Reykjavík Grapevine - 27.06.2003, Side 24

- the reykjavík grapevine -24 june 27th - july 10th, 2003
The Icelandic comic scene up until
recently has been as legless as a
drunken worm.
Mostly, the comic book culture here has
consisted of importing series aimed at
children. During World War II some ac-
tion titles started to seep in with the sol-
diers and much later efforts were made
to translate those titles, which was un-
fortunate in many respects, since these
were often poorly translated. In the 70´s
we started to publish most of the big
Belgian/French childrens titles, such as
Tintin and Asterix, not to mention Donald
Duck who has always enjoyed a strong
following here. But through all this there
was no major activity among the natives.
It´s enough to drive a man to drink.
But now it´s time to put aside the
bottle, because the situation has been
rectifying itself for the past few years.
It has even come to the point where
Edda miðlun, the largest publishing
house in Iceland is turning out at least
one graphic novel come autumn, called
Kárasaga (more about that below). We
have enjoyed visits from western comic
luminaries like Warren Ellis and Grant
Morrison who, as well as being big sell-
ing authors, have enjoyed much critical
acclaim and have both contributed a
lot to the battle for public acceptance.
Things are improving all over. As Morri-
son pointed out in his speech held at the
downtown City Library (Borgarbókasa-
fnið), the geeks are taking over. With
Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, Matrix
and Star Wars crazes sweeping every-
where, not to mention the endless comic
book adaptions, it´s becoming harder to
shun the medium where a lot has been
going on for the past 15 years. Comic
books for mature readers with elaborate
and powerful scripts and meticulous
artwork are more commonplace now
than ever and Iceland can only benefit
from that. We are lucky to have a comic
store, Nexus, that concentrates on car-
rying the more cutting edge, quality work
with less emphasis on the more soapy
superhero titles. Aside from that we have
The City library that carries over 2000
comics and graphic novels in English,
the majority of them aimed exclusively
at adults, as well as a few hundred titles
in Icelandic and the other Scandinavian
languages. This was formally opened in
the year 2000 and has consistantly been
one of the most popular sections of the
library.
Things are looking up. Something
is in the air, maybe it´s just smell of
money...but quite possibly we will be
seeing young Icelandic talent, influenced
by the new scene, crawling onto the
world stage in the coming years. You will
know when we do – It´ll be swell.
ICELAND: RECENT COMICS AND
WORKS IN PROGRESS
Kárasaga (Saga of Kári) by Ingólfur
Örn Björgvinsson and Embla Ýr Bárudót-
tir, based on the old Icelandic Brennun-
jálssaga, should be seeing light this fall.
Like most of the titles referred to here it
will only be available in Icelandic, at least
for the time being. Kárasaga sounds like
a focused, energetic piece that should
avoid the mistake of the last project of
this kind, the Egilssaga comic adaption.
Egilssaga was a beautiful piece of work
that regrettably tried to cover too much
ground and ended up a little muddled.
Kárasaga, on the other hand, sounds
very promising and something to keep
an eye out for.
Bjarni Hinriksson´s Stafrænar fjaðrir
(Digital Feathers) and Aukablaðið by
Dónald both came out a couple of
months ago. The two are unlike in con-
tent as the former is a take on modern
culture done in a progressive art style,
while the latter springs from the vein of
editorial cartoons nibbling at the heals of
the nations leaders. But both are tasty
and available in book form in Nexus (the
only comic book vendor in Iceland –and
the best in the universe, per head, at
least.)
Elskið Okkur by Hugleikur (whose
name means Mindgames) is another
single panel funny like Aukablaðið. This
grand, majestic story, matched only by
Moby Dick and possibly The Bible in
its epic sweep, attacks the Icelandic
national soul where it´s at its weakest.
Sweeping strokes of Swiftian satire
leaves the reader grabbing his epiglottis
and coughing up praise (and blood) for
the boy-genius author. This really, really,
really good book will be out in translation
as “Love Us” so everyone can get really
happy.
Besides the English translation of his
previous work, Hugleikur will later this
year bring us a new dose of forbidden
love and social awkwardness with his
sequel “Drepið Okkur” or “Kill Us”. Not to
mention the very hush, hush collabora-
tion with poet Sjón (whose last partner-
ship with Björk Guðmundsdóttir almost
bagged him an Oscar).
Blek, along with Gisp, is the largest
and longest running comic book anthol-
ogy in Iceland (neither has been running
much longer than 8 issues which says a
lot about the state of the Icelandic comic
community). Both have been instrumen-
tal in giving young comic writers and art-
ists a platform to showcase their work.
Blek recently published a gorgeous
hardcover book that collects all previous
issues to date as well as putting out a
new issue.
Finally there is a illustrated novel in
progress, which has yet to be named,
by two young men, Theodór Líndal
Helgason and Steinar Kristinn Sigurðs-
son. It sounds like it could be a very
enjoyble little, sci-fi romp and it is always
encouraging to hear tremors from under-
ground. And there are likely many young
comic-creators-in-the-making like them
out there and they should not hesitate
to contact us to tell us about it. A proper
comic community is long overdue.
