Around Iceland In Eighty Minutes: Friðrik Þór Friðriksson’s “Hringurinn”

Before Friðrik Þór Friðriksson earned Iceland its first (and so far only) Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nomination for Children of Nature in 1991 — and long before he accepted the role of chairing the jury at the Moscow International Film Festival in 2024, a gig most self-respecting directors would have declined — he dabbled in a series of nontraditional projects. Now a kind of luminary in the local film industry, his early work includes gems like the 1982 punk documentary Rokk í Reykjavík, controversial for its time, and the 1985 Hringurinn (The Circle in English) — a film that takes you on a dialogue-free road trip around Iceland.

Hringurinn is an experimental film without a traditional plot, characters, or narrative. Friðrik Þór blends the elements you might expect in a film, rolling them into one endless 1,331-kilometre loop of Iceland’s Route 1.

“I watch the film on YouTube in a terrible 360p quality, which honestly feels like an insult to both the filmmaker and anyone who claims to like movies.”

Quite literally: he places a 16mm camera on a car that drives around Iceland’s major (only) highway. The camera is programmed to take one frame every 12 metres, and the film is later edited to show 24 frames per second — the speed of sound. This means a continuous trip around Route 1, which normally takes 16 to 18 hours (assuming no stops, i.e., impossible), in Hringurinn is compressed into a mere 80 minutes.

I watch the film on YouTube in a terrible 360p quality, which honestly feels like an insult to both the filmmaker and anyone who claims to like movies. I think of those days back in middle school, when mobile phones that could play a few minutes of video first arrived, and the kids would gather around, cracking up over some grainy nonsense. I’m sure this is not how Friðrik Þór wanted his film to be seen, and wish I could watch it properly — preferably on the biggest screen in Iceland, at Egilshöll’s cinema. But after checking the library, emailing the director, and contacting the National Film Archive of Iceland, this still seems to be my best bet. [A few days later, the Film Archive ended up sending me a screener of the film, definitely an upgrade from YouTube, but still pretty grainy.]

Off east we go

On the plus side, watching a car drive around Iceland is one of those rare experiences where you can rely entirely on your own memories. I’ve driven the Ring Road many times, so the epic landscape along the way — lush hills that change into black lava fields then into dramatic mountains and then back again, purple lupines accompanying the journey in summer or the northern lights lighting up the darkest stretches of the road in winter — are deeply ingrained in my mind. If you’ve taken this trip at least once, you’ll know exactly what I mean.

The movie goes like this: on a beautiful autumn day, the car starts in Reykjavík and heads east, reaching Hveragerði in just two minutes. By minute 10, it passes through Vík; by 25, it arrives in Höfn; and by minute 38, it’s already in Egilsstaðir. Travelling around the country at the speed of sound is quite amusing — just imagine if this were reality and any road trip could be sped up like this. You could reach wherever the best weather in Iceland is in less than an hour.

The soundtrack, composed by Lárus Grímsson, is an extensive piece of work, running continuously throughout the entire film without a single break. There’s something magical about it — at times quite intense, at others hypnotic. Its repetitive motifs pull you in, but in a rather uncomfortable way.

Too niche for the big-screen сrowd

Friðrik Þór is not the only director who had an idea to travel around the country for a video project of some sort. The most famous example is probably Sigur Rós’s 24-hour live broadcast Route One. Taking place on the summer solstice in 2016, the project was meant to promote the band’s then-new single “Óveður.” In Route One, a car drove around Iceland for 24 hours to a soundtrack created around “Óveður” using generative music software. As Jónsi explained, the goal of this “slow TV” experiment was to do “the exact opposite” of what we’re used to in our fast-moving daily lives. The best moments of the 24-hour journey were then released as an eponymous album. At the time, this transfixing journey through Iceland felt refreshingly new — and even inspired Route One watch parties (one of which I actually attended, sitting through an impressive six hours of the broadcast. Oh, those were the days).

Back then, I didn’t know that Friðrik Þór had done a similar thing 30 years earlier. And I doubt anyone was throwing watch parties for Hringurinn at the time. There are almost no mentions of the film on the internet, and even a deep dive into printed media archives from the 1980s suggests that it was very much a niche project back then. In the few mentions I did find in DV and Morgunblaðið from that time, Friðrik Þór complains about how few people were seeing the film and that it might have to be moved from the main screening room at Háskólabíó to a smaller venue.

What makes Friðrik Þór’s approach different from Sigur Rós Route One, or anything else I’ve seen on the topic of road-tripping around Iceland, is its sped-up effect. “Fuck the slow TV,” indirectly tells us Friðrik Þór (it’s 1985, there’s barely any TV in Iceland, at least on Thursdays). You don’t need to savour this beautiful country, just sit back and you’ll see everything you want — and probably even more than you would if you had gone on a five-day trip around the Ring Road. Perhaps Hringurinn is the 80s version of FlyOver Iceland — “Sweeping glaciers. Stunning fjords. Ancient mysteries” in under an hour. But Friðrik Þór just didn’t know how to market it that well.

Everything and nothing

I couldn’t finish Hringurinn in one go.

Maybe it’s the video quality, maybe it’s the growing trance-like pull of the music, maybe it’s a sudden urge to be on mushrooms — or maybe it’s simply that there’s literally nothing happening. The thoughts that pique my interest during the film included: “Oh, so much of the road is gravel,” “Hey, this old-school car is cool,” and “Ooof, imagine driving in this fog.” A few times, there’s road construction and a construction vehicle suddenly appears on the screen. This is the closest we get to a plot twist.

“A few times, there’s road construction and a construction vehicle suddenly appears on the screen. This is the closest we get to a plot twist.“

I stop somewhere between Egilsstaðir and Akureyri, take an overnight break, and finish the rest of the film the next morning before breakfast. Honestly, the break makes the rest of the watch more enjoyable. With a renewed curiosity, I watch the car cut through corners of gravel roads in Eyjafjörður and thick fog creeping in over the screen somewhere after Varmahlíð. Passing through Borgarnes, the sun starts to set and the sky paints itself with pink streaks. Three minutes before the car reaches the capital, the music intensifies again, but this time with a more hopeful tone. At minute 76, the car passes through Mosfellsbær and finally returns to Reykjavík.

In the past decade, Friðrik Þór has mostly collaborated as producer on other films, and I wonder if directing something as obscure as Hringurinn is still on his horizon. But whether you see it as a hidden masterpiece or a time-wasting experiment, there’s one thing that Hringurinn makes clear: travelling around Iceland never gets old.

There’s nowhere you can currently watch Hringurinn. And if you find one, maybe think twice. Take a road trip instead?