Mondays in Iceland - #100

No subject could be more appropriate for the capstone of FITK’s Mondays in Iceland:

Jófríður Ákadóttir


Reykjavík Grapevine

Most great artists share these common traits: early promise, hard work, and continued growth. Jófríður Ákadóttir, with her twin sister Ásthildur, formed the Folk/Pop duo Pascal Pinon in 2009 (they were 14 years old!) A short set I caught at an Iceland Airwaves off-venue show in the Norræna Húsið that year showed the early promise of her talent: almost everyone in the room was stunned by the integrity of the songs composed by this unassuming teen. Jófríður and I communicated with each other on a few occasions back then; her level-headed approach to her career was already evident. Unfortunately, Ásthildur—who did most of the production and accompaniment on the Sundur CD—has recently been suffering from depression. Jófríður, in recent interviews, has intimated that as a group, Pascal Pinon is probably finished. While this news is disheartening, Jófríður is continuing her career: a new album by the electronica group Samaris was recently released,  she is also member of the “supergroup” Gangly. Now she has a solo act—JFDR—with an album coming out in 2017:



She was recently featured in an in-depth interview in The Reykjavík Grapevine, an article that is an excellent chronology of her career. It shows her hard work, both in performance and composition, as well as her relentless drive to explore the world. It’s as if she can’t get enough of life and all it has to offer. I have never been much of a musical prognosticator, but Jófríður’s continued growth in all of her musical projects has exceeded my wildest dreams. She’s all grown up now and has made the transition from child to adult on her own terms. What I’ve heard of her new material (in live tracks) features loopy arrangements layered with reverb, but I’ll reserve any judgement until the upcoming CD comes out. Time will tell if this old dog can warm up to her new kind of musical tricks.

Below is a live performance of JFDR doing some new material (not from the album) for Seattle radio station KEXP, interspersed with interviews from the great Kevin Cole:



And an interview on Portuguese TV:




NOTE: This is the final installment of “Monday in Iceland.” My thanks to all who viewed these posts and images over the last seven years. I hope you enjoyed the experience as much as I enjoyed the making of them.

JFDR

A list of FITK references to Jófríður Ákadóttir, the Icelandic musician.

With Pascal Pinon:

Airwaves 2009 Day One
Airwaves 2009 Day Four
Sounds Like a Whisper in Your Ear
Icelandic Invasion
KFJC Interview
On Parade
Quiet Revolution
Do Not Underestimate
Sugar Mountain
Sundur
Mondays in Iceland #75 
Airwaves 2017
Ást

With Samaris:

Góða tungl
Promise and Problems
Most Dangerous?
Chanteuse

As JFDR:

New Dreams
JFDR
Mondays in Iceland #100
With Strings
Iceland Airwaves 2018
The Orchid
Iceland Airwaves 2023
Search for a Dancer
Museum

Collaborations:

Gangly
Mondays in Iceland #61
portal 2 xtacy
Airwaves and Gender

Grund

Chapter 12 of Search For a Dancer, a serial memoir about a week I spent in Iceland. Mondays on Flippism is the Key

I have mentioned sprakkar, an Icelandic word meaning ‘outstanding or extraordinary women’ before. Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson, pictured above, is married to Eliza Reid, who, in a recent book, has popularized the word.

He also happens to be the president of Iceland.

I was in the assembly hall of Grund, a senior residence in Reykjavík. Guðni was speaking to a varied group: Seniors, schoolchildren, media types and a handful of jet-lagged attendees of the Iceland Airwaves music festival. This was a repeat performance, he had spoken here in 2018 (when I was also here) and in 2019. Covid had caused the cancellation of this ceremony in 2020 and 2021; this was a much smaller gathering (the festival had been scaled back considerably) so this event had a special significance. Guðni’s speech was short; a pleasant mix of greetings and platitudes, but his attention to supporting the performing arts in Iceland was a genuine reflection on the country’s support for education in music and the arts. Guðni is a historian and is acutely aware of Iceland’s role in the world and its strategic location in it. He left he following week on a tour of various colleges and universities around the world. I was duly impressed that he took the time to talk with us, even more so after interacting with Eliza (albeit virtually) at the 2020 Iceland Writers Retreat and (in person) in Minneapolis the previous spring.

After Guðni’s speech an Icelandic pop duo Sycamore Tree came up and sang several pleasant, if somewhat nondescript, songs in English with a backing of strings:

They have been an act for a while, YouTube videos don’t show much change in their repertoire, although their hats have gained some embellishments over the years. I wondered what the elderly residents (some of which were my age-peers) thought of them. Cognitive Dissonance? After they had finished, the troubadour Júniús Meyvant performed, solo, singing and playing guitar, also in English:

He offered more of the same bland fare, except with whistling. My musical allergies to CD (and whistling) were beginning to act up so I left after a few of his songs. It wasn’t that his music was bad, but it just didn’t measure up to what I had seen here four years ago: The magnificent Soléy, performing heartfelt tunes sung in Icelandic along with her father’s support on the trombone. This situation of singing in English is a not a problem unique to Iceland, English lyrics are everywhere in pop music. It takes real courage to perform in an obscure language before an international audience, and a great deal of determination to write lyrics in one. This issue will come up again and again over the festival—my fear is that in not too many years Icelandic songs will have become historical curios; and festivals such as this one will become even more culturally diluted.

Another reason for my early departure was that I had a luncheon date at noon, and it was a good twenty-minute walk to Hlemmur Mathöll, a food hall at the eastern end of Laugavegur. In 2004 it was a sketchy bus terminal and one of the few places in Reykjavík where I had ever felt ill-at-ease.  I had stopped in there then to change film in my cameras (Film!) and was given the evil-eye by a young ruffian.

Not a likely occurrence today as the station has been transformed from a shelter for miscreants into a bustling hub of dining opportunities. I made it there in time and, as my partner in gustatory delights worked only a block away (at the Foreign Ministry)  I expected her shortly, although that hadn’t always been the case in the past.


Search for a Dancer Index…

Mondays in Iceland -#131

Photo/Essay Exhibit

Image: Dan Dustin

In October of 2005 I assembled an art exhibit at a local community college.

The photographs were taken on my 2004 visit to Iceland. Many of them have been featured here on FITK Mondays in Iceland posts and also used as illustrations for the serial novels and other posts. A thing that made this show different from most others was the inclusion of blog posts by “Audi” a young Icelandic woman. Her blog was titled A Woman Without a Man… and these “essays” covered a variety of her experiences and her reflections on issues that faced her and other modern women. The show was well-received but my pictures were definitely upstaged by Audi’s posts. Here is one of them, reproduced as close as I can make it in HTML:

February 6, 2004

About a girl

23 years ago, minus about 29 hours, a young woman was giving birth right here in Reykjavík. She had been due a week before but the stubborn creature inside of her refused to come out. She was 24 herself and she already had a 8 year old son. The boy was a handful although he was an amusing child. He had been known to drop in for a cuppa with all the old ladies in the neighborhood to discuss the state of the world and told them stories of his father the rock star. His father was no rock star but he stuck by his story and made all the other little boys green of envy. The young woman had hoped that the new child would be a bit calmer but little did she know. Her life as she knew it ended that day.

