Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.07.2006, Blaðsíða 13

Issue 10, 2006 8 Page Listings Section in Your Pocket
it’s
free
The Grapevine can finally firmly recommend a guide-
book for getting around our hometown of Reykjavík - our
own guidebook, Inside Reykjavík. Not that other travel
books from massive, impersonal conglomerates are evil or
inaccurate; we typically consult with them in exchange
for free dinner, and we can say the authors of other books
are often well mannered and… not evil. But our book is
local. True, written by an American jackass, but at least
an American with a vested interest in the country, and
three years of hard Icelandic living under his belt.
Here’s why you need Inside Reykajvík: you can find
out about how to relax, how to party, how to start a
decent conversation, even how to get out of the city. And
we have photos, yes, photographs. Many of them. And
handsome maps.
Truthfully, we just can’t say enough about how good
our own work was. If only we had the linguistic skills to
describe how strong our linguistic skills were in writing
the book. But we don’t. Since we sent the book to our
publisher, Edda Press, we have grown tired, dumb and
lazy.
Which is one more reason to buy the book. We can
state, for the record, that we will never be that good
again.
Fellow tourist, expatriate or self-conscious Icelander,
imagine the day you pick up our fine book as the day you
get married or fall in love. That significant other, which
in this case is 170 pages of photos, text, design and pas-
sion, is supple, smells good, and, most importantly, all
yours, will grant you both your wildest dream and your
deepest, most fulfilling need. Take us. Take us now. Go
to the bookstore, grab our book, throw down your money,
and bond. Bond. Bond.
Because when you are done with the book, we will
never quite fulfil you in the same way. Afterwards, you
will read us and think of what once was. And either that
will be enough, and you will smile sweetly as you read us
and believe yourself to be in a promising relationship, or
that one moment between our silky smooth pages will be
the beginning of the end, and you will wander around,
picking up sexier, more f lashy street trash that can’t
satisfy you as we once did, but that won’t remind you of
those haunting memories. BC
/// So in just a word or two, what does Rey-
kjavík mean?
Haukur: Awe. A-w-e. Look at all the cool
stuff they’re doing in Reykjavík.
Bóas: From an outsider’s point of view,
definitely.
Haukur: Iceland revolves around Reykjavík.
It’s our backbone. All the newspapers are
published here. If you read Morgunblaðið, in
the what’s going on this weekend, you won’t
have anything in Akureyri, even. So if you’re
from outside, you’re bombarded with all this
great stuff that’s going on in Reykjavík.
Bóas: In one word, Reykjavík to me would
represent attitude, and not in the negative
sense. But everybody in Reykjavík has it.
/// An attitude you can’t have in a smaller
town. You might get beaten up.
Bóas: Or made fun of, at least. It’s all about
building your self-image here. Everybody
does it. Even the guy that works behind the
counter at the 10-11 convenience store has
some kind of image-based attitude.
Haukur: Yeah, you know Eiríkur Norðdahl,
the big Nýhil poet, he’s the clearest example
of what happens. He’s from Ísafjörður, he’s
a friend of ours. He decided when he was
about 16 years old that he was going to be a
poet and a novelist and a communist. So he
took to wearing a hat and drinking coffee.
And people just came on to him really hard.
There’s no room for self-creation when you’re
in a small town like that. ‘Cause everyone
remembers you from when you were 12 or 15
or something like that. So what he had to do
in the end was move away to Reykjavík. This
is similar to the reason you see a lot of people
here.
/// And now, Eiríkur Norðdahl is famous
for driving the culture in Ísafjörður, partly
for his work in Nýhil, partly for the work he
does with his best friend, Mugison.
Haukur: He lives there now. This is some-
thing he did when he was 20.
Bóas: But he came back to Ísafjorður with
that reputation from Reykjavík, and then
people started paying attention to him.
Looking past his former self.
There is just an attitude here. Even peo-
ple who don’t have an attitude, that’s their
attitude, like the krútt kids. [(Cute genera-
tion, a label for Sigur Rós, múm and their
contemporaries.)]
