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Transcendental Meditation: Do it Right and You Might Even Fly!
Nothing beats relaxation and down time, and when such time is trademarked by a global corporation it must be the most superior rest period ever. Such is the case with Transcendental Meditation™, also known as TM™, a licensed trademark of the Maharishi…
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The End of Neo-Liberal Neverland
The Meaning of Success ‘How to succeed in Modern Business: Lessons from the Icelandic Voyage’ is the title of an address given by Iceland’s president Ólafur R. Grímsson to British business leaders in London’s Walbrook Club in 2005. In his lecture, the…
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Grapevine Exposes Sordid “Music Trip” to ‘scandinavia’s sodom’
A fortnight ago, the Grapevine hitched a ride with cover stars Retro Stefson, Ólafur Arnalds and Hjaltalín as they made their way to Oslo, Norway. Their mission: to perform at the annual by:Larm Nordic showcase festival and charm the socks off Scandinavian…
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Monsters and Mythical Beings – Tilberi
This eleventh instalment in our Hugleikur Dagsson illustrated series of Iceland’s monsters and mythical beings (or are they?) tells of the Tilberi. And boy, is that one fucked up being. Listen: Tilberi are magical creatures, made exclusively by women out of…
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Iceland’s Rainbow Revolution
Prologue: By early afternoon on January 20th 2009, it was obvious that it was going to be a historic day. Just how the day, and the ones that followed, would unfold was not yet clear. When the dust had settled, a whole…
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Things Falling Apart – Tuesday’s Protest In Photos
Photographer Jóhann Þröstur Pálmason – AKA SvarTTrast – was present at Austurvöllur on the eve of Tuesday 20.01.2009. This is the fateful night as seen through his lens: Thousands were gathered outside the house of parliament. Some brought along leftover fireworks from…
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The Grapevine Presents: 2K8 Round Table Round Up Bonanza Extravaganza Madness!
So this is the New Year. Aught nine. Seems pretty dark and rainy thus far, but then again most Icelandic years start out that way. And given the present situation, all the cold, rainy darkness seems to fit in perfectly with the…
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Involuntary treason
Páll Skúlason is professor of philosophy at the University of Iceland, and former Rector at the same institution. A Grapevine reporter sat down with Páll to discuss the philosophical sides of the current economic crisis, and to investigate if the current economic…
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The Day We Started Fighting Back
“We will not go quietly into the night! We will not vanish without a fight! We’re going to live on! We’re going to survive! Today we celebrate our Independence Day!” These words were spoken by a fictional President in a, let’s face…
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Can He Save Us, Too?
Barack Obama’s call for change resonates as deeply in Europe as it does in the US. The new leader of the Free World is seen as a unifying symbol, capable of rebuilding the bridges that the Bush administration burned down in the…
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Grapevine Airwaves Sunday
Read our Iceland Airwaves coverage by downloading today’s Grapevine Airwaves festival paper here. Download the pdf.
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Grapevine Airwaves Saturday
Read our Iceland Airwaves coverage by downloading today’s Grapevine Airwaves festival paper here.Download the pdf.
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Grapevine Airwaves Friday
Read our Iceland Airwaves coverage by downloading today’s Grapevine Airwaves festival paper here.Download the pdf.
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The Skeleton Economy
The Icelandic economy has crashed. The government has nationalized all three of the major banks in Iceland and most Icelandic financial institutions overseas are bankrupt. The global credit crisis that has left banks in Europe and the US bankrupt has hit Iceland…
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The Lessons of Life
At the beginning of 2006, Lovísa Elísabet Sigrúnardóttir was just known as the girl from Benny Crespo’s Gang. And even that would be stretching it, since the band was only known by a small group of people who pay attention to the…
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Sexism and Sloppy Journalism
In the last issue of the Reykjavík Grapevine we published an open letter from Björk, where she lambasted the music press collectively for being sexist and not doing their homework. Her letter provoked some controversy, and generated a lively Internet debate in…
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The Inevitability of Homogenisation
The powers that be are turning glorious old Staðarskáli into yet another standard, boring N1 gas-mall. And they tore down Brú. Those fucks. The walls of truck stop-cum-gas station Staðarskáli are plastered with thank-you notes and dedication shields from the community it…
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Predator for President
In retrospect it might seem obvious, but at the time no one really suspected that two of the stars of mid-eighties action flick Predator would become US governors. Back then, most people thought of it as a lightweight shoot ‘em up about…
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Chickenshit Happens
Iceland does not maintain an army; but since 2001, we have maintained the paramilitary Icelandic Crisis Response Unit (ICRU), an expeditionary peacekeeping force that is deployed on peacekeeping and humanitarian aid missions around the world, mostly in an effort to bolster Iceland’s…
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Insititute of Higher Ranking
In 2005, Kristín Ingólfsdóttir succeeded Páll Skúlason as Rector of the University of Iceland. After a year on the job, she revealed her ambitious plan to take the University of Iceland to the top 100 of the leading university ranking lists. Now,…
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The Book of Non-Icelanders
Journalist and author Colleen Kinder recently visited Iceland to interview American expats for a book projects she is working on. Here’s what she found out. I’ve never heard thunder here,” Jonas, an American living in Reykjavík, blurted out during our hike, as…
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Art and Ice – A Difficult Combination?
Pretty people, money and the weather – ask most people about Iceland and they’ll usually weave you a story around these three topics, touching on the freezing-but-beautiful environment (it’s Ice-land, right?) and how a round of drinks requires a small bank loan…
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Never Underestimate the Power of Play
Reykjavík based game developing company CCP was founded in June, 1997. In May 2003, the company launched its first Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMO), EVE Online, which took the on-line world by storm. The founders, Creative Director Reynir Harðarson and Chief Financial Officer Ívar…