The new baby, a big and strong girl, started her adventurous life with a bang when a nurse at the delivery room messed up a simple task of measuring the babies temperature resulting that the child was stuck at the hospital for 10 days. While growing up the girl managed to break all her fingers on the right hand in two incidents, fall a few meters down a stair and land on her eye, cut her leg pretty badly and get so many holes on her head that her dad had bought a first aid kit to keep at the house cause the medical bills were getting too high. Her great-grandmother taught her to read when she was five cause she had gotten sick and tired of reading out loud the subtitles to the Muppet show and soon after that the girl demanded that she would be taught to do simple math as well. The very patient great-grandmother did exactly that and by the time the girl started school she was way ahead of her peers.

The little girl soon developed a deep caring for others and her teachers told her parents one day that if there was someone left out at the class the little girl always made sure they were taken in to the group again. She was a friend to the little people and helped the ones who were slower at the books. Another thing that would be her trademark through out her life was clear at these early years. Out of all the children in her class she befriended a half Italian boy who had just moved back after living his whole life in Italy. This was the first foreigner in the little girl's life and surely not the last.

The little girl turned into a teenager and somehow lost her direction in life. She floated almost unseen through her teenage years and in the end she fled away from her island to look for herself. Her adventures were her way to flee the reality of her own life but she soon realized that she could run but she could not hide. At 22 she was faced with no secondary education, a job that sucked the life out of her and debts and shit up to her ears. Drowning in her own life she made a decision. She was not going to be one of those people who never live up to their potentials. She was going to be somebody, she just didn't know who yet. This morning for the first time in a long time she woke up smiling.

And tonight she's going to go to sleep again still smiling.



Audi mumbled at 01:37

Vatnsmýri

Chapter 4 of Search For a Dancer, a serial memoir about a week I spent in Iceland. Mondays on Flippism is the Key

On my first visit here I was unceremoniously dumped at the Icelandair Hotel, a half-mile away adjoining the city airport. The BSÍ station was closed that day for some reason, but had re-opened by the time my visit ended. This time the regular disembarking lanes behind the terminal were torn up and the arriving buses (as well as the smaller shuttle buses) were in a haphazard jumble in the front. A bad omen? For the independent traveler without a car in Iceland this place is ground zero. Tours and connections are made here—like any bus terminal. It is a place to shift gears and move on. My metamorphosis was changing from a passenger to a pedestrian. A pedestrian eager for his early morning walk a thing I would never do at home  but with the 5 hour differential this was  akin to ‘walking after midnight.’ My strategy for avoiding west-to-east jet lag is simple, but effective: No alcohol on the flight, get to a swimming pool (with a hot tub) first thing, stay awake until at least 20:00 hours, then sleep for 12 or more hours, completely resetting your internal clock. The pool was about 2 km away, an easy walk, but not with a bunch of luggage.

I looked around for the lockers to store my carry-on and laptop until I could access my apartment later on in the day. In years previous the lockers had been next to the cafe but, like everything in tourist Iceland, the need for them had grown—bigger now having its own room, entered from the outside. The room was brightly lit and smelled of disinfectant is that a good thing or a bad thing? There were dozens of lockers in several sizes, I picked a suitable one and put most of my gear inside, keeping only my small backpack with my swim gear and a camera. I paid the checkout machine with a credit card while carefully noting the return procedures. The credit card worked the first time! A good omen.

My load suitably lightened, I headed back outside, past my recent traveling companion who was squeezing into his shuttle bus, heading out on his adventure. My path began a few hundred years from the station where a spiral pedestrian footpath wound up and over the busy roads and ended at the end of a marshy fen appropriately named Vatnsmýri, ‘water swamp’. Before the British invaded Iceland in May of 1940 the swamp was much larger, including what is now the city airport but this little wetland is all that remains. The area has been restored in recent years; birds frequent it and a wooden walkway passes through ending at the Noræna Húsið: the Nordic House library and cultural center. A place where I have spent many enjoyable, even transcendent hours. Its food space once hosted a future Michelin Star gastronomic restaurant (since moved to bigger quarters downtown) and the dozens of musicians I have seen perform there always created special moments. The music festival is just getting back on its feet after two years of shutdown so this year nothing (as yet) has been scheduled here.

Moving on, I walked through the campus of The University of Iceland. It was still a little early for classes, but I did see one scholar scurrying between buildings. A half-century earlier, in Minneapolis, that would have been me, lost and searching. I am no longer lost, but I am still searching, searching for those ‘moments of shine’ as Björk once put it. I walked past Veröld - Hús Vigdísar, a facility named for the first female president of Iceland, where I had been scheduled to attend a Covid-cancelled writing seminar in 2020. Missed opportunity but not really missed. I was outside looking in, a condition that I’ve never quite overcome in my travels and studies of the culture and the people of Iceland. Right next to Veröld is the big Radisson Blu Saga hotel, where I had once booked a room, also cancelled. Not my preferred choice of accommodations; I prefer to be in the center of town, but the hotel’s location was perfect for the conference. Looking back at the hotel I was cheered by the sight of the sun rising over the building, a promise of fair weather. A good omen.

My lucky streak of beautiful days in Iceland had continued.


Search for a Dancer Index…

Summit at Sandholt

Chapter 8 of Search For a Dancer, a serial memoir about a week I spent in Iceland. Mondays on Flippism is the Key

I spotted her immediately.

We were meeting at the Sandholt Hotel/Bakery/Restaurant/Haberdashery for a late lunch. Even though it was after 1400 hours the restaurant was still crowded. She walked in just before me; I had to hustle a bit to catch up to her. I touched her shoulder lightly and said “Silja… ” She turned and said “I was wondering if you would recognize me.” I assured her that it wasn’t a problem. Although it had been 10 years since we last met her visage had been featured in numerous articles that I had read online since then. Her face showed her years but her posture and the sparkle in her eyes belied her age.

When it comes to Icelandic literature, Silja is the real thing: a writer, an editor, a translator and even theatre critic. In her presence I felt as if my Flippism blog-posts on Icelandic culture were the work of a poseur—a literary wannabe—as was the Laxness in Translation website that I had developed years ago. That site (about the works of Icelandic author Halldór Laxness), was how we came to know each other. She had written an essay on the novel Salka Valka that had been published in The Reykjavík Grapevine, an English language weekly tabloid newspaper. It had been easy to get in touch with her via Já.is  (a national directory) and she had been willing to let me publish her essay. The LIT site was fledgling then but in the last decade it had become sort of a de facto international clearinghouse for information on the author and his work. Our previous meeting was rewarding and I was looking forward to talking with her again.