Haukur: That’s a very closed group. That’s
the thing that surprised me most on moving
to Reykjajvík, because I had been following
them closely, listening to múm albums and
reading their poetry books. And I could nev-
er imagine they had a hierarchy. You would
think it would be like in Ísafjörður: sailors
drinking with mechanics drinking with
musicians drinking with college professors,
but my third weekend living in Reykjavík I
learned that was not the case.
/// Egalitarianism is a point of pride, but it
doesn’t quite happen in Reykjavík. Each to
their own bar: Sirkus for krútt. Kaffibarinn
for young filmmakers. Bar 11 and Dillon
for hard rock.
Bóas: We’ve started going out on Lækjargata
to avoid seeing the same crowd, when we
want to hide out.
/// The joke we make in New York is that
you know you’re in New York when you’re
hearing Midwestern music. And you’re
proof of the same being true here. Of the
major Reykjavík bands, I can’t think of one
that is actually from here.
Bóas: A lot of the bands you see here are
from Hafnarfjörður. Like Botnleðja, Ja-
kobínarína, lots of them.
Haukur: Hafnarfjörður has had a Social
Democratic government, so they take culture
into account. Bands get practise spaces and
that kind of thing.
Bóas: Which they would never do here.
/// Reykjavík has a coalition government,
R-Listinn. And when this book comes out,
it will likely be Independence Party, which
is extremely conservative. The politics are
pretty conservative, but not as bad as some
villages up north.
But are you telling me that you moved
to Reykjavík, named your band Reykjavík!,
because of the attitude of Hafnarfjörður?
Haukur: I moved to Reykjavík to study
philosophy.
/// But we don’t want people to think this is
a campus town. It certainly isn’t that. First
off, there’s a highway keeping students
away from town.
Bóas: And there’s never been a campus feel.
We always wanted one. It seems to be chang-
ing, though. There is an upcoming campus
musical festival, and they’re really making an
effort now.
/// When you thought of Reykjavík and
read about it, were you assuming that the
nights out you had in Ísafjörður would just
be expanded by one-hundred times, bigger
population, multiply the energy?
Bóas: That would be the idea. But then the
smaller groups really split it up.
Haukur: That’s where they got the idea for
things like Reykjavík Nightlife Friend, where
you can get a Reykjavík insider to take you
around and show you the other side.
/// Oh dear god, you had to bring that up.
I suppose it’s a key service and an indica-
tion as to how things work here. You hire a
friend to get you into bars.
Bóas: I used to live with two guys who did
that.
Haukur: It’s expensive. They say they can
get you in front of all the lines, and they’ll
teach you to party like a native.
/// What does that mean, to party like a
native?
Haukur: I don’t know, drinking a lot. You
get a lot of dirty weekend guys visiting.
Wearing suits. Walking around telling peo-
ple “I’m from America,” or stuff like that.
/// Dirty weekend being an advertising
campaign that has become a mark of shame
in Iceland. Years ago, the tourist board
showed photos of blond girls in hot tubs
promising a dirty weekend in Iceland.
Bóas: I actually worked for the only Rey-
kjavík nightclub, Thomsen, a few years ago.
And there were a bunch of really big guys.
And I ended up talking to them, and they
were from the Boston Fire Brigade. They
were invited by Boston to go out on a dirty
weekend in Reykjavík. And they were so
bummed out that they couldn’t find any loose
girls.
/// It is a part of this town - something to
warn people about, maybe. Icelanders turn
out to be human beings. Their sex lives
really shouldn’t be tourist attractions, and
having their private lives used as advertise-
ments may have really, ahem, turned them
off foreigners.
Haukur: I think it’s okay. They can come
and do whatever they want - it’s not going to
make the women find them attractive… just
a lot of disappointed foreigners.
/// If you’re coming here for culture and
want to hear music or see art, you may not
be disappointed.
Haukur: No, if people came for culture, they
wouldn’t be disappointed. Do they come for
that?
“Iceland revolves around Reykjavík. It’s our backbone.
All the newspapers are published here. If you read
Morgunblaðið, in the what’s going on this weekend,
you won’t have anything in Akureyri, even. So if you’re
from outside, you’re bombarded with all this great stuff
that’s going on in Reykjavík.”
The Climax of All Our Hard Work – Inside Reykjavík: The Grapevine Guide
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