Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.05.2011, Blaðsíða 34

Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.05.2011, Blaðsíða 34
34 The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 6 — 2011 You can watch the recordings from this year's AFÉS at www.aldrei.is. Check it out! BEST FRIENDS DAY MONDAYS KAFFI ZIMSEN Hafnarstræti 18 - 517 4988 - www.kaffizimsen.is LARGE DRAFT €3.50 Enjoy covers the ambiance, food and location of 32 restaurants in Reykjavík Seafood, steakhouses, vegetarian, innovative cuisine and more . . . Enjoy dining out www.salka.is In the salty, arctic air of Ísafjörður, a small fishing town cradled in the north- west corner of Iceland, an omnipresent warmth lingers. A sense of community radi- ates from the town's resi- dents, their quaint homes, and the landscape that can become suddenly intimate if one looks closely enough. During the Aldrei fór ég suður music festival this feeling community warmed me to the core. THE DRIVE We drove up to Ísafjörður packed in a small rental car. My friends slept, sung, and snacked during the six-ish hour drive from Reykjavík. The spider web of a road map gave us the impression that time should be allotted for getting lost, but in reality the roads are well marked and signs for Ísafjörður are plentiful. Out of the window, I witnessed the landscape pull us through the seasons. While traversing a mountain range af- ter turning off route 1 onto route 60, we struggled to find the road in a snow- storm. But in the slowly greening plains before entering the Westfjords, we rolled down the windows and shed our layers. The creation of this landscape is no less epic than the sight of it: thou- sands of years ago, the Westfjords, like all fjords, formed by glacial melting. The diminishing ice carved U-shaped valleys out of the rock, leaving behind rows of sheer, flat mountains. FIRST IMPRESSIONS Within thirty minutes of my feet touch- ing the soil of Ísafjörður, a town of roughly 3000 inhabitants, I got the overwhelming feeling that Aldrei fór ég suður (AFÉS) is a festival for the past, present and future residents of Ísafjörður, the rest of us warmly wel- comed guests. The festival's name, which trans- lates as “I Never Went South” (to Reyk- javík), comes from a song by Bubbi Morthens, a former migrant worker, and alludