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Food Review: Bergsson Is A Place To Enjoy, Slowly
While not the first of its kind in Reykjavík, the appearance of Bergsson Mathús clearly signalled the arrival of something different—a shift in Icelanders’ food culture. Essentially a breakfast and...
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Swan Lake Without The Swan Song
On November 14 and 15, the St. Petersburg Festival Ballet teamed up with the Iceland Symphony Orchestra to stage a spectacular performance of ‘Swan Lake’. Filled with exciting sets and costumes,...
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A Boy Becomes Less Of A Boy In Rúnar Rúnarsson’s Sparrows
Much buzz surrounded the Reykjavík International Film Festival premiere of ‘Sparrows’ (‘Þrestir’), director Rúnar Rúnarsson’s second feature film. It begins as a classic coming-of-age story, focusing...
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Do Not Praise That POS Bjartur: Independent People, Reviewed
Six decades ago this year, Halldór Laxness was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for his vivid epic power which has renewed the great narrative art of Iceland.” Having just read ‘Independent...
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Something For Everyone: Bike Cave
Located in the Skerjafjörður neighbourhood behind the domestic airport, the Bike Cave is somewhat out of the way for travellers and locals alike. However, given its fleet of rental scooters—parked...
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Let Them Eat Lobster & Stuff
It’s technically langoustine, not lobster, but Langoustine & Stuff doesn’t sound right. It misses the fricative soft rhyme of “ster” and “stuff.” That’s the type of linguistic gymnastics marketing...
View Article2016: The Year In News
We all had a nice year, right? Even though there are plenty of people happy to see this year come to an end, not all the news of the past year was necessarily bad. Political upheaval was a dominant...
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Women Steal The Show At The Reykjavík Folk Festival
Folk music is defined as music of the common people, which, in this day and age, is essentially all music…other than Queen Bey of course. This is why folk music is so difficult to describe, because its...
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Rok Review: A Big-Ass Celery Near Everyone’s Favourite Church
Rok is a beautiful building. It’s understated and unobtrusive, and its architecture references the turf-roofed houses that once dominated Iceland, done in a contemporary style. The interior is...
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Nordic Italian: Buenissimo Italsk “Mat” at Mat Bar
One of the highlights of a small food market in Reykjavík last Christmas was a pop-up Italian bar. It flabbergasted us visitors with dried olives and smoked almonds that we ate by the fistful, leaving...
View ArticleThe Next ‘Case’: Icelandic TV Keeps The Scandi-Noir Hits Coming
The second series of Icelandic courtroom drama ‘Réttur’ ended in 2010, with quite a cliffhanger: a lawyer is on a hunting trip with an eccentric client, who picks up his rifle and announces that he’s...
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Election Campainful: A Serious Review Of Election Campaign Videos
With only a month to go before municipal elections and a plethora of problems to solve, political parties scramble to rescue Reykjavík from the clutches of the bad guys currently in charge. They claim...
View ArticleMust Love Zombies
There is something very addictive in this ongoing, apparently non-stop series. What can it be? Its 10th paperback volume is out now, and still there is no apparent plot, the characters are kind of...
View ArticleThe Essence Of Iceland
There is certainly no lack for photographic coffee table books in the spectrum of Icelandic publications. Generally aimed at tourists and Icelandophile types, these books tend to show the usual...
View ArticleWildly Imaginative, Creatively Liberated…
Björk Guðmundsdóttir has been busy. Not content with crashing into the global mainstream as one of the most avant-garde pop artists of the last two decades, her latest project, Biophilia, transcends...
View ArticleA Voyage to the Worlds of the Amsterdam System
In a centrally located and often-travelled region of the Reykjavík galaxy lies a surprisingly seldom-visited solar system known as the Amsterdam system. How and why it received such a name is a mystery...
View ArticleThe Good, The Bad and The Misplaced
Whatever quarrels surrounding the Harpa concert hall and its construction, you have to admit that it is a huge, polished piece of architecture that is made to be home of music. This is why it became...
View ArticleFrom Sitting On The Floor To Raising The Roof
It’s hard to imagine a more incongruous set of opening acts for the headliners at this gig, unless you count the time Tom Jones opened for GG Allin at the 930 Club in Washington, DC in 1988. But I...
View Article"Twee As Fuck!"
ORPHIC OXTRA Strange as it may sound, big band Balkan music has been a constant presence on the Icelandic scene for well over a decade now. It started late last century among a group of music students...
View ArticleA Night To Remember
Fönksveinar – 20:00 Young, energetic, and looking good, these talented gents had the task of opening up Airwaves at Harpa Kaldalón, and did so confidently. With a congealed, classic sound, Fönksveinar...
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