The Race For A Great Summer

In the summertime, Icelanders do anything for a good time

Before we left our stinky turfhouses (some as late as the 1960s), winters were a time of quiet consolation when us farmers and fishermen stayed indoors. Ideally, everyone had worked their asses off enough during the summertime to rest easy during the icy months. People told stories, sang together, knitted clothes, wrote the sagas and got fucked up on homebrewed spirits. During the summer, the work was relentless, with the sole aim of sustaining you and your fellow turf moles throughout the next season. Rinse and repeat.

Since Iceland’s urbanisation and the country’s general development, this dynamic has gone topsy-turvy. Winters are for work, summers for leisure. This rapid transformation, among other things, has exacerbated an almost woeful sense of desperation among the Icelandic nation.

After a long dark winter, Icelanders crave getting something out of summer, willing to do almost anything to squeeze any fun and sun out of it. It’s a frantic pursuit of enjoyment — almost so frantic that no actual enjoyment comes out of it. But when it works, Icelanders get drunk, euphoric, excited, optimistic, and sunburnt.

They feel and experience — albeit briefly — all the things that they miss year-round. The sense of feeling alive, the sense that nature, for once, is not trying to kill you. To do something physically and emotionally which other countries take for granted: to feel alive, to feel love, to feel a sense of hope and purpose. Icelanders will do almost anything to find their summers.

“After a long dark winter, Icelanders crave getting something out of summer, willing to do almost anything to squeeze any fun and sun out of it.”

Trying to explain the integral components of what makes summers in Iceland so special, we reached out to friends of the Grapevine for their most prized summer memories. Here are their stories, playing out against the backdrop of some classic Icelandic summer hits.

Waking up after winter

As you may have noticed by now, Iceland’s location on the orb we call Earth means that wintertime is inky black. In the deep of the snowy season, sunlight is limited to only a few hours per day. In some places, towns nestled in fjords surrounded by towering mountains, it might not even show up at all. The customary darkness permeates Iceland’s culture and even into formal governmental policies: the Directorate of Health officially encourages higher doses of vitamin D compared to neighbouring countries.

But winters aren’t necessarily constricted to that contractual quarter of a year. A common joke, usually told to tourists, includes the punchline that Iceland only experiences two seasons. That’s because autumn isn’t really a thing here, as it’s just more cold disguised as wind, and spring is just early summer (or an abnormally late winter).

“The Icelandic summer to me is the delicate scent of the enzymes finally changing in the soil, offering plants to wake up after a long winter and the spring that never arrived,” writes singer-songwriter Ólöf Arnalds.

Helgi Björnsson by Hörður Sveins

Since they didn’t have a say in the matter, Icelanders have endured this state of nature for a millennium. In recent decades through the power of budget airlines, a sizable portion of the public flat out refuses to participate in Icelandic winters, opting instead for a Mediterranean climate. Practicing their own form of tourist colonialism, the roaming Icelander has taken seasonal quarters in Tenerife, Spain. In 2024, approximately 50,000 countrymen visited the equatorial island, with rates of 2,000 staying there every week over the course of winter.

But, against all common sense, we still crave enjoying the sunny season in Iceland. Having suffered the cruel breath of winter, people are too stubborn to waste the fruits of their labour somewhere else. If shit hits the fan and summer sucks, Tenerife acts like Iceland’s nuclear bunker.

Put that all together, and you have a recipe for a highly volatile national psyche and a downright toxic relationship with sunshine. After nine months of habitual seasonal depression, frost, rain, northerly winds, and over 30 different ways to say snow, Icelanders race to make their wildest fantasies materialise. Former Grapevine Editor-in-Chief Anna Andersen encapsulates the mania:

“Iceland in the summertime can be cold, wet, and windy, but when the sun shines, a peculiar thing happens,” writes Anna. “The temperature is 15°C, but it somehow feels like 25°C, and it looks like 35°C. If you head downtown on one of those days, you’ll find half the nation sitting outside of bars and cafes, scantily clad and content to be turning a bright shade of red.”

Artist Jelena Ciric further contemplates the magic summer brings. “The way birds catch the sun’s rays when it dips just below the horizon on summer nights, and glow pink against the dark blue sky,” she wrote.

That magic is partly found in our fleeting and renewed relationship with nature. For the first time in months, nature isn’t trying to get us to contemplate why, every day, we make the decision to live in Iceland.