Salka Valka, first published in 1931, had recently been republished in a new translation, creating quite a stir in literary circles and garnishing many favorable reviews in the print media including The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and The Wall Street Journal. At my mention of it Silja became more and more animated as she described her participation in a recent seminar. Halldór’s biographer Halldór Guðmundsson was scheduled to lead a discussion group about Salka Valka and had a scheduling conflict so he asked Silja to take over. She jumped at the opportunity; “I was on fire… ” she said, eyes dancing, “… and the reception was most enthusiastic.” Adults of all ages had been captivated by the story of the poor girl who grew up unwanted in a fishing village. More than just a character, her struggle with the injustices of society was and is an inspiration to thousands of Icelandic women. We talked about how the book presaged the #MeToo movement, and how it was also a critique of both Capitalism and Socialism.

I had read that she recently participated in a literary retreat with renown Icelandic writer and artist Hallgrímur Helgason. I spoke of it and the topic of conversation turned to him: “Hallgrímur, what a wonderful man,” she said, gushing with obvious affection. She noted that in spite of his often pointedly satiric novels and plays, he had a great love for Iceland and its people, about how he had embraced the #MeToo movement with an article about his rape experience. I mentioned speaking with Hallgrímur (on Zoom) about his play Þetta er allt að koma and she remembered it vividly, commenting on its fantastic set design. She also brought up the play’s lead, Þorunn Erna Clausen, and rued that she had not pursued her theatre career further, I mentioned that she had been featured in Documentary Now! (a parody show that featured Fred Armisen) and she was also on the television series Trapped! At our first meeting she had given me some tips on Icelandic theatre productions; I then discovered that she had published ‘amateur’ reviews in TMM (a literary magazine) which were a fount of information that I consulted whenever I went to the theatre in Reykjavík. Being a critic in a small country like Iceland requires a great deal of tact and her reviews reflected that, but her lack of animosity made them invaluable for an outsider like me—just the basics—there was no literary baggage to unpack. I told her of my wife and I and seeing Páll Óskar in The Rocky Horror Show in 2018. “Ah! I saw him in that when he was in college!” she said, smiling at the memory.

Silja related a story about the James Joyce tower in Dublin—a writer’s dream vacation—which turned into a nightmare after she fell and broke her leg, severely. One of the Irish EMTs who attended her wanted to take her to a local clinic, but the other one thought it serious enough to go to the main hospital where a group of doctors operated and reset her leg with pins. They must have done a great job in that she was able to walk so well now. “My son-in-law helped me, I couldn’t live at home because of the stairs, so he took care of me every morning, with a hot breakfast and fresh-squeezed orange juice, he was an angel. Now my house is for sale—my late husband said that when we can’t handle the stairs we would move out; that time is now.”

We talked a bit about blogs, I said that although the traffic to the Laxness in Translation website was steady there wasn’t much of a surge when Salka Valka was republished. I mentioned that my personal blog, Flippism is the Key, was still holding on in its 18th year, but that I could see a time when I would stop posting on it. She looked at me closely and then asked, “How old are you?” “72,” I replied. “Oh, you’re just a baby!” she exclaimed, “I’m 79, and I just finished translating Jane Austen’s Sense and Sensibility into Icelandic!” I have often been in awe of my Icelandic correspondents achievements and this was one of those times. After we had been talking for about an hour she said “I haven’t spoken English a long time.” Her use of the language was impeccable.

We finished our meals, and then prepared to leave. “I’ll take care of this,” I said, picking up the check, “It makes me feel like a big shot.” Silja gave me a side-eye. We went out and walked the half-block to the bus-stop on Hverfisgata. As we waited for her bus our conversation flowed on. My thoughts went to the word Sprakkar, an Icelandic word meaning outstanding or extraordinary women, recently used by the ‘first lady’ of Iceland, Eliza Reid, married to Guðni Thorlacius Jóhannesson, Iceland’s president. Here was a sprakkar, standing right in front of me, being extraordinary and outstanding. After thinking of Eliza, I mentioned that I was going to see the President of Iceland speak on Thursday morning, to which she replied: “Oh!, My daughter is his secretary.”

Of course. Everybody in Iceland knows Silja.

Search for a Dancer Index…

Mondays in Iceland - #75

Pascal Pinon, Sundur and the circle…


Magnus Andersen

I’ve been listening to the latest Pascal Pinon album a lot. What follows is not exactly a commercial review; in light of the sensitive nature of this project that would be crass. This is more of a rumination—on the music of course, but also on my circular quest for a fuller understanding of life via Icelandic culture.

By the mid-80s, when I had pretty much hung up my musical “career”, I was trying to make the home and family thing work. One escape from my domestic duties that I did have was a subscription to Andy Warhol's Interview magazine, one of the few periodicals that retained a large format. The articles and photography were mostly about New York art and music scenes, but they also showcased up-and-comers from around the world. One of these blurbs featured the Icelandic band The Sugarcubes: Björk’s breakout vehicle. It was the beginning of a circle. I made a mental note of her and, in 2000, the Weaver and I did manage a short trip to Iceland. She was impressed but I was overwhelmed, especially with the omnipotence of Björk in the shops. So began a cultural odyssey. After quickly getting up to speed on Icelandic music and literature (and with the advent of blogs), I even began to make personal contacts with some of the natives. Now, five trips to Iceland later, I have come to the realization that I am approaching the end of the circle. Nothing ever stays the same, of course, and my contacts in Iceland have, like me, have moved on in their lives. The classic literature of Iceland remains great (and I adore serious Icelandic theater), its modern practitioners are gifted. Icelandic cinema remains very strong. The Icelandic music scene, however, seems to have reached some kind of peak around 2010. Although there are still some acts with international success (Sigur Rós, Of Monsters and Men), the most challenging new work is coming from Jóhann Jóhannsson, as a film music composer (Prisoners, The Theory of Everything, as well as the new Bladerunner).

All of this rambling is a preface to today’s subject: Sundur, the third album by Ásthildur and Jófríður Ákadóttir, twin sisters who call themselves Pascal Pinon. I first saw them in 2009 at Iceland Airwaves and I have always had an affection for the group. Their first release (Pascal Pinon, 2010), recorded when they were 14 years old, was a honest topography of the heart. Twosomeness, their second release (2013), brought the girls out of their bedroom and into the studio. It was, as to be expected, much more polished, while still retaining an intimate nature. Sundur goes far beyond either of these, presenting Jófríður’s lyrics "up-close-and-personal" accompanied by Ásthildur’s sure-handed production. The songs, as would be expected from the album’s title, are about love: lost, broken, or missed, with a bittersweet tinge. I could run this down track-by-track, but Jófríður has graciously already done so. Two of the stand-out cuts, Orange, and Ást, are available at the link. Ást was inspired by the writing of Halldór Laxness (another cultural circle), and is a powerful lament on love: “… the silent symphony created by stroking the strings of the heart… ”

Speaking of circles, Jófríður is featured in a recent Guardian article as being one of Björk's inspirations! Some reviewers have commented on the similarity of the two singers vocal styles. There is something to it but Jófríður is in full command of her gift; her melodies and phrasings are her own, the similarities in diction are shared by thousands of other Icelanders! She is also blessed with a twin sister who has grown musically as well. Ásthildur’s previous contributions were subtle but she is now an equal partner in this fascinating collaboration. Her assured and dynamic keyboard efforts are the equal of her sister’s vocalizations.  I would even put Sundur in the same class as Joni Mitchell’s Blue, not as mature, of course (after all, they still are only 22), yet it is even more intimate than Joni’s masterwork—if such a thing could be possible. As a jaded, card-carrying curmudgeon, it takes a lot to crack my frozen attitudes. Pascal Pinon, those wyrd sisters from the North Country, not only thawed my resistance, they positively melted me.