Ragnar Egilsson
B O O K S
FUNNY MONEY
Icelanders are stubborn, independ-
ent and extremely proud of their
history, which is fine. Iceland’s cur-
rency reflects these things being
both colorful, and full of history.
The bills have pictures of histori-
cally famous or important people,
while the coins have carvings of
various types of fish (reflecting
Iceland’s biggest industry). Still,
you probably haven’t got a clue
who these people are, or what type
of fish are on the coins, and if you
simply don’t care, don’t read any
further than this.
The purple 1000 króna note is a little
bit wider than the red 500 króna note,
the difference is so little (5mm) that
it is hard to notice. On the front is a
picture of Bishop Brynjólfur Sveinsson
(1605-1675), who served 30 years as
a Bishop at Skálholt and, among other
things, rebuilt the cathedral there.
More famous in later times was his
daughter Ragnheiður, her short, dif-
ficult life, and her death driven by grief
has been an inspiration for many Ice-
landic songwriters and poets, among
them Megas. Ragnheiður had a secret
lover and her father made her swear to
give her virginity to the church in front
of a large crowd of priests and other
church related people, but ironically, 9
months later she bore a child. Megas
suggested in one of his songs that
Brynjólfur himself was the father. On
the back, among other less important
things, is a picture of the aforemen-
tioned cathedral.
What’s it worth?
A decent lunch in one of Reykjavik’s
bistros is not much more than a 1000
krónas, the purple note would also
easily cover the infamous price of a
beer at the same bistro or buy you a
six-pack in a liquor store. Enjoy those
purple ones while you can, in Iceland
they don’t last long.
On a sunny Friday afternoon I sat
down at Austurvöllur waiting for
one of the founding members of the
group Nýhil (pronounced nee-hil). I
noticed the group last September on
account of the massive amount of
underground work published and the
monthly poetry nights at Grand Rock
Bar. I was confused about the name,
since it clearly indicates Nihilism but
has a troubling spelling error, which
could not just be a mistake.
After a short while Haukur Már Hauksson
came and sat down with me and told me
the facts about the group that has in un-
der a year added an essential flavour to
the poetry scene.
Nýhil is a group of young artists and
poets who started this art society after
Eiríkur Nordal published a book of poetry
in the autumn of 2002. He and Haukur
Már were living in Berlin, Germany at the
time and were bursting with creativity like
often happens to Icelanders while living
abroad (probably coming from the surge
of increased possibilities when realising
that you are not on a far away island).
Instead of forming the mandatory “so-
ciety-of-Icelanders-having-a-home-away-
from-home” they rented a small venue
with a DJ and had their friends come
over, drink heavily and read each others
poems, both in Icelandic and German.
At the same time in Iceland other friends
started doing the same thing every
month. The nights here in Iceland were
a bit different from the ones in Germany
because Icelanders tend to let everything
go completely, while living in a foreign
country so when they were drinking and
rioting on booze and poetry, we were just
having serious poetry nights with silence
and applause in the right places.
Nihilism and the Icelandic word for “new”
(nýtt… hence the “ý”) make the name
Nýhil. Haukur Már told me that they de-
cided on this name because they had the
goal of following the theories of Nihilism
to some extent. To destroy everything
that could possibly be destroyed. If they
didn’t succeed then they could at least
say that were doing something new. Al-
though these kinds of art societies have
been formed before around the world
they were doing it in a different style;
a less serious approach compared to
similar poetry-bashes.
In the interview, Haukur Már admitted
that at present, they have become more
like Post-Modernists, questioning all
borders and barriers between styles,
tradition, language and nationalities.
One of those borders would be between
the wanna-be bohemian Reykjavík life-
style and the bread-earning everyday
lifestyle in the countryside. The idea of
poetry only happening in the city will be
attacked with poetry when six or seven
Nýhil members will go on a bus and tour
the country, rock and roll style.
It has been a popular activity amongst
some Icelandic cover bands, to tour the
country and gain recognition by playing
at fish factory dances. These bands are
generally frowned upon by those who
write poetry and “Poetry-Parties” on tour,
can be understood as a mix between the
high art and low art if there is such dis-
tinction.
This is what Nýhil is doing right now.
They will tour about 6-7 places in two
separate trips. Although the readings will
mainly be in Icelandic it can be enjoyable
for everyone since they have a DJ to go
with the verses and they urge everybody
to do some massive drinking.
Aðalsteinn Jörundsson
NÝHIL ON TOUR
THE NEW NIHILISTIC ART SOCIETY TAKES ON THE COUNTRY SIDE
The schedule:
July 5th, Skaftfell, Seyðisfjörður, 22:00
July 6th, Gamla Búð, Höfn í Hornafirði, 17:00
July 10th, Gallerí Undirheimar, Mosfellsbær, 22:00
July 18th, Deiglan, Akureyri, 21:00
July 19th, Kaffi Krókur, Sauðárkrókur, 22:00
July 20th, Kaffi Ísafjörður, Ísafjörður, 22:00
July 24th, Grand Rokk, Reykjavík, 22:00
COMIC BOOKS IN ICELAND
The comic “Pax Americana” from Aukablaðið (www.aukabladid.is) by Dónald. “A
majestic story, matched possibly only by The Bible in its epic sweep,” apparently.