John Rogers
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Three Hours Of Sun Is A Luxury
Although at 64° N Reykjavík is the world’s northernmost capital city, the most northerly permanently populated site on Earth is Svalbard. Located at 78° N, this Norwegian archipelago is about halfway between the edge of continental Europe and the North Pole. Winter…
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Listicle: A Survival Guide For The Darkest Months
In Reykjavík and beyond, there are some activities that are available only in the winter season. January can be made into a lively month, with a few ideas and a bit of willpower—never before has the frozen city pond looked as inviting,…
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SAD Times: The Effects Of Winter—And How To Fight Back
When I meet working psychologist and PhD student Erla Björnsdóttir, it’s already dark outside. Reykjavík’s streets are becoming treacherous as compacted snow freezes into sheets of slippery ice, and the streetlights have been lit for a couple of hours already, throughout the…
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Festival Season Forever!
After reading about all the SAD and darkness in this issue, are you now dreading the dark and icy stretch of February? Well don’t shit yourself quite yet, friend, because the Sónar festival has fixed that for you. For the uninitiated, Sónar…
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The Best Of What We Saw At Iceland Airwaves 2014
Iceland Airwaves 2014 came and went, and oh what a blast it was (it was. It’s crazy. You should come next year). We very much like the Iceland Airwaves festival. Indeed, every year since 2005, we’ve operated a gargantuan team dedicated to…
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Pippa’s Wish
A particularly heart-warming story made the rounds recently when a crowdfunding campaign called “Pippa’s Wish” hit its required target, after a month online. The GoFundMe campaign was started by family friend Tamara Antonelli Comerford to take Pippa—a disabled seven-year-old Sigur Rós fan…
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The Mengi Set
Amongst the fast-changing merry-go-round of music venues in Reykjavík’s city centre, something unusual sprang up around last Christmas: a small, homely, unassuming performance space on Oðinsgata, called Mengi. It appeared quite suddenly, passed around initially only by word of mouth, but quickly…
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Making Airwaves Flow
As the carnival of new music that is Iceland Airwaves approaches, the anticipation in the air is becoming palpable in Reykjavík. The festival pre-game is in full swing: there are posters all over town, the schedule and accompanying app have been launched,…
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Pop Vomit
On the wall of a dark room in Reykjavík’s Hafnarhusið art museum, a stream of brightly coloured icons is fizzing out of the ground. Triggered by the tiniest sound, they erupt onto the wall at every footstep or word, tumbling into a…
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Owning it
In a crumbling old building on the outskirts of central Reykjavík, a dust-covered, semi-abandoned workspace is coming to life. In one corner, a makeup artist applies vivid lipstick to a member of feminist rap collective Reykjavíkurdætur as photographer Axel Sigurðarson steadies his…
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Capturing Biophilia
Way back in June 2011, English film editor Nick Fenton was one of the lucky few sitting in the crowd at the Manchester International Festival waiting to experience the live premiere of Björk’s epic Biophilia project. David Attenborough’s voice came over the…
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Didaskophilia
The Biophilia project has extended its tendrils into many unexpected areas. Its accompanying education outreach programme aims to encourage creativity, whilst using new technology as a gateway to science and music learning. This approach combines the use of cutting-edge apps based on…
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Tying A Ribbon On Biophilia
Sitting upstairs at Iðnó, pouring out a cup of coffee in a fetching fluorescent yellow ensemble, an animated Björk is expressing how pleased and surprised she is that people still want to talk about her work. “I spoke to someone earlier who…
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This Is Not The First Time We’ve Seen Change
Reykjavík Art Museum’s Hafnarhús is making more noise than usual. Normally a quiet gallery building, today it’s throbbing with bass, the big glass windows rattling in their frames. Through an open service door, the cavernous main hall ripples with light—against the back…
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Mexico
Gusgus didn’t seem like a band that was in it for the long haul. Starting as a loosely strung collective of musicians, filmmakers, producers and vocalists, they seemed to the outsider like a mercurial proposition—a bubbling experimental formula with equal potential to…
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Over The Glacier: Ice Hiking On Vatnajökull
Vatnajökull is the second largest glacier in all of Europe, covering 8% of Iceland’s land mass and dominating the southeast corner of the country. Visible only on clear days, the glacier’s peak sits atop a vast sheet of compacted snow and ice,…
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“Well, It Was Probably A Tourist That Did It…”
Laugavegur, running as it does directly through the heart of 101 Reykjavík, becomes a very cosmopolitan street in summertime. Temporarily pedestrianised, it transforms into a lively boulevard filled with music, street food, public art, craft stalls, picnic tables, sun-loungers, and rails of…
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Glacial Wonderland: Ice Hiking In Vatnajökull
Vatnajökull is the second largest glacier in all of Europe, covering 8% of Iceland’s land mass and dominating the southeast corner of the country. Visible only on clear days, the glacier’s peak sits atop a vast sheet of compacted snow and ice,…
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Keflavík: Home Of Icelandic Rock ‘N’ Roll
All Tomorrows Parties acquired cult status almost the moment it was conceived. Its line-ups betray a strong aesthetic that differs from much of the festival landscape, both figuratively and literally—rather than stages set up in fields and live music happening out under…
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Akureyri: Home Comforts And Cosmopolitan Culture
Akureyri, located on Iceland’s longest fjord, Eyjafjörður, is often referred to as Iceland’s second city, or “the capital of the North.” With a population of just under 18,000, “city” is probably pushing it a bit, but Akureyri is a thriving and charming…
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From Heavenly Lakes to Hell’s Gates: Seeing Northern Iceland
Seeing Iceland from the air can be an astounding experience. From the soft blue-grey washes of coastal estuaries and floodwater plains, to black flatlands with their gleaming silver rivers, to expanses of blinding white glaciers—a flight over the Icelandic heartland is often…
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Everything In A Cake
The phrase “allt í köku” is one of the Icelandic language’s many interesting, old-fashioned aphorisms. It roughly translates as “everything in a cake,” and while that might not sound like such a bad thing, the phrase is actually a way of saying…
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Icelandic Art, If There Is Such A Thing
On the ground floor of a grey apartment building, across from Reykjavík’s old harbour, around the corner from the Reykjavík Art Museum, and a five minute walk from the heart of the city’s centre, sits a quiet gallery space which takes its…