Highest recommendation.

Wednesdays in Iceland - #1

Hjartagarður

Eight weeks from today I’ll be back in Iceland for a little mini-vacation—catching some culture on my favorite rock in the North Atlantic.

In light of that fact I’ve resurrected my Mondays in Iceland series, but now on Wednesdays. These will be a bittersweet visits, my attempts to recapture the magic until I can be there in person. My one-bedroom apartment (with kitchen) will be my home base. We’ve lost a lot in the four years since my last trip. The Iceland Airwaves music festival is but a shell of what it had been pre-Covid (and pre-Brexit) and my theatre options are fewer now. The charm of the Old Harbour, which has been under ruthless attack for many years, has almost completely succumbed to the cancers of commercial development. Construction of new commercial buildings and hotels isn’t a bad thing in itself, but the uninspired and charmless architecture displayed there could have reflected the culture and heritage of the area in better ways. It has displaced the very things that brought visitors to the area.

One such casualty was the short-lived but much beloved Hjartagarður, the heart garden, a grass-roots “pop-up” park that existed for a while, starting in 2009. My long-time blog-pal Maria Alva Roff posted the picture below and wrote extensively about the park and its meaning for the people of Reykjavík, its creation and its destruction:

A Hilton Canopy Hotel is there now. The once-vibrant courtyard is now a sea of gray concrete. There have been efforts to rebuild it, but without success. I’m usually not impressed by graffiti art, but what once adorned the walls around Hjartagarður was exceptional; vibrant displays of craft, passion and emotion:

Nostalgia may well be a sucker’s bet but my 25-year obsession with Iceland has enriched my life in many ways. The country and its people and culture have been a pleasant obsession; my attempts here are to make some sense of it all and to share with you, dear reader, some of the joys of my discoveries. These posts may be rambling but they are simply a way for me to prepare for my return, Rick Steves would probably not approve of this approach.

Mondays in Iceland - #115

This is a re-post from FITK, May 16, 2011

Interview

In 2009 a group of four young Icelandic women began performing what they called “Friendly Concerts” in Reykjavík under the name Pascal Pinon. In October they appeared at the Iceland Airwaves Festival where I was most impressed by their performance. Although I didn’t know it at the time, they had already recorded an entire concept album which they later released independently; it was picked up by Morr Music in Berlin and re-released worldwide. Last October my blog-pal DJ Cousin Mary (from radio station KFJC in Los Altos Hills, California) went to the 2010 Iceland Airwaves where she saw them perform. Recently Mary did a three-hour special on Icelandic music and during the show interviewed Jófríður Ákadóttir, the primary songwriter for the group. A transcript of that interview follows:

MARY MACDONALD: I’m talking to Jófríður from Pascal Pinon… Now tell us about your band, it’s you and your sister right?

JÓFRÍÐUR ÁKADÓTTIR: Yes, it’s called Pascal Pinon and we mostly just play indie-acoustic pop music. It’s always written in my bedroom so I think you can sort of hear it, because it has a lot of shyness in it because we’re both very shy… when I’m writing I always do it in my bedroom and I always play very low so I hope that nobody can hear…

MARY: (laughs)

JÓFRÍÐUR: … I think that maybe I can hear that in the music because it always colors it, how it comes into the world, I think, and that’s sort of where my music is born.

MARY: Is there anyone other than your sister and you in the band?

JÓFRÍÐUR: We always play four girls when we play concerts, but we just get session players for the shows because we used to be four in the band, two other girls with us, but then after a year of working together they decided to quit because it was getting a bit hard, and me and Ásthildur were doing everything, mostly, so we all just agreed, they just stopped being in the band… sometimes playing with us, sometimes doing other things… it actually works out a lot better this way.

MARY: You began playing when you were very young, isn’t that true? How old were you when you started?

JÓFRÍÐUR: Well, this band we started when we were fourteen, and today we are sixteen, almost seventeen.

MARY: Oh, I see, so you’re still in school…

JÓFRÍÐUR: Yes, and it’s actually Easter break now and we’re using the Easter break to make the second album.

MARY: Oh, how exciting…

JÓFRÍÐUR: It’s very exciting!

MARY: You and your sister are twins, isn’t that true?

JÓFRÍÐUR: Yes, we’re twins.

MARY: You say you’re shy, yet you get up and perform… Do you enjoy performing?

JÓFRÍÐUR: Yeah, I think it‘s really, really fun to perform. The first concert—it was terrifying! My feet were shaking and we couldn’t stand because I was so nervous and we had to sit down and my feet were both shaking really, really fast. It was awful because I was so nervous and afraid and shy—and that was the first concert. And then you just sort of learn that people aren’t really that mean, they always kind of seemed to be really positive, and after playing many, many concerts, and people seem to be very happy, it’s not that frightening anymore, it really gets kind of fun and you start to enjoy it a lot because its really really fun to play your own songs in front of an audience.

MARY: There's a sweetness and a warmth to your music, at least that’s why I enjoy your music, so I would think that would appeal to a lot of people.

JÓFRÍÐUR: I think our music, because its been called very cute, and I think that it is very cute, and it’s very warm and it’s very happy, in a way. It’s kind of if you would imagine something very soft. I have nothing against being soft, but I also think that it cannot be too soft, and it cannot be too cute and it cannot be too much of anything. I think it’s very important that all of the things that you write, all this cuteness, and the shyness, that it doesn’t get too much of anything.

MARY: Now, have you written new songs for your new CD that you’re mixing?

JÓFRÍÐUR: Yes we have fifteen songs that we’re going to choose from, and we have recorded fourteen.

MARY: The songs that you’ve composed, have they changed over time, from the first songs?

JÓFRÍÐUR: Well, um, we’re experimenting a bit, on the second album, with shakers and a bit of drums, because if you heard the whole album you notice that there are no drums, or shaker, or anything at all, on the whole entire album, we’re experimenting a bit with that. I think that maybe the compositions, in general, haven’t changed that much. I mostly noticed that the sound is improving and we’re exploring a bit of kind of different sound world on the second album. There’s one song that is very different from all the other songs. I think the most, the biggest difference with this album and the other is that the first album is a really, really whole unit. It’s a really whole album—it has a very similar sound to all the songs and it kind of forms a very special wholeness—if that makes sense (laughs) because it was recorded in five days and we had been practicing these songs for a long time and we knew exactly what we were going to record and we just did it. This album is recorded in three different places. It was recorded first of all in the summer, the summer of 2010, when we had a recording session, and again, when we had the next break from school—it was the Christmas break—and then we did some recordings now, in the Easter break. So we’re using all our breaks to record. And the songs we’ve been adding, more and more songs to the album with time. There’s not much similarity in all the songs as it was in the first album, so the sound is kind of different from each song. But in a way, I think that’s also interesting, to make an album that has a very mixed diversity, or at least more diversity than the first album.

