this day in icelandic history — The Reykjavik Grapevine %

Dirty Secrets Made Public

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It is true that Oprah Winfrey has an estimated 30 million viewers and is one of the most influential people…

Preaching History

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Most of the Icelanders who migrated to North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries went to Canada….

Eurovision Guru Páll Óskar Gets to the Bottom of the International Competition

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Páll Óskar, singer, performer, and DJ competed for Iceland in Eurovision 1997. He is a huge fan of the competition…

Screaming “Masterpiece“?

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The categorical imperative: Create! It happened suddenly and swiftly and no one even seemed to notice. 30 years ago bohemians…

FJALAKÖTTURINN

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Opened a month ago, Fjalakotturinn, which means “the cat on the boards,” (boards as in theatre), stands on the oldest…

Siv Friðleifsdóttir: Changing the Face of Icelandic Government?

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“I want to make it a law that ministers can’t be members of parliament,” Siv Friðleifsdóttir tells me on the…

Thirty Minutes with Róbert Marshall

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Unlike a prominent American journalist, Marshall resigned immediately. He has since rebuilt his reputation. He spoke with the Grapevine from…

Can Bobby Fisher be helped?

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How Fischer Played his Part in Political Disputes But not between the countries you think Getting Bobby Fischer to Iceland…

A UNIQUE LIFE – A UNIQUE MUSEUM

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It was raining heavily and the rain turning into sleet when I arrived at Glúfrasteinn, the home of the late…

“We Are Not theEnemies of the Seal”

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The people of Húsavík attracted the seals with smoke. They hunted the seal in nets and had a box of…

Echoes of the PastEchoes of the Future

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A woollen raincoat cased in transparent plastic, ice cubes in the shape of Iceland, (Klakinn, as they call it), a…

THE FACE OF ICELANDIC FOOD:

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By Valur Gunnarsson An American book from 1965 called The Art of Scandinavian Cooking (a contradiction in terms, you may be…

The Burning Issue

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Originally penned sometime around 1280 and apparently based loosely on factual events, with a good dose of fictional narrative thrown…

can jesus, allah and science coexist?

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by Valur Gunnarsson TAKE 1: The Vikings “In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth.” Easily the best…

On graphic design and Iceland

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The first floor of the exhibition “Graphic design In Iceland,” currently in Hafnarhúsið, is mostly dedicated to the early days…

The Struggle for New Iceland

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by Valur Gunnarsson TAKE 1: The Vikings Relations between North Americans and Icelanders did not get off to an auspicious…

TIME FOR THE BULLET?

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The film was made almost 15 years ago when farmers had no option but to leave their farms for the…

LIKE “DALLAS”, ONLY WITH SOFT DRINKS

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1. ORKA The mother of all power drinks. Using the foolproof blend of ginseng, guarana and caffeine, Orka (which means…

WAVING A PIRATE FLAG

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Seditious Superstar “She sings funny. And she don´t dance all that great either,” a character says in the film Dancer…

NATURAL DEFENSE

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For some Icelanders, environmentalists represent a few sentimentalists who hang onto antiquated notions of preserving nature despite economic “realities.” Yet…

BREIÐAFJÖRÐUR: THE ICELANDIC MEDITERRANEAN?

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I got onboard the Særún. Our first stop was at a rock inhabited by a colony of puffins. The catamaran…