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@rvkgrapevine

MOST AWESOME LETTER

Dear Mammút,
Thank you for your postcard! It’s great to hear your tour is going well (or was when you sent it, in any case – who knows what happened afterwards), and it’s great you sold out all your merch. Goddamn, you kids make us proud.
Go have some free beers at Bakkus to celebrate when y’all get back, aight?
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Good morning Haukur,
I’m submitting the following to the Inspired by Island competition, and I thought you might enjoy reading it and maybe even publishing part of it.  The Grapevine, after all, was also very much part of my Iceland, and I was very impressed by the quality, the energy and the stimulating eccentricity of your paper.  Thank you for that. Andre
My Iceland?  You want my Iceland?  Very well, but I warn you that if I give you my Iceland you will not get your Iceland back again.  My Iceland, after all, is filtered partly through Olaf Olafson, and just as his dreams become part of memory so my reality will become part of yours.
My Iceland is compounded of Arnaldur Indridason, Louis MacNeice, W. H. Auden, Mr. Bjarnfreðarson, Andri Snaer Magnason, and Halldor Laxness,  remembering always that Laxness is not just the grimly optimistic Halldor Laxness of  Independent People…
[goes on for approximately 45.000 more words…] Dear Andre,
Wow! You really were inspired by Iceland, huh! That was a Russian novel you sent us. Thanks, man. Unfortunately we couldn’t print the whole thing… OK, who are we kidding. We couldn’t even read the whole thing! Sorry. It’s just been really busy around here. And it is SUPER LONG. But it’s cool that you wrote it nonetheless. And thank you for your kind words, too. <3
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Hello,
I wondered if it is possible to post out a copy of The Reykjavik Grapevine, Issue 11 to us in England?
My daughter is a huge Bjork fan and would love to have a copy if it was at all possible, I would be happy to pay postage costs etc.
Thanks
Karen Ellis
Dear Karen,
But of course we can! We’d be glad to. Did you know you can even subscribe to the Grapevine for dirt cheap? No fooling! It’s all there on our website. Or on page two of this very issue. Cool, huh?
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Dear editor,
As an Israeli living in Iceland, I felt compelled writing you after reading the interview with the Palestinian author. Though she was correct on few points, there are still many misconception that are widely accepted among many people (among them many Icelanders) that I would like to clear up.
Give me the opportunity to clear some of them up for you and your readers. I offer you an exclusive interview for on the subject for the point a view rarely given stage on the local newspapers. Hopefully, that will shed little bit light on this controversial issue.
Med kvedju,
(poster asked us to remove his name in December 2016, so we’ll call him Bob)
Dear  Bob,
thank you for your letter. It’s good to hear “the Palestinian author” got some things right when we interviewed her, and it’s even better that some Israeli that moved to Iceland is kindly willing to allow us to interview him to clear up some of her misconceptions.
You should just write us an article and clear these ‘misconceptions’ up for yourself, though. We print pretty much anything folks send us (so long as it doesn’t suck all over the place, and it isn’t too long).
Anyway, what is it with all these folks writing in all the time asking to be interviewed? What’s that all about? Should we just start interviewing everyone that has an opinion or something he or she wants to promote?  Do other magazines do that? How come no one ever interviews us? We have lots of views and opinions and shit we’d like to promote.
In fact, Bob, you should interview us. We read your blog (www.[redacted]), and while it got some things right (well, a couple), you seem to foster a bunch of misconceptions that we would be happy to clear up for you and your readers. We offer you an exclusive interview on how you are totally wrong about a lot of things. Free of charge.
PS – sorry for the snarky tone of that reply. It’s cool that you read us, and that you are opinionated, and we really do urge you to write them down so we can publish them (and then, if anyone disagrees, they can write in to ‘correct’ you. FREE EXCHANGE OF IDEAS IS SO LOVELY). But you gotta admit, your letter was kinda douchey and sorta begged for some snark.
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HI!
I decided to write here, because i am worried!
When did Icelanders start cheating so much?
I thought that people here are nice and honest, but guess they are not.
Is it because i´m foreigner, that you think it is ok to cheat me?
I am not so rich that i can afford to all that crap you guys are selling me.
Stop that! Stop cheating and acting like gypsies!
You are not gypsies, you are icelanders. Peace loving honest people!
Stop fucking cheating me!
[redacted by request] Dear [redacted by request],
What did we cheat you on? Or did we perhaps cheat on you? Who knows! We never fully committed to this relationship in the first place, it was a summer fling. It was a fling! You knew that! You knew! You were the one who suggested an ‘open relationship’ (and my how well that worked out for everyone). 
Also, who are you to call us ‘nice’ and ‘honest’? Where the hell have you been? And WTF is with your goddamn racism? That is extremely uncool. In fact, your ‘gypsy’ remark sorta wants us to cheat you out of your money, and hope others do, too. Stop fucking being a racist! Stop it! Is it because we have almost no foreigners in Iceland that you think it’s OK to be all racist all over our pages.  You are not a racist, you are a probably a Finn. An alcoholic, pessimistic, suicidal sauna-lover.
Stop being a goddamn whinypants racist! Stop stereotyping folks! STOP IT!