MARY: What kind of musical education do you and your sister have?

JÓFRÍÐUR: We have both studied classical music, and we are studying now. Ásthildur is a really good piano player, a classical piano player, and I play the clarinet, I have been playing the clarinet since I was eight years old and we are very much busy at the music school all the time, except for the breaks, then when we have time to be in a band. I also play piano too, but very little. Ásthildur plays the bassoon.

MARY: Are you attending a music school right now?

JÓFRÍÐUR: Yes we are, we are in the Music School of Reykjavík.

MARY: Is that at the high school level?

JÓFRÍÐUR: Yeah.

MARY: When will you be going to university?

JÓFRÍÐUR: In three years from now, it's a different system…

MARY: Well, that’s a long time.

JÓFRÍÐUR: We’re also very young… so it kind of adds up.

MARY: You’ll have plenty of time to do what you're doing right now.

JÓFRÍÐUR: Um-hmm. I think we just don’t really realize how young we are. We have all this time to do so many things. Sometimes we kind of get lost in always comparing ourselves to some people who are older and have been doing this thing for a lot longer time. I thinks that’s one sort of mistake that you make and you have to be very careful sometimes because we are very young and we have to sometimes be careful not to compare ourselves too much.

MARY: Well, not to compare you to other people, but to compare Iceland to other countries, it seems to me that there are a lot of musicians in Iceland, given the small population, do you agree?

JÓFRÍÐUR: I agree, and I think that there are strangely many good musicians here. I really like this whole indie community that had been formed here, and this whole music scene. I really like it and there are a lot of people in it, and it’s really lucky to be a part of it.

MARY: I agree. Do think there's anything particular about Iceland that has made this happen?

JÓFRÍÐUR: No, I really cannot tell because it’s so hard to spot something that you’re a part of. It’s really hard to look at it as an outsider. I don’t really know why it has become the way it is. I really always think it is a huge misunderstanding that it has anything to do with nature. I think that’s just something that Björk created. Sometimes, when we do interviews, and there are people from other countries, they ask: “Has the nature affected your music in any way?” and we always say “No!” (laughs) because I cannot see how nature can possibly be connected with music, at least not the type of music that we make. But I understand maybe Björk always talks about how she's hiking in the mountains and looking at the wilderness… I think maybe this somehow works for her, but I don’t think it has anything to do with the rest of the Icelandic music scene. I haven’t really thought about this very much. I like the way it is and I haven’t been wondering why everything is the way it is. I’m kind of just thankful for it.

MARY: Are there other Icelandic Musicians that you particularly like, or that you feel influenced you?

JÓFRÍÐUR: Yes. I really like Sóley, who is also with Morr Music, and I also really like Sin Fang, who is also with Morr Music and Sóley is playing with him, and I also like Nolo a lot. They’re not very famous, but they are really, really good.

MARY: OK, I’ll have to look for them.

JÓFRÍÐUR: Yes. I would look for Nolo on gogoyoko- have you been visiting gogoyoko.com?

MARY: No, that sounds like a good idea.

JÓFRÍÐUR: Yeah, that’s a really good site… it’s a music webshop…

MARY: What about other musicians that have influenced you, in the whole world? Is there anyone in particular?

JÓFRÍÐUR: Yes, we were quite obviously interested in Tegan and Sara when we were beginning the band, when I was 14 the only thing I could listen to was Tegan and Sara and I think that without realizing it I was becoming very influenced by their music in my own compositions, maybe I Wrote a Song, which was one of the first songs we played together. Tegan and Sara, they’re Canadian twins—but they’re identical twins. Maybe it’s different.

MARY: Could be. Did you study composition or did you just start writing songs?

JÓFRÍÐUR: No, I’ve been doing this for a long time, it started when I first got my guitar… it was a Christmas present from my parents when I was eleven. I got an electric guitar and I got a book to learn how to play the guitar. I learned the chords and one of the first things I did was to write very, very awful songs on it and they were all very, very bad. Then later I started writing better songs (laughs). Then we got the idea of maybe starting a band and I was the only who could stand up and say “I have written a song—maybe we can play it?”

MARY: Is there anything else you’d like to tell our listeners about your music or Iceland?

JÓFRÍÐUR: I think its really really fun to be in concert in Iceland, I think it’s really a special atmosphere in concerts in Iceland. I think because everybody seems to know each other… all the musicians are watching the other musicians, this whole scene is really connected. It’s sort of like it is a family.

MARY: I could sense that, even being an outsider. I could definitely sense that. Thank you so much for talking with me and with my listeners, and I wish you all the best of luck.

JÓFRÍÐUR: Thank you.



And thanks again to DJ Cousin Mary and radio station KFJC for supporting Icelandic music and airing this interview.

Photo: Lilja Birgisdóttir

Interview Copyright KFJC, 2011. USED BY PERMISSION

Mondays in Iceland - #103

Ölstofa

One of the perks of a having free day in Reykjavík is stopping in to one of the local watering holes. The weather in Iceland is usually on the cool side and often windy and damp, even in the summer. A good way to escape the elements is to enjoy an adult beverage and conversation in one of the many pubs—I sometimes wish that I was more than a one-and-done kind of drinker.

You aren’t supposed to take pictures of people in bars, but in 2012 I felt compelled to capture a bit of the ambiance.

Bars have re-opened in Iceland now; the Covid control measures that were instituted there give it the lowest rate per capita of any European country. There have been fewer than a half-dozen domestic cases in the last two weeks.

That said, it will probably be a long time before regular tourists from the U.S. will be allowed to enter without a quarantine so I’ll have to hold on to my ticket a little longer before I can partake in this ritual again.

Much more on Iceland…

Mondays In Iceland - #4

The Atom Station


U.S. Military base, Keflavík

"But the people did nothing. The people are children. They are taught that criminals live in Skólavörðustígur and not Austurvöllur. Their faith in this wavers a bit, perhaps, from time to time, but when politicians have sworn often enough and hurrahed for long enough, they begin to believe it again. People don't have the imagination to understand politicians. People are too innocent."

Halldór Laxness' post-WWII satire The Atom Station has many parallels to the current Kreppa (crisis) in Iceland. As the story begins the country is in turmoil, there are demonstrations in the streets, and foreign powers threaten Iceland's recently won independence. Ugla (the name translates as "owl") is a young woman from the rural north, who finds employment as a housekeeper at the home of Búi Árland: Businessman, Doctor of Philosophy and Member of Parliament. In Ugla's eyes Búi's wife and children are spoiled rotten, symptomatic of the degenerate modern life in the city. When asked as to why she is in Reykjavík, Ugla says that she has come "south" to learn how to play the harmonium for church services back home. As the story progresses, however, she reveals that her real longing is to "...become a person, to know something, to be able to do something for myself..."

She takes "lessons" from a strange "organist" and his suspect circle of "friends." These lessons are as much about the way the world works as they are about music. Ugla also encounters a "cell" of Communists, further raising her awareness. Meanwhile, Búi hosts U.S. military men and members of parliament during negotiations to "sell the country" for an "atom station"- an event which did, in reality, lead to the existence of a U.S. military base in Keflavík for nearly sixty years.

