Published September 27, 2025

Witnessing the fall of an empire

After a frantic, peripatetic summer, my seven-year-old child was astonished to note, as we sat in the massive hot tub at Vesturbæjarlaug, a glorious sunset. In a search for order, I’ve kept strict bedtimes, so September brought the first sunset my child was allowed to take in. For possibly five minutes, my child, always on the move, was both speechless and motionless, taking in the shades of purple and orange in sunsets along the Arctic Circle that come off as mundane in writing. 

Such beauty overwhelms the senses. And to watch a child take it in is something close to a moment of grace. 

In my life outside of swimming pools, until recently, I believed that I was experiencing what one-time popular historian Arnold J. Toynbee called the sunset of civilisation. To paraphrase our columnist Charlie Winters, I’m a writer and not qualified to discuss historical theory, but Toynbee suggested that as the creative energy of the nondominant powers waned, civilisations would essentially topple into their failed foundations. I believe Toynbee stated, with the authority I could only dream of, “The sunsets and sunrises of civilization are inevitably separated by intervals of isolated darkness. The night that followed the Roman sunset was long and uncertain, and the turmoil it brought consumed countless man.” With the creative classes reduced to, say, producing cat videos or episodes of Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, I was sure we were at sunset for Western Civilisation. 

I see now that I was excessively optimistic. Western Civilisation isn’t sunsetting, fading out in glorious colours, aware of its demise but shining as hard as it can with the last of its energy. Western Civilisation has passed fully into night. 

The sunset of Western Civilisation, upon reflection, clearly seems to have occurred under Bill Clinton and Tony Blair, both for whom I openly cheered as they metaphorically lit fire to core values of dignity and responsibility in favour of a spike in GDP and a vast increase in the number of billionaires per country, leaving the masses abandoned. 

This month saw the publication of The World’s Worst Bet: How the Globalization Gamble Went Wrong (And What Would Make It Right) by David J. Lynch. In the book, the author quotes former US president Bill Clinton explaining nationalist movements as follows: “I was amazed that we held off as long as we did in this kind of nationalist reaction, because you could see all over America and all over the world that the thing that was killing globalisation was that the policies had to be ratified by nations. But their ability to nationalize the benefits was limited, either by their tax base or their wealth or their understanding or whatever – it was just limited. So there was going to be a reaction sooner or later.” Yup, globalisation was killed by little hiccups like no plan and the surprise that power corrupts, which… I mean, who knew? With hindsight, Bill Clinton, who ordered a hot dog behind the Reykjavík Grapevine office and only wanted mustard on it, ended Western Civilisation. 

As it happens, I got to see Bill Clinton arriving in England in 1997, shaking hands with his buddy Tony Blair, Oasis singing songs about cocaine in the background. The sunset of civilisation was delirious. Our assets were being looted to create wealth. Our culture was being drained, as indicated by Oasis existing. There was still light then. There was hope, though it was clearly misguided. As either William Shakespeare or Noel Gallagher wrote, the sunset brought on by neoliberalism was truly “a champagne supernova in the sky.” 

In this issue, Freyr Thorvaldsson describes the experience of watching Donald J. Trump and King Charles parade around London. By Freyr’s description, we are aeons from the time merely misguided men ruled the world. We are clearly in darkness. 

Good news, though. While Reykjavík is a stunning place to witness a sunset, it specialises in darkness. As I noted above, I still can’t shake the sloppy history upon which I was reared, which stated that there are cycles to civilisation, and there would be sunrise, sunset and darkness. We at The Reykjavík Grapevine were recently able to speak with a medieval manuscript scholar, Iceland’s newest citizen Roberto Luigi Pagani. It turns out that despite whatever was happening on the continent, the people on this island managed to generate profound, moving art. 

This brings us to our cover story, and a remarkable collaboration between two seemingly disparate artists: resonant philosopher Benni Hemm Hemm, and dance hall icon Páll Óskar. It is my strong assertion that their new album meets a specific need: music for dark times. I also believe their willingness to push forward and innovate is a model for the rest of us who might find these times exasperating.