The Struggle for New Iceland
by Valur Gunnarsson TAKE 1: The Vikings Relations between North Americans and Icelanders did not get off to an auspicious start. The Icelanders came upon nine Native North American
The Reykjavík Film Festival
What’s the difference between a big-budget feature film and a low-budget independent film? The assumption once was that major releases got the money for their promotion because t
Bitter Coffee or: The Worst Mood in the History of This Director
What got you interested in film making? I first got interested in film making when I changed a short story which I had sold to a literature magazine in Iceland […]
SCREENSAVER: A Time to Weep, a Time to Laugh
A few minutes of watching, though, and it’s clear that, whatever the reasoning behind the selection, the work’s presence here should be celebrated, and not just because of the
The Swedes Take Háskólabíó
Thank God for film festivals. Háskólabíó will be treating us to a Nordic film festival from the 5th to the 15th of November. On offer are four Swedish films; One […]
BLACK MILK: A Revelation on the Reykjavík Stage
There´s nothing quite as sad as seeing an elderly Russian woman standing on a corner, peddling the medals the party awarded her for service to the motherland, the only thing [&hel
SWEENEY TODD in the Icelandic Opera
The demon barber of Fleet Street is back in business and a cut above the rest. The Icelandic Opera has recently started showing Stephen Sondheim´s highly comical horror opera, Swe
Apparat Organ Quartet
The four organists in the band, Jóhann, Úlfur, Hörður, and Musíkvatur, use all of their 40 fingers to bring out a dazzling array of sounds from their collection of instruments
Jóhann Jóhannsson
When not delivering catchy melodies on vintage synthesizers in electronic rock outfit Apparat Organ Quartet, Jóhann Jóhannsson makes albums of mellow and beautiful contemporary c
LOCALS ROCK AIRWAVES, Despite the Imports
When I saw Keane, The Stills and The Shins on the lineup for this year’s Airwaves festival, I expected the worst. The Iceland Airwaves Festival would be an innocuous gatherin
On graphic design and Iceland
The first floor of the exhibition “Graphic design In Iceland,” currently in Hafnarhúsið, is mostly dedicated to the early days of the craft, about a century ago, when the typ
A CHANGE OF TERMS
A roadside. A tree. Chattering. Phone rings, a Bob Marley tune. Godot (At the other end): Guys? Vladimír: Yeah. G: Hey. V: Er, hi. G: It’s Godot. V: Ah, yes, […]
AMERICAN OF THE MONTH: The Reverend Al Sharpton
Preaching at the age of four, ordained a minister at the astonishing age of ten, and working for Rev. Jesse Jackson by the age of fifteen, Alfred C. “Al” Sharpton […]
Editorial: WHERE DID IT ALL GO WRONG?
Where did it all go wrong? How did it come to this? The United States seemed like such a good idea at the time. At the end of WW2, they […]
101
It’s a shop, a hotel, a bar, a book, a postcode, a mindset, a wasteland and a warzone. It’s the epicentre of cool. It’s the seed-bed of ambition and the […]
Giving the whole story
The scene described is from Jehane Noujaim’s documentary Control Room, about the political problems Qatari news network Al-Jazeera faced covering the war in Iraq. One is left wit
MAKING HISTORY:
Acting on an election promise to further equality, Zapatero began by breaking the European political mould by appointing 50% of his cabinet portfolios to women. In a recent intervi
Getting Warmer, Post-Colonial Style
Species that form the basis of indigenous lifestyles -whales, seals, reindeer, and many birds- are under increasing threat from climate change. Impacts include melting permafrost i
“HI. MY NAME IS THOR, AND I’M AN ALCOHOLIC”
Some try to explain this alcoholic phenomenon by pointing out various factors, such as the climate, the extremes of light and night, and most recently, that the answer is is [&hell
Does a Uniform a Soldier Make?
In early September, we printed a feature on the Icelanders in Afghanistan, posing the question whether they were soldiers or not. Because of the three Icelanders who have sadly bee
The Meeting of the Bear Men
It was clear that these people had something in common that strongly bound them together and they were happy to have found their kind – hence the laughter created by […]