All this inter-twined plot gives plenty of room for Laxness to explore the social issues of the day. Many of them, such as fraudulent deals by sham Icelandic businesses, read as if they were torn from today's headlines. Ugla's faith in the values of her rural upbringing is challenged, but she is ultimately true to it in her refusal to become Búi's mistress. Her decision to start a family with the somewhat shady man who fathered her child, while possibly not the best choice (although he is a Northerner), is a life of her choosing.

This book isn't on the epic scale of some of Laxness' other works, but I found it to be an enjoyable read- and much better the second time after I had gotten a little more background on its setting and themes. It has a much faster pace than most of his others, the whole novel unfolds in less than a year. Laxness again shows sensitivity and insight in handling a female character, and while Ugla is hardly the heroic figure portrayed in Salka Valka, her character has real depth. I've found myself quoting this book on more than one occasion. It might be a bit bewildering at times for the beginning Laxness reader, but it is a solid effort by a truly great novelist.

I'll leave you with these thoughts from the "simple" farm girl Ugla as she prepares to leave home:

"When the peace of Autumn has become poetic instead of being taken for granted...the last day of the plover become a matter of personal regret...the horse become associated with the history of art and mythology...the evening ice-film on the farm stream become reminiscent of crystal...and the smoke from the chimney become a message to us from those who discovered fire - then the time has come to say goodbye. The world-bacterium has overcome you, the countryside has turned into literature, poetry and art; and you no longer belong there."

My Laxness blog-pal Rose has also read and reviewed this book.

Mondays in Iceland - #113

Iceland Writers Retreat - 2021

At long last the IWR happened, albeit virtually on Zoom.

Although the virtual format is almost the exact opposite of the “bodies in a room” experience that I signed up for (way back in 2019!) it was still something, and something about Iceland is usually better than nothing, right? My previous experiences with Zoom had been OK, if somewhat clumsy. This was on a different scale of magnitude, instead of a half-dozen former classmates I was one of a 150 or so fellow-seekers of literary enlightenment, interacting with numerous writers, poets and even an editor! Held over three seven-hour days, there were 27 presentations to peruse in real-time (and to review later at my leisure.)

So, how did it go?

Better than I had hoped.

The three Icelandic authors were the highlights of the retreat for me. Andri Snær Magnason (LoveStar) had a low-key, almost conversational presentation, as did Ragnar Helgi Ólafsson (in green box above). Hallgrimur Helgason (Hitman’s Guide to Housecleaning, Reyjkjavík 101) gave a wonderful history lesson on modern Icelandic writers, I could have listened to him speak for another ninety minutes. There were non-Icelandic notables as well, I was very impressed by Adam Gopnik’s talk on memoir and was pleasantly surprised by The New York Times Book Review editor Pamela Paul’s wide ranging discussion on how to write a book review. I saw the bulk of nine presentations and am looking forward to seeing most of the others when they are available on replay.

I did run across Emily Lethbridge who I “knew” from Laxness in Translation; we had an exchange of private messages. Other chat-room denizens were also entertaining and informative.

The technical side was handled very well except for a few participants whose equipment/connection wasn’t really up to snuff. I found that several participants hid in the shadows; a simple desk lamp would have turned their presence from distant to palpable.

The big question: would I do it again, in person, in Iceland, in 2022?

As Björk once sang: Possibly Maybe…

Mondays in Iceland - #51

Perlan


This picture is from the very first day I was in Iceland, March of 2000.

Located on a hill (Öskjuhlíð) overlooking Reykjavík, this amalgamation of water tanks, public space, museum, restaurants and an observation deck is one of the first things in Reykjavík a newbie to Iceland finds amazing (TIP: sit on the Driver's side of the Flybus when going into town.) It's a pretty neat place with a fancy rotating restaurant on the top. That restaurant is quite expensive (although not as pricey as Dill) but there are lower-cost dining options in the complex as well. As an attraction, Perlan (with the surrounding area) is well worth a look if you have a couple of open hours. I went to it again in 2004 and that was enough for me. It remains an attractive building, the view from the University district is quite photogenic, especially with a telephoto:


October, 2015

In 2000 Iceland was an odd place to go for a winter vacation; The Weaver and I saw few other tourists and had most of the museums and other attractions to ourselves. That year Iceland received about 500,000 tourists, most in the summer months. This year the number is expected to be triple that amount and you will run into swarms of tourists everywhere, anytime of year.

Mondays in Iceland - #52

Insufficient Processing Time

This weekend was so full of activity that I don’t think it has caught up with my mind yet. It was full of colors, massive amounts of Icelandic input, and the gritty Icelandic landscape.

Yesterday we spent the day on Snæfellsnes with a friend (S) whose family has been in the area for generations. His grandfather (the oldest man alive in Iceland, over a hundred years old) bought the land in the 1920s and it has been part of the family since then. The land lies on the edge of Breiðafjörður, a hammer-shaped fjord that separates Snæfellsnes from the lower portion of the West Fjords. It is dotted with islands of various sizes and was apparently a pretty great place to live hundreds of years ago since it was one of the few places you could always find something to eat and didn’t starve.

The intention of our mission was to catch fish, but this late in the year we weren’t sure there were going to be any. This plot of land is well-suited for it, with two rivers of different temperatures joining together before flowing into the fjord. We suited up in all the warm clothes we had, plus some borrowed shin-high rubber boots, and set out across the hummocky grass to the sheep fence. S said, “here is your first obstacle” as we toed our way over the barbed wire.

The second obstacle came soon after as we started wading across various bends in the river, the mud sucking at our boots. At one point the water was too deep for our boots, so S, fully suited in waders, had to piggy-back both of us across. Our destination was a bend in the river where apparently the fish like to sleep behind the rocks. We baited with mackerel and gave it a try, but no success was to be had. The point of the trip seemed mostly about the location though, as we stood below the snow-covered spine of Snæfellsnes with the sun filtering through the clouds. I realized that it was the first time in months, if not years, that I had been somewhere that it was impossible to hear a single car. We were far enough from the road that the once-hourly (if that) car was inaudible, and there are no distant highways in Iceland that can be heard from miles away. The most amazing thing about this is that it is only 2 hours away from where J and I live.

We then adjourned for lunch in the family summerhouse that had been built a few decades ago from the wood used to build car shipping crates. After lunch, we tried a different location for the fish, and I decided to go for a hike out to the waterfall S had said was nearby. I had to first climb the hill up to the sheep pasture, through the wild blueberries, the red berries S said were called “mouseberries” and the waist-high grass the color of wheat. I climbed a few more fences and happened upon a pair of surprised sheep as I wallowed through the hummocks. The land oozed with water, so between some of the mounds of land I could hear the gurgling of narrow brooks (sprækur eins og lækur) that came straight from the ground.

