The Best Of Reykjavík : The Anarchist’s Edition

An anarchist interested in history might want to take an ‘oppression tour’ around the city, checking out important power-symbols like the police headquarters at Hlemmur, the cabinet building at the bottom of Bankastræti (originally built as a prison, this tiny cabin allowing for 70 prisoners!) and Alþingi on Austurvöllur (just remember to take off your overcoat to avoid being charged for attacking the parliament and its free will). Another anarchist might just want to pick up some of the good quality bricks around the house of parliament, for instance to discover whether the Situationists were right in asserting that beneath the paving stones lies the beach.
The third one is likely to enter a jazz concert whereas his or her comrades in arms would want to hear the Icelandic Symphony Orchestra, or better yet, play their weekly gig with that same orchestra. The hedonist would drink and eat well, a luxury meal followed with a good orgy, as the dropout would wander behind supermarkets to experience the unbelievable surplus of the consumer society… and then join the orgy. Another one would just masturbate, fair enough. In Öskjuhlíð one should be able to find strong enough trees to build a primitive shelter and, if lucky, catch a few rabbits for lunch (if you have no luck with the rabbits, there are plenty of tourists around).
More seriously, the big institutional Churches, both the Lutheran State Church and the Catholic one, have recently been the centre-point of criticism due to their priests’ historically common sexual violence against women and children, and not less for their super-hypocritical response to that criticism. It might be good to go and teach some of them a lesson. But at the same time, there should be one or more of those guys in each and every institution of the ruling order, meaning that at least a whole summer is needed to poke all of them at least once in each eye. If limited by time, it might be a better idea to get up in drag or, if drag is your everyday clothing, take off all your clothes and bike to the Nauthólsvík artificial beach. It is a taboo—yes, also here in the country of never-ending-naked-dancing-jumping-in-the-wilderness-to-be-inspired-by.
One could go on forever like this—and that is the absolutely only real answer to the question: what is ‘the best of Reykjavík’ for ‘The Anarchist’? Generalising about ‘The Anarchist’ would go perfectly against the essential meaning of anarchy, namely: Liberty from all possible manifestations of authority, not only the very visible ones—the schools, the church, the police, the government, the nuclear family etc.—but also from our own or our community’s self-suppression and from media-designed stereotype categorisations.