A Scene Under Siege: The Never-ending, Always Painful Loss Of Reykjavík’s Live Venues

A debate has long been raging in Reykjavík about the diminishing number of small and medium sized concert venues. With rising real estate prices and a booming tourism industry hungry for space, it is becoming harder to maintain the city’s vibrant music scene. It’s not a new phenomenon, per se. Lamenting the loss of beloved venues is a cyclical passtime of music lovers in Reykjavík. The latest victim in this reincarnation of the onslaught against live music is the popular venue KEX.

“Just yesterday (August 14), we were hosting a concert here at Prikið with a young and upcoming Icelandic band. Great atmosphere, amazing party and a perfect band for us,” says Geoffrey Þór Huntington-Williams (Geoff), owner and proprietor of music venue Prikið on Bankastræti in the heart of downtown Reykjavík. “Then at little before midnight the police came knocking. We have a permit to 01:00, but they had received a noise complaint from the tourists staying in the Center Hotel luxury apartments next door. We are in the part of Reykjavík where there is music and partying, which creates the magic of Reykjavík.”

After interrupting a concert at a bar that has been operating at the same location since the 1950s to check its permits, the police left and the music was allowed to continue. But that is not the case everywhere in the downtown core. In the past 20 years, the city has lost many of its small and medium sized concert venues, with the tourism-driven gentrification of the past 10 years being a major factor in driving up rents and turning spaces that previously catered to local culture into hotels, souvenir shops and other enterprises that service the tourism industry.

“The tourists who come here and think about Reykjavík as some amusement park or a zoo deserve no warm welcome.”

“I’m becoming radicalised, you can quote me on that! I’m not opposed to tourists, but the tourists who come here and think about Reykjavík as some amusement park or a zoo deserve no warm welcome.” says Geoff. “The real estate prices have become so ridiculously high that everything is being turned into spaces for those types of tourists, and what happens then is that places like us get noise complaints, because the tourists who chose to stay on Laugavegur can’t go to sleep.”

As with other cities around the world, hotels and tourists want to stay downtown — in the middle of life, restaurants and culture. But increasingly places like Prikið are getting mired in an argument with an industry that sells comfort and quiet to foreign visitors staying in what has historically been the centre of Reykjavík’s notoriously raucous nightlife. The situation is not helped by the city’s rigid permitting regulations, which make it all but impossible to operate late night bars and clubs outside of the city’s central 101 postcode.

GusGus at Kex by Hörður Sveinsson

Goodbye KEX

The latest victim of the tourism gold rush is KEX Hostel on Skúlagata. For years, it has been a mainstay for up and coming artists and those who play more non-mainstream kinds of music. On September 1, KEX will be no more and the packed concert programme, which often featured two concerts a week, will end. The stages and the soundsystem will make way for beds, bathrooms and whatever else the average tourist needs.

The reason for this is simple: management’s Excel sheet shows hotel rooms create more profit than music.

“It’s been going really well and we’ve always had good attendance at our gigs, but the owners decided they could make more money from turning the space into hotel rooms,” says KEX’s outgoing event organiser Ólafur Halldór Ólafsson (Óli Dóri). “I think it is incredibly important for bands that we have these small and medium size venues, this is where they get noticed and where they learn how to perform.”

For the past four years, Óli Dóri has been managing live music and events at KEX, but he has been booking artists for various bars and clubs in Reykjavík since 2004. Over the past two decades, he has witnessed the changes to the city’s concert scene firsthand.

“The tourism industry is musclig these places out of the market and I think authorities need to do more.”

“When I started out, there were way more venues. For instance, during the early years of Iceland Airwaves there were a lot of great places for concerts, which are now gone. NASA, Faktorí, Húrra, the list is long,” he says. “This development is very short sighted, I don’t think people realise how important the music scene is for us. Tourists go to the countryside for nature, but they come to Reykjavík for the culture and the music.”

According to Óli Dóri, the disappearance of the smaller venues that provide a stage for emergent artists could stifle the growth of young bands, having a devastating impact on the future of Icelandic music.

“The tourism industry is muscling these places out of the market and I think authorities need to do more, because these venues are a vital part of Iceland’s very vibrant music scene,” he says. ”But I want to be positive, I want to believe that the authorities realise how important this issue is.”

The government steps in

Icelanders have always prided themselves on punching above their weight when it comes to producing internationally renowned bands. It is hard to adequately underscore just how important artists such as Björk and Sigur rós have been for putting Iceland on the map internationally.

Before the post-financial crash tourism boom, the typical tourist was more Pitchfork reader than nature lover — they came here for the bands, not the Blue Lagoon. The worry now is that if up and coming bands lose the opportunity to take these necessary early steps, the talent pipeline could dry up.

“I can’t overstate how important these smaller venues are for the music scene,” says María Rut Reynisdóttir, the director of Icelandic Music. “This is where the grassroot lives, where bands take their first steps. If we don’t have that part of the scene, then we won’t have the bigger, more established part of it.”

Iceland Music is a public organisation, which was founded last year with the mandate of serving Icelandic music and artists “locally and internationally.” Part of that work is a new ISK 216 million fund that, among other things, will support music venues financially.

“I’ve been arguing for the importance of supporting smaller venues for years,” María Rut says. “We need a place for the entire spectrum of music and that includes everything from small joints to Harpa. The government has now created a policy when it comes to this issue, which is great, because we need a clear vision on how to tackle the issue. But it is very sad that a prolific place like KEX is closing down.”