Ragga Gísla by Hörður Sveins

Pop and punk icon Ragga Gísla (pictured) echoes this sentiment. “My favourite thing to do during summers is to find a nice dwarf shrub and lay down. It’s a bright summer’s day, the birds are chirping and the flies are buzzing. There, I fall asleep and feel rejuvenated. My favourite summer song is Mugison’s “Stingum af”. It’s beautiful in every way. The lyrics are adventurous and perfectly juvenile for it to light my summer mood and warm my heart.”

And speaking of the adventurous and juvenile, musician Ása Dýradóttir writes: “It’s 6:00 in July at some pier in East Iceland and you are 19 running on one flatkaka and soaked from the freezing ocean and your knees are bleeding but you are invincible,” she adds.

“To do something physically and emotionally which other countries take for granted: to feel alive, to feel love, to feel a sense of hope and purpose. Icelanders will do almost anything to find their summers.”

“He tastes of cheap lager and 35 cigarettes with dead flowers in his hair and the music is over and the gig is a blur but you think you did OK. The birds are screaming and the sun does not set so you just hover through the morning like it does. The electric mania of Icelandic summer controls every cell in your body and while you love it you ache even though you have not known any real pain yet but surely true art only comes from sadness and you are determined to find it before it finds you,” Ása shares.

We are so willing to make it the most fun we’ve ever had, the Icelandic language has more than 30 ways to describe the varying levels of intoxication. Icelanders get euphoric, borderline manic even, when temperatures reach a whopping 10 degrees. You see Icelanders dressing up in shorts where no European would catch himself without wearing a parka.

Hot tubs and garden whales

In April 2025, news outlets reported that hot tub sales had risen by 10% since last year. It’s a move of dizzying self-gratification, as Iceland is one of the rare places where a public pool is always in your vicinity. Similar to our farming forebears, it speaks to our determination to ensure that we are well equipped to deal with rain or shine.

Bríet by Hörður Sveins

Photographer and former Grapevine staffer Jói Kjartans sums up the essence of Icelandic summers with vivid memories. “Waking up at 12:00. Sundhöllin in the sun. Hamburger and beer at Vitabar. Some exclusive party in Viðey or something with free drinks in the sunshine. Then Röntgen for some serious mingling. After that Kaffibarinn for some serious dancing until 4 AM. Then an afterparty at the Ingólfur Arnarson statue at Arnarhóll until 7 AM (still in the sunshine). Walk home with a beautiful companion. Knock on the door of the next bakery on the way home and get a bag full of snúður and donuts for free. All my films are full. Sleep. And then repeat.”

This kind of national bliss produced during summer would not be possible, in large part, were it not for Iceland’s generous labour environment. Generally speaking, every salaried employee is granted two paid vacation days for each month of employment. Tallying it up, that’s 24 days per year. Additionally, pre- and primary schools take varying time off to recuperate, meaning that absent parents must pick up the slack come summer leave. So, what do you do?

“If shit hits the fan and summer sucks, Tenerife acts like Iceland’s nuclear bunker.”

For some, the answer is simple: pack your kids in a family-owned mini van and go camping. Manager of Bíó Paradís Óli Hjörtur Ólafsson remembers one such memory. “I think the year was 1989 and I was 11 years old when my mother and stepfather went for a camping trip one weekend in Kirkjubæjarklaustur with my sister and step siblings,” he starts.

“I had never camped before and remember I couldn’t be bothered, as I wanted much rather to go abroad. I was a bit of a diva. I remember vividly when we stopped at Seljalandsfoss, completely unharassed — a rare experience these days. When we arrived at Kirkjubæjarklaustur, my siblings and I hopped on an air mattress and slid down a hillside. The weather was insanely good and I remember how everything was so bright. Then, when I came home, I would not have traded this experience for a trip abroad.”

Another seemingly homegrown idea permeating Icelandic culture is the need to have constant access to a summer house. Traditionally, these are wooden huts peppered around the countryside which can give burnt-out individuals a brief respite from the mundanity of urban life. Honestly, the concept of owning not one, but two houses is a baffling notion to the coming millennial generation, but strong labour practices have managed to safeguard this philosophy. Almost every single labour union has numerous of these cottages available for its members, for a subsidised price. Anna Andersen has a charming anecdote from her childhood cabin.

gugusar by Hörður Sveins

“The word psithurism refers to the calming sound that wind makes when it blows through the trees and rustles their leaves. No matter where I am in the world, that sound has a way of transporting me back to my great grandma’s cottage, where I spent so many childhood summers playing outside, late into the night,” she wrote.

