Author: Valur Gunnarsson
Selfies With Sith Lords: Iceland’s Midgard Comic-Con Comes Online
“How did Star Wars change your life?” is one of the questions posed to the panellists at Iceland’s first ever…
Murders At The Movies: Jar City Revisited
It is surprising that even though crime fiction writer Arnaldur Indriðason is something of an industry, being the best-selling writer…
Moderately Warm In The City: Billy Idol In Reykjavik
The evening starts with a surprise, and not an altogether pleasant one. Instead of getting our Billy on time, an…
All Our Yesterdays: Guns N’ Roses Take Reykjavik
Guns N’ Roses take to the stage like a lumbering Apatosaurus, crushing everything in their path and in constant danger…
The World of Yesterday : 101 Reykjavík Revisited
The ‘90s were another country. The late ‘80s had given us malls, pizza delivery, even more TV and, most important,…
The Trump Era Finds Its Poet: Sicario 2
If Denis Villeneuve‘s near-masterpiece Sicario went out of its way to be several shades of grey, then Stefano Sollima’s follow-up…
A Woman Goes To War: Finally, Iceland Is Ready For Eco-Terrorism
In the 2014-15 season, a triumvirate of films appeared that set the benchmark for Icelandic cinema in the 2010s. That…
Pain And Empathy In Award Winning Movie ‘And Breathe Normally’
A recent American film suggests that no one cares about dentists. Much the same can be said about border guards,…
Pain And Empathy In Award Winning Movie ‘And Breathe Normally’
A recent American film suggests that no one cares about dentists. Much the same can be said about border guards,…
Ben Kingsley and the New Icelandic Star of Cinema
We all remember ‘Death and the Maiden,’ the 1994 film starring Ben Kingsley as a suspected war criminal flushed out…
Festival Season Arrives: Whiling Away Winter in the City Cinemas
Back in the dark ages before the advent of Bíó Paradís, one of the few opportunities Reykvikians had to see…
Ploey: You Never Fly Alone, aka Valur The Killer vs. The Migration Birds
Perhaps one of the reasons there haven’t been very many Icelandic cartoons (apart from the probative costs), is that there…
From Crime Fiction To Running The Government: Meet Iceland’s New Prime Minister
They say everyone in Iceland knows each other, but that’s an exaggeration. I went to visit the President, Guðni Th….
A Song of Innocence: The Swan Is Born
“The worst part about this is that it’s not even original,” says the young girl, now pregnant, and with seemingly…
Last Words: Whose History?
In Brussels, they have just opened a museum of European History. But is it really possible to tell the unified…
A Song of Innocence: The Swan is Born
„The worst part about this is that its not even original,” says the young girl, now pregnant, and with seemingly…
1997: The Last Days of Rock
by Valur Gunnarsson and Andie Sophia Fontaine
Yes, rock is dead. It is dead in the sense that punk is dead. Or classical. Punk by now belongs…
The Reykjavik Poet Par-Excellence: Megas Talks About Music, Drugs, Björk, Toyota, Armageddon and the Afterlife
The first time I interviewed Megas was during my first summer as editor of the new paper Reykjavik Grapevine 15…
Last Words: Maybe This Time Will Be Different
When is history a reliable predictor of future events? The last time a left-wing party formed a government with the…
No Singles Allowed: The Great Bolungarvík Debate
When the first Þorrablót (an annual celebration involving the eating of sheep’s testicles and drinking of brennvín, among other merriments)…
Blast From The Past: Student Protests In The 1800s
by Valur Gunnarsson and Andie Sophia Fontaine
Probably the most famous student protest ever in Iceland took place in 1850. A group of students at the Latin…
Welcome To The Old Skool: Icelandic Legends To Play Airwaves
Airwaves. That time of year when annoying youngsters fill the streets with their unbridled joy, loudness and new-fangled music (this…
Of Miners and Moonshine: Debut Film From Icelandic Director In Denmark
It’s interesting to note that despite most of them studying abroad, Icelandic film directors almost universally come home to start…
Blast from the Past: Danish Soldiers Maim Themselves Celebrating
Everyone will tell you that the reason “Þjóðhátíð” (literally, “national celebration”) is held in the Westman Islands every year is…
Blast from the Past: Illicit Love in Öskjuhlíð
It used to be that Öskjuhlíðin hill was the best place to go in RVK for an American-style dating experience….