I followed the sound of the waterfall across more pasture, before I came to the edge of the gorge. There was a separate fish-ladder on one side, and the cliffs were covered with more red blueberry bushes and tiny birches whose leaves were turning orange. Birds swooped across the gap and in the distance I could see the snow-covered mountains and the sprinkled islands in the fjord. When I returned from my walk, S and J had still caught no fish, so we walked down along the river to where the rocks were covered in seaweed and mussel shells and the high-tide mark was visible on the rocks.

The tide was fully out, so the three of us set out across the muddy tidal flats, strewn with kelp and snail trails. S told us stories of the islands in the fjord, but his words were snatched from his mouth by the fierce wind that had been blowing straight from the north all day. We skirted one island and caught a glimpse of our goal, a haphazardly tilted shipwreck the next island over. It had been abandoned there some decades ago by the owner since the boat was worthless even as scrap metal by then. The ravages of the saltwater were evident on the hull, which must have once been as tidy as some of the ships I’ve been seeing in the shipyard in Reykjavík. Now it was deep rust-red, and flaking apart in sheets off the surface of the boat.

A rope was hung over the side so we hoisted ourselves up onto the deck, which was pitched at more than a 45-degree angle. By this time the sun was below the horizon so the wind felt even more chill as we leaned on this abandoned boat, unprotected in the middle of an enormous fjord. As we walked back across the tide-drained landscape, I had a newfound respect for the people that had lived here for so many centuries before. I had spent a whole day out fighting the wind, and I had had the benefit of modern clothing technology with my Goretex, my polypropylene, my (borrowed) well-sealed rubber boots. I also could look forward to a well-sealed, well-heated, bright house, plentiful food, and a hot shower. How must it have been to be out in this weather wearing clothing that probably never dried fully in the unpredictable weather of this land? What was it like to spend the whole day outside fighting to find food, only to look forward to a dark sod house at night? It’s no wonder people here are so unfazed by the weather and strangely proud of the peculiar national delicacies like hákarl. I have to also say that in a field test (yesterday) I also have concluded that the Icelandic wool was one of the other secrets of their success. The hat I made last year in Boston (from wool I had bought here) served me proudly.


By ECS.  First posted October 10, 2005, used by permission.

Reposted by

Mondays in Iceland -#129

Hand Knits and Wool

Wool and Iceland have been synonymous for over a millenium, vaðmál was the equivalent of currency in the late middle ages, lopi wool from Icelandic sheep is still prized for its warmth and moisture resistance in lopapesya, the iconic Icelandic sweater.

There are several outlets for real Icelandic knit goods in Iceland, the most notable is Handprjónasamband Islands at Skólavörðustígur 19. One caveat: there are Chinese knock-offs being sold in Iceland, make sure you get the originals!

There are factory-stores for Icelandic wool and knits: Álafoss, in Mosfellsbær:

And Gamla Þingborg, a quaint store in the countryside a few km east of Selfóss, well worth the trip into the countryside:

Red Eye to Keflavík

Chapter 1 of Search For a Dancer, a serial memoir about a week I spent in Iceland. Mondays on Flippism is the Key

The egalitarian boarding procedures of Icelandair are commendable. People who need extra time first, then First Class, everyone else next. No myriad class divisions. To actually sit in First Class, however, will cost you plenty.

I was taking a flight (that might well be my last Icelandic hurrah) in a use-it-or-lose-it situation, the ticket I had was a replacement for a Covid-cancelled flight in 2020. I’d done this trip to Iceland many other times over the last twenty-two years each one was: rejuvenating; a celebration; an obsession; a search; an escape. Party for one, row 10, window seat A. Over the wing, but it really didn’t matter much as it will be dark the whole way. I was in a new jet—a 737 MAX—but I didn’t dwell on those crashes, they’d worked out all the bugs, amiright? The thrum of the engines are a lullaby for this jaded traveler, a prelude to takeoff. The ground crews on the tarmac are few on Sunday nights at MSP Terminal 2, I think this is the last flight east for the night.

An advantage of doing several repeat trips to the same destination is that planning is a breeze. You’ve done the drill, you know your options, you can plan for some free time i.e., in the hot-pots at the neighborhood swimming pool. Being in Reykjavík always offers you more opportunities for things that than you could ever experience at home, especially when there is a music festival going on at the same time as the height of the theatre season. And then there are the women. The sprakkar. More about them in due course.

The announcement that the cabin is sealed is a good omen—no one else had come to sit in my row. Any red-eye flight is a struggle with comfort, but being able to snuggle into the wall with my legs extended over the other two seats a least offers an opportunity for some fitful sleep. As soon as we took off I was into hibernation mode…

“… old gigs experienced in Iceland, superimposed upon expectations of the upcoming shows, dreaming of the future, are these premonitions any less real that those past memories of when I was in a band and those wild nights from my youth, almost every one a hallucination… desire commingled with elation… ‘Halcyon days’ is what my old friend Jim called those times; an idyll that came to an abrupt end with murder at a gig on Washington Avenue—typical Northside shenanigans—we’d been circling blithely around this dance of death for years… music, dancing, liquor, grass and other mind-altering substances the group’s performances were, in reality, a strange facilitation of communal foreplay… breaking down the inhibitions of socially retarded young people… love and death in a pas de deux… these trips to Ultima Thule an attempt to erase those sordid escapades from my youth… Iceland, on its surface, was clean and welcoming in that first visit twenty-two years ago… subsequent trips opened up my eyes… getting to know some of the people there revealed the darker sides of the island but the darkness an order of magnitude less than dismal cesspool of my youthful nightlife… that was my life… it’s no good life… ”

The seat-belt chime. Turbulence over Thunder Bay, an isolated front, an anomaly, climbing over it, ignoring it as sleep returns…

… A café in a Scandinavian capital…
-We meet again. Good to see you.
-Have some tea with me?
-I'd better not.
-You aren't so surprised to see me now.
-I'll admit it, the first few times were a bit unsettling but it is rather nice when you show up in my dream every once in a while.
-Enjoying your visit to our fair city?
-Of course, whether awake or asleep, it is always a kick to be here.
-I can't stay long, I've got a party tonight…
-Of course, good bye…
… the dream shifts to a street scene… Laugavegur… twilight… walking down the hill towards Bankastræti… three young wanna-be toughs eyeing me a a potential mark…I put on my wild-eyed stare and they turn away to look for an easier target… the sound of breaking glass… a son of privilege is smashing the bottles in a sack toted by an old man… a scrounger for recyclables, people ignore the sad tableaux… I turn on to Ingólfstræti just in time to see a woman in despair over the vandalism to her car’s side-mirror, its broken shards glitter like diamonds beneath it on the street, perhaps the perp was the same hooligan… in Kolaportið, the flea market by the harbour, there is a woman selling books, with bruises on her face…

Awake again, the flight progress map showed us situated over Greenland, a little more than halfway. Were any sleepless Inuits below aware of this aluminum tube soaring over their frigid homeland? I reset my watch to GMT. I was probably not going to be able to get back to my dream-state, but I closed my eyes anyway, these night flights are relatively quiet as far as activity, the low roar of the jet engines mask any conversations, even the steady parade of bladders on their way to be emptied has come to a halt. I closed my eyes and when I opened them again the plane was in glide mode, it wouldn’t be long until we landed and my adventure began for real.

