stroke the strings and blow the reeds with The Heavy Experience, their self-described “drone, spaghetti western and blues” influenced rock band. Since the release of the band’s first LP—‘Slowscope’—earlier this year, the two have…
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All The Polluted Air
Dear Icelanders. Isn’t it appropriate to start a New Year’s address with those two words—words which were never meant to build bridges other than those between fabricated similarities, words meant to create a feeling of national unification? This, indeed, is the ultimate…
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Hip-Hop Is A Dialogue
As the Winter Solstice promises the world brighter days in the coming future and the end of the current Mayan Calendar suggests a new era of transformation, No Borders Iceland—an activist movement working with and for refugees—is preparing to add weight to…
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Justice Delayed, Justice Denied
Why would people who have escaped their homelands to seek asylum in Iceland want to leave again? Didn’t they come to live the good life? To enjoy Western freedom and the Nordic welfare system? In the last six months, a number of…
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Angeli Novi’s Ticking Time Bomb In The Continuum Of History
There is a photograph by Richard Peter of a statue of an angel overlooking the card-house-like ruins of Dresden. During three days in February 1945, the German city was annihilated by the allied forces using a new firestorm technique of simultaneously dropping…
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The Nazi Clause Strikes Again
Can an individual degrade a whole nation or nation state? Apparently the answer is “yes” as suggested by the 95th clause of Iceland’s criminal code: “Anyone who publicly degrades a foreign nation or a foreign state, its top official, its head of…
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Hail To Thee, Great Leader!
Those who have been arrested and interrogated for partaking in political protest, in Iceland and abroad alike, know that the search for leaders plays a huge role in the authorities’ standard procedure. Unable or unwilling to understand the power of spontaneous, organic…
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The Power Of The Unsaid
In Grapevine’s last issue, Kári Túlinius poses a question that he then attempts to answer: “What became of the far right in Iceland?” Trotting out numerous examples of short-lived right-wing parties, whose political agenda truly advocated xenophobic and racist ideologies, Kári outlines…
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THE BLACK CONE
Spanish artist Santiago Sierra premiered a giant piece of rock called ‘The Black Cone, Monument To Civil Disobedience’ in front Iceland’s parliament this January. Sierra cracked the rock with a black cone, which “alludes to black cone-shaped hats that condemned persons were…