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Selfie Nation
“The untamed, distant and cool Iceland” “A few reasons why Iceland is the best place in the world” Those are random headlines I spotted on Icelandic news sites the day I wrote this article. Both stories report on articles that appeared in…
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Welcome To The Dark Side
Winter is upon us. It’s here, enshrouding your very being in short, frosty days with only a few hours of sunlight, followed by long, frozen, windy nights. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Some handle it just fine, getting cosy at home as the weather…
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Tourist of the Year 2014
Wow, tourism really did dominate the landscape of debate here in 2014, didn’t it? We here at Grapevine have spent more time experiencing, arguing, analysing and pondering the effects of tourism on Iceland than maybe anything else. And there was some serious…
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Squeezing Blood From A Turnip: Iceland’s Universal Healthcare At Risk
In a small and private ceremony in a chapel in Fossvogur, around 30 friends and family members are present to pay their respects to 50-year-old Rósa Mikaelsdóttir, a single mother of three who passed away on November 17. Rósa had struggled with…
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May Day Mayday: Iceland’s Ongoing Doctor Strike
Following a round of unsuccessful negotiations, doctors in Iceland commenced their first ever strike in late October. In the wake of the banking crisis, so as to share the burden, doctors not only accepted a 5% wage cut, but also ceased seeking…
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Iceland’s University Hospital: The Director Speaks
Throughout the whole healthcare debacle, one man has consistently remained focused on the big picture: the National University Hospital of Iceland (LSH) director Dr. Páll Matthíasson, PhD. Educated as a psychiatrist, Páll worked in London, England, from 1997-2007 before returning to Iceland,…
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Down To The Bone: The Healthcare System, Post-Austerity
Following the economic collapse of 2008, the Icelandic State’s debts skyrocketed, reaching 126% of the country’s GDP in 2011. At the same time, State revenue sources ground to a halt, and property devalued. The consumer price index shows price levels on consumer…
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Prescribing Trouble: Iceland’s Social Insurance Explained
Prescription drugs used to be either completely, partially or not at all covered by the insurance system, sometimes arbitrarily. On May 4, 2013, a new system was implemented, which was meant to be simpler and more just than the old one. The…
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Iceland’s Healthcare System: How Does It Work?
Iceland maintains a universal healthcare system, under which all legal residents are covered by the Icelandic social insurance system. All hospital admissions are paid for by this system, as is the majority of the cost of outpatient appointments. There is a token…
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Future Perfect
On “The Story Island,” a fresh young crop of writers is busy carving out a space, making way, creating a culture all of their own, in defiance of what came before. Much like their predecessors, and their predecessors’ predecessors Icelanders’ rich literary…
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Youth Groups In Icelandic Literature, A Brief History Of
Some accounts claim that modern Icelandic literature began in 1835, when four young students started their own literary journal in Copenhagen. Their influences and impulses came from Europe; an amalgam of reigning Enlightenment ideals of progress and a desire to disseminate bright…
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Sea Change
Angelica Aquino moved from the Philippines to the East Iceland fishing hamlet of Djúpivogur over a decade ago. Enticed by a job in a factory owned by a fishing and fish processing firm called Vísir, Angelica, whose name has been changed for…
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Owning it
In a crumbling old building on the outskirts of central Reykjavík, a dust-covered, semi-abandoned workspace is coming to life. In one corner, a makeup artist applies vivid lipstick to a member of feminist rap collective Reykjavíkurdætur as photographer Axel Sigurðarson steadies his…
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Back To Basics
Although contemporary hip hop culture is undeniably global in its scope, most people wouldn’t think of Iceland as a hotbed for street dance, one of hip hop’s most recognizable and fundamental off-shoots. And honestly, it’s not. Today there are—at a generous estimate—maybe…
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Project: Overload
When we profiled New York design firm karlssonwilker for our 2012 DesignMarch issue, one of the things we discussed was the need for graphic design and visuals, and why people should pay them for what they do—what exactly they bring to the…
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This Is Not The First Time We’ve Seen Change
Reykjavík Art Museum’s Hafnarhús is making more noise than usual. Normally a quiet gallery building, today it’s throbbing with bass, the big glass windows rattling in their frames. Through an open service door, the cavernous main hall ripples with light—against the back…
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The Puffinisation Of A Country: Tourism Today
When Grapevine started in 2003, we were in the midst of what at the time seemed like a considerable tourism boom. The number of tourists per year was fast approaching the number of the population as a whole, or 300,000. Earlier that…
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Growing Pains
In the aftermath of 2008’s TOTAL ECONOMIC COLLAPSE, scores of Icelanders found themselves struggling to make ends meet as jobs became scarce and household debt skyrocketed. The nation collectively struggled to come up with ways to pull itself up by the bootstraps;…
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Old Masters, New Dude
He’s young—only 36—but creates his work using the same methods that artists employed hundreds of years ago. His techniques are like those of the Old Masters (even though it’s impossible to say for certain exactly what methods they employed). He paints in…
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Páll Óskar: In The Name Of Love
The front door is wide open. Giving a little tap on the wooden frame, I hear the boom of his instantly recognisable voice greeting me from the next room. The one and only Páll Óskar strolls into the foyer motioning that he’s…
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Best Of Reykjavík 2014 (Photo Gallery)
Once a year, we like to take a step back and celebrate our little city. It’s not that Reykjavík is a city without problems, or that it’s a place that doesn’t have plenty of ways in which it could improve. This probably…
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The Death Of Ben Frost
First, some disclosure: I came to know Australian-born musician Ben Frost almost as soon as he showed up in Iceland nine years ago, through mutual acquaintances and through eventually making and recording music together (he produced an album for my band, Reykjavík!,…
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Love In The Land Of The Midnight Sun
It’s nearing four o‘clock and the boys at the bar are tearing their shirts off. Bare chests multiply on the dance floor like drunken amoeba—three, four, five. This is a high-stakes game and all stops are pulled. You don’t go gently into…