“Culture is what creates a city and our music scene receives a lot of attention abroad. We don’t want to end up with a downtown that is nothing but hotels.”

María Rut claims that initiatives like Iceland Music are positive steps towards safeguarding the local music scene and their approach is constantly evolving. They have researched what other Nordic countries are doing and she claims that her organisation is always looking into ways to help safeguard the vibrancy of the Icelandic music scene.

“There is a lot of value in Icelandic music,” she says. “Culture is what creates a city and our music scene receives a lot of attention abroad. We don’t want to end up with a downtown that is nothing but hotels.”

During COVID, the Reykjavík municipality put together a fund that helped concert venues operate and invest in things such as sound systems and stages, which was of great benefit to places like KEX. However, as it is with all government intervention into markets, it remains a tricky subject, as the places in question are privately owned, despite serving an obvious cultural good.

Uncool country

For both Geoff and Óli Dóri, there is one big question that needs to be answered to guide policy: what kind of city do we want to live in?

It used to be that Reykjavík was considered a pretty cool city that had a lot more to offer than its size suggested, but that status was built on a vibrant and appealing culture that needs space to thrive. Much of downtown is unrecognisable from 20 years ago as developers rush to profit from an out of control housing market. Just in the last 12 months, rent in Reykjavík rose by 13% according to figures from the Icelandic Housing and Construction Authority.

“I’m in my 30s and I come from a time that doesn’t exist anymore, but I remember being in my 20s when it was possible for young people to live downtown,” says Geoff. “Today I have these prejudices against young people who can afford to own an apartment downtown. There is no way these kids didn’t get help from their parents. These things are all related.”

“The people who are making money hand over foot on the downtown real estate market and the tourism industry need to start pondering what it is that makes this city great.”

Business owners have not been immune to the astronomical increase in property prizes. According to figures from the Icelandic Central Bank, from 2021 to January 2024, the prices for commercial properties rose 26%. Running a small concert venue is usually not a big money maker and for businesses that often exist on a month-to-month basis, a quarter increase on rent can make it untenable — or impossible — to keep the doors open.

“The people who are making money hand over foot on the downtown real estate market and the tourism industry need to start pondering what it is that makes this city great. To think about the times when they had a great night out in Reykjavík,” says Geoff.

According to Óli Dóri, it is vital to make investors, who have been making bank off the housing boom that is not showing signs of slowing down, understand that a city is built out of more than profits and concrete.

“It is always getting more and more expensive to rent a space to do anything in Reykjavík and I think we need to get real estate owners onboard, to make them understand the value of culture. To make them understand how shortsighted this development is.”

The downing of NASA

One of the earliest and most high profile victims of the Reykjavík tourism boom was the concert venue NASA on Austurvöllur. It can be argued that the popular venue was the canary in the coalmine — in many ways, it is possible to draw a direct timeline from the closing of NASA in 2012 to the situation Reykjavík finds itself in today. For years, the venue had been a mainstay for the local music scene, operating as the stepstone for bands moving from the smaller venues onto the big stage.

“A lot of musicians and others came out to protest the closure of NASA, but the owner of the building decides what happens and I believe he felt there was more money to be made in the tourism industry — money talks,” explains Ingibjörg Örlygsdóttir, better known as Inga á NASA, who ran the beloved venue for years. “It’s a very sad development and I think it is inevitable that it will have a negative impact on the music industry and the future for Icelandic bands.”

“I guess all the hotels are full, but is that all there is?”

The venue was torn down and despite promises from the owner that it would reopen with a similar mandate and continue to cater to live music this has been far from the truth. The old, loud and rocking club that used to be a key component of festivals such as Iceland Airwaves and Innipúkinn and where artists such as Trabant, GusGus, Páll Óskar and more played weekly is now the rather garishly named Independence Hall, located so conveniently in the Iceland Parliament Hotel. Reportedly, booking a Friday night event there will set you back at least a million ISK — far beyond what a local musician can even dream of affording.

“Today, NASA is a beautiful wedding and conference hall, but it is not a nice concert venue,” she says. “I think what has happened to the small and medium sized venues in Reykjavík since then is incredibly sad. I guess all the hotels are full, but is that all there is? All musicians have to start somewhere, nobody starts out by performing in Harpa.”

Spacestation by Hafsteinn Snær Þórsteinsson

The last hurrah

One of the more notable bands, who took their first steps onto the scene at KEX is the rock band Spacestation. The band started performing live last year and has been a frequent fixture at KEX ever since.

“What will inevitably happen is that the artists currently playing in Harpa will die out and there won’t be anyone to replace them.”

“We would never have made it to the surface without getting the chance to play these small venues,” says frontman Björgúlfur Jes Einarsson. “We had our first gig at KEX in April of that year and we’ve played there five more times since. It was also just amazing for us to perform with a proper sound system and an audio engineer. What will inevitably happen is that the artists currently playing in Harpa will die out and there won’t be anyone to replace them.”

Björgúlfur says that the value of smaller venues for bands starting out isn’t just the ability to reach an audience, it is also a learning experience and a possibility to test out songs. To find out what works and what doesn’t. Their 7th concert at KEX will be on the closing day on August 31, where Spacestation will perform alongside Hasar and DJ Óli Dóri.

“We’ll be the final act at KEX’s final night,” Björgúlfur concludes. “I’m going to use the occasion to chant something against tourism in Reykjavík.”

Read more about the Reykjavík music scene here.