This June, Iceland found out that it was, indubitably, the happiest place on Earth – fuck Disney World, Iceland blows it away, with Australia following somewhere as a distant second. When announced casually in a June 2006 Guardian article, the Icelandic media…

Stefán Þorleifsson, 90-year-old sports instructor and gym coach, is sitting on the couch in his two-storey house in Neskaupstaður. He has just been asked what makes Icelanders the happiest nation on earth. “I doubt there is a simple answer to that, my…

Typically they start with the weather. If you’re writing about the northernmost capital in the world, the windiest country on the planet, a country with “Ice” in its name, yeah, it’s understandable you’d start with weather. But it’s a non-story: Reykjavík is…

“I can’t believe we’re overlooking the most famous restaurant in Reykjavík,” says Ian Rankin, as we sit down. It takes me a moment to realise that he is not referring to the high-end restaurant SALT, in which we are sitting, but rather…

“I guess Frank, the guitarist, got too drunk and he passed out onstage and he landed on me. I thought he was pushing me, so I may have decided to start choking him. He laughed it off, but I think he’s still…

The book is called Draumlandið: Sjálfshjálparbók handa hræddri þjóð, or The Dreamland: A Self Help Book For A Frightened Nation. In the three months since its release, it has been re-printed three times, and reached record sales for a book published out…

You may have heard of the new water laws that clogged parliament with filibustering and heated debate for days on end. According to the outraged opposition parties, this controversial new bill is fundamentally altering the relationship between the nation and one of…

The concert and political movement of January 7th probably won’t be remembered by the date alone, as we have suggested on our cover, but it will be a key moment in Icelandic history. With 5,500 guests, the concert brought in a higher percentage of…

The parking lots were packed, the lines were long and security was tight. A foreigner was busy scalping tickets by the entrance queue, and by the backstage door I bore incredulous witness to a livid argument over a young man’s right to…

Nobody knows what to do about Björk when she’s in Iceland: she’s kind of like the 80-pound elephant in the room. You imagine someone is going to gush, someone is going to stare, but with her around, few people are thinking of…

/// Three bands, three costume changes. I bet that was fun. – It was hectic. Schizophrenic. /// Rass is known for being a political band, yet you didn’t make any political statements during Rass’ performance. – That’s true. We avoided this for…

In August 2004, the Reykjavík Grapevine brought you the story of farmer Guðmundur Ármannsson at Vað near Egilsstaðir. At the time, Guðmundur was in a dispute with the National Power Company, Landsvirkjun, over the rights to build an access road through his…

Margrét Vilhjálmsdóttir is an award-winning actress (Falcons, The Seagull’s Laughter) who has been working mostly in the Icelandic theatre for over ten years. More recently, she was approached by the environmentalist group Hætta (Stop) to help organise one of the largest benefit…

According to World Health Organisation statistics from 2002, the average number of live births per 1000 in Scandinavia, among women aged 15 to 19, is 10.4. In Iceland, it’s 19. In fact, Iceland is edged out only by the UK (with 20…

The kennitala — Iceland’s personal identification number — has been getting a bad rap lately. Persónuvernd (the Icelandic Data Protection Authority) suggested late in 2004 that Icelandic kennitölur are too often used and too easily accessible. Persónuvernd proposed that Icelanders instead carry…

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I didn’t personally download your album. I overheard someone listening to it and confiscated it. I swear. After we heard that you weren’t that upset over the fact that it was online. Jónsi: How does it sound when you download it? I…

THE WARZONE: The two locations of shooting are the Sandvík beach on the west coast of the peninsula and an area around Krýsuvík south of the lake Kleifarvatn. Both areas have been affected by soil erosion for a long time: 60 years…

However, a few brave extras have given the Grapevine a unique insight into what it has been like to be a part of the Hollywood dream machine. One young man, whose identity shall be kept secret to protect the innocent, says that…