The captain’s voice saying “Velkominn heim… ” came over the cabin P.A.


Search for a Dancer Index…

Mondays in Iceland -#132

Awesome Auðurs

Auður (Modern Icelandic spelling) or Auðr (Old Icelandic spelling) is an Old Norse-Icelandic female personal name. It also has the variant forms Unnr (Old Icelandic) and Unnur (Modern Icelandic). It is sometimes rendered as Aud, Audur, or Unn in English and in other languages. ~ Wikipedia.

This was a name I was completely unaware of prior to my infatuation with all things Icelandic, an obsession which began in 2000.


Roughly translated as “wealth” or “prosperity” it comes from Germanic roots via the Old Norse. The first famous Aud was Aud the Deep-Minded (Auðr djúpúðga Ketilsdóttir), a ninth century settler of Iceland who is featured in several sagas.

In 2004 I discovered a not-quite-so-famous Auður who wrote an influential blog that I’ve referenced here many times. I had the pleasure of attending a play with her in 2006.


Another famous Auður was Auður Sveinsdóttir, who married Nobel Laureate Halldór Laxness and was also his close collaborator. She had a big cultural influence in Iceland in the last half of the 20th century, introducing new ideas in homemaking and crafts as well as being host of numerous soirées at Gljúfrasteinn, where she and Laxness lived. In 2012 I was given a tour of her kitchen!

A more recent Auður that I’ve discovered is the author Auður Ava Ólafsdóttir. She is one of the best of the modern Icelandic authors.

Finally, the intriguing Audur Helgadóttir Winnan, author of Wanda Gág, A Catalogue Raisonne of the Prints (1993).

The book she created covered the work and life of another of my obsessions, Wanda Gág. It is a masterpiece of research and writing and brought a wider awareness of Wanda into the twenty-first century.

Icelandic born, she and her husband, R. Gray Winnan, were patrons of the arts in New York City. Audur also worked on other artist’s catalogs, another “deep-minded” Auður.

The only image I uncovered of her was an embriodered name tag in this designer dress from the 60s.

According to the website the dress is an “honest” size 8.

Móðir, kona, meyja

Chapter 13 of Search For a Dancer, a serial memoir about a week I spent in Iceland. Mondays on Flippism is the Key

“I think that was our conversation, as nearly as one can recall a conversation when a woman talks to a man and a man to a woman, for of course the words themselves say least of all, if in fact they say anything; what really informs us is the inflection in the voice (and no less so if it is restrained), the breathing, the heart-beat, the muscles around the mouth and eyes, the dilation and contraction of the pupils, the strength of the weakness in the knees, as well as the chain of mysterious reactions in the nerves and the secretions from hidden glands whose names one never knows even though one reads about them in books; all that is the essence of a conversation - the words are more or less incidental.” ~ Halldór Laxness, The Atom Station

Of all those bloggers whom I’ve interacted with over the years, K stands apart.

In 2004 blogs were all the rage, especially so in Iceland. K was the mother (móðir) of 3-year-old twins, with a husband and a cat. Reading between the lines on her blog, it seemed that she was under-employed for her education and a bit lonely, missing the friends of her youth, many of whom had been scattered to the winds. Her blog was somewhat a mommy-blog, but with an additional focus on culture and her life on the ‘rock.’ I had had two young boys myself once so it was fun to follow her parenting efforts. She posted pictures of herself and her children doing things; an idyllic Flickr-fairy-tale-land. I had sent her a box of books that my boys had enjoyed when they were young. Other pictures on the blog showed her on nights out with friends; proto-selfies. She was the first blogger I met IRL, during the 2006 Iceland Airwaves. Her graciousness, charm and perceptive wit made my day. I met with her again in 2009, right after I had attended a poignant concert, I was so affected by it that it made me tear up a bit. She comforted me then, and even called me later to make sure I was alright. In 2012 I met her with her young son and she was radiant: in full-móðir mode. We had fallen out of touch since then, life gets in the way of the best of intentions.

I was a bit early so I was already in Hlemmur (food hall) when I spotted her walking down the street. She worked just around the corner and was on a lunch break so this would be a time-constrained affair, unlike the other occasions when we lingered over coffee. She looked great, of course (myndarleg kona), I had always felt a bit shabby sitting next to her. Professor Batty meets Eve Kendall. Getting together with her was never quite seamless—several times we had failed to connect due to a misunderstanding or a sudden event, or something would up to cause us to reschedule. This time was no exception, she had mis-read my email to be for a meeting a week earlier which caused her to email from a restaurant with ‘Where are you?’ message while I still a thousand miles away.

But now we were here, together again in the eternal now, ordering Krösti-burgers. We took our buzzer to a quiet table away from the main doors and began catching up. What a difference ten years makes: K was now in the midst of a painful divorce from her second husband. I had never met her first (an investment banker with a porn-addiction) but I did meet her second husband. I wasn’t too impressed by him, but then spouses of blog-pals (and I’ve met several, some of each gender) are not really interested in you and can be hostile, and may even consider you to be a threat. I think I won’t be going there again. Closure. This whole trip could be considered closure of sorts; the blog-era is nearly dead, displaced by e-commerce and about to be overwhelmed by AI. While one can never be entirely honest on a blog I try to be. AI posing as human is, by definition, a lie.

One positive thing K had going for her was that she had finally gotten her dream-job, working as a translator in the Icelandic Foreign Ministry, extremely precise and challenging work that paid well and was not without its perks (including junkets to European capitals!) As my days of gainful employment are over, I again felt a twinge of guilt in imposing on her schedule. We talked a bit about the Icelandic theatre scene and she gave me the lowdown on a musical I would be seeing in a couple of days. The musical was a big thing, it was the first full-blown  production since the Covid restrictions were lifted. One of the characters was on the autism spectrum, and there had been a row about having a ‘norm’ portray him. K’s involvement with autism has been vigorous and constant over the years, active in many circles (her blog was even called Aspie Mum) and she was the narrator for a documentary film on the subject of autism in women (konur) in 2019.

When she was a young woman (meyja) she had lived in both Iceland and abroad, she was an au pair and had even won some renown for her flamenco dancing! Now her life was less free, having to raise her son with a faithless husband during an epidemic will put a damper on the most optimistic soul. I wished there was something I could do or say to make things better, I doubted if my words of consolation could have much of an effect. She had picked me up when I was down. I thanked her again for taking the time to see me and after finishing our meal we walked back to the Foreign Ministry. She pointed out a nearby art gallery (ministering to foreigners?) as having a good selection of artists (and indeed it did) and then she was gone.

Some friends are life-long, some friendships flare-up brightly, only to quickly burn out. Some friendships are simply a case of parallel lives, two stars a drift in the heavens, each gaining a little energy from the radiance of the other and then parting to fade away to oblivion.

Svo lít ég upp og sé við erum saman þarna tvær stjörnur á blárri festinguni sem færast nær og nær. Ég man þig þegar augu mín eru opin, hverja stund. En þegar ég nú legg þau aftur, fer ég á þinn fund. ~Megas

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