Published September 20, 2024

Making this issue of your Reykjavík Grapevine was a whirlwind.

As we were calling across the time zones to chase down the INNI guys for our cover feature, news broke of another suspected murder in Iceland, and we could hear the chants of street protests through the office window over the shameful threatened deportation of chronically ill Palestinian boy Yazan Tamimi.

At the same time, we were having conversations and photoshoots with many great people in Iceland’s flourishing arts scene. We talked to film directors, festival organisers, talented chefs, and music pioneers, from exciting upstarts to returning legends.

It was a crunching change of gear switching back to reporting on rising knife crime and the sky-high cost of living one minute, then joking around about a deadly spider infestation of suburban paradise Grafarvogur the next.

It’s a lot to hold in one’s head when things are simultaneously so vital, exciting, awful, and dystopian. As many of you readers expressed in the comments online, we found ourselves asking — what the hell is going on in Icelandic society right now? Get a thoughtful take on that from Grapevine’s publisher Jón Trausti here.

The whirlwind continues, and we hope you enjoy this snapshot of it. If you’re in Grafarvogur, good luck with those spiders. Aukwafina forever. And free Palestine.

Catherine Fulton will return.

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