Author Hallgrímur Helgason told us about his wildlife encounter at his summer house: “We have a summer house up north, in Hrísey Island, so every summer we go there for six weeks or more,” he wrote. “The house, named Bjarg, stands on a cliff close to the sea, on the southeast tip of the island. Once I was working in the garden on a beautiful calm and bright summer evening, when I heard this loud breathing, as if a huge troll was standing behind me. I immediately turned and found no troll, but ten metres away from shore I noticed a big humpback whale disappear into the ocean. From then on I started talking about our whale in the garden.”

The national summer locomotive

All of this results in plenty of time to travel and destinations to visit. Those who aren’t particularly fond of the idea of spending four to six hours in a cramped plane — just to arrive at a place which seems to have even more fellow Icelanders than at home — will likely occupy the various spots around the Ring Road.

For film director Smári Gunn, “There is nothing as serene as teeing off at midnight, at summer solstice, at a remote golf course in the Icelandic countryside. It’s typical that the weather falls asleep late at night, so the calm and silence is second to none […] in the midnight sun, you can’t go wrong.”

“Another fuel revving up the travel engine is produced by simply following the sun.”

In an attempt to get this national locomotive moving, you will find festivals — where music may or may not be the focal point — dotted in nearly every single town throughout the island. There are at least 50 local festivals happening around the country, demonstrating local culture in an attempt to attract visitors to remote towns.

Curious names such as Akureyri’s Car Days (Bíladagar), Höfn í Hornafirði’s Lobster Celebration, and Akranes’s Irish Days pop up on the map, all with their unique perspective on what a good time means. Of course, the common denominator is copious amounts of drinking.

Another fuel revving up the travel engine is produced by simply following the sun. By now, it’s almost like a national sport in Iceland, where sensible people check the weather forecast every three hours for the next pit stop on the Ring Road.

Steinarr Lárr sent us an automobile anecdote: “When the jeep is full of diesel and has new tyres. I deflate them. I pass rather aimlessly around the highlands and notice I haven’t filled my lungs in nine months. The track playing in my mind is “Jörðin sem ég ann” by Magnús Þór Sigmundsson, because it’s just so good to move to its bassline.”

This constant travelling means you could be in Atlavík, East Iceland, on a Tuesday, and Arnarstapi, on the opposite side of the country, two days later. This is generally regarded as a normal thing to do, as it maximises the amount of ultraviolet rays hitting our pink flesh.

The sound of summer

With so many people on the road at any given time, music is a fixed component to passing the time. Popularised by compilation albums Pottþétt starting in 1995, people could tune in to golden oldies and the sounds of the new generation in the same ride. Of course, this has given way to contemporary playlist culture, which we so graciously play into (see below).

Teitur Magnússon by Hörður Sveins

Those artists who successfully branded themselves as the quintessential road trip and camping material were — duh — usually the ones headlining the various music festivals and country concerts. This synergy, coupled with tradition, has generated large swathes of classic legacy tracks which reverberate throughout the summer. Does it mean that “summer” songs are not played in winter? We can’t tell you, but we can tell you that there’s only a certain number of times you could hear Sálin’s “Sódóma” in a given month. But “summer” songs don’t even need to sound “summery”. Bubbi Morthen’s “Sumarið er tíminn” sounds like you just got invited to a sailor’s funeral. But hey, whatever floats yer boat.

That’s not to say that the young cats don’t have a chance. Every year, dozens of artists vie for achieving this year’s big summer hit. In most cases, they don’t need to be thematic. Artists just need their feel-good bop submitted before radio staff go on vacation.

For most people, listening to the annual Þjóðhátíð festival song will probably cut it. Every year, the notorious Þjóðhátíð engulfs the small Heimaey island of Vestmannaeyjar in debauchery and bad spirit. To parallel the experience, the festival’s organisers commission a relatively popular artist (or burnt-out sleazebag/convicted sex offender) to write the event’s latest anthem. Most of it is watered down country-pop music, but for sun-crazed Icelanders, it gets the job done.

So, to ramp up to great sunny months, we’ve left a collection of songs — new and old — for you to play against the backdrop of the Icelandic summer. Feel free to use these songs as the soundtrack to fall in love with, get heartbroken, dance to, reminisce, party, create new memories, black out in a ditch, go on a spontaneous camping trip with no gear, run a flat tyre, reconnect with nature, and most importantly, have fun.

Happy summer! Please don’t fall into depression or move to Tenerife. Read what Grapevine’s staff had to say about our selection of new and old summer songs here.