Now And Then: Reclaiming A Music Venue

A building that has been a school, a ballroom, a store and a live venue

This house, standing by Austurvöllur, downtown Reykjavík, has, like many a house there, served multiple purposes in the past. It was built for Thora and Páll Melsted in 1878 by a composer and carpenter (living off of a music career has always been difficult in Iceland) called Helgi Helgason. It was built for purpose as a school for young women. Built from wood imported from Sweden, which was somewhat unusual at the time, the house was thought to be one of the more beautiful in Reykjavík and originally had 18 rooms for 34 students, 10 of whom lived there. The school was viewed with suspicion by Icelanders living in the countryside, both because it was felt it had urban values, and also because it was thought that it was under Danish influence. The school moved to a different building in 1909, and the house instead hosted a retail business for the next few decades, run by a Hallgrímur, whose son Geir, born in the house in 1925, would later become mayor and the chairman of the Independence Party.

During the Second World War, the house was acquired by the Independence Party, historically one of the most powerful and largest political parties in Iceland. From there, the party built its dominance over Icelandic politics, which strangely included adding a ballroom area for 500 people, naming it Sjálfstæðissalurinn. The new room then moonlighted as a party place, where cabarets were staged and live radio shows recorded during the 1950s and 1960s. At the end of the 1960s, the Independence Party sold the house to the Icelandic Phone Company and eventually moved into a purpose-built house called Valhöll, or Valhalla, in 1975, while the ballroom simply became a canteen for the Phone Company’s staff for the coming decades.

Finally, in 2001, the building was converted into a live venue under the name NASA. During the next decade or so, the building would not only serve as a venue for Iceland Airwaves every year, but also host some of the most memorable live shows of that booming decade of Icelandic music, along with hosting numerous foreign acts, such as Television, The Rapture, Tindersticks, Cut Copy, etc. Like so many live venues in Reykjavík, it was eventually closed down, to build — you guessed it — a hotel. However, possibly due to public protests, it was not completely torn down, but the original building temporarily removed so the ballroom could be rebuilt as an almost identical copy of the original.

In 2023, again under the name Sjálfstæðissalurinn, it reopened, and has since hosted numerous live music events. This year, it again serves as a venue for Iceland Airwaves, giving many an older attendee of the festival a nice shiver of nostalgia, because damn, we’ve all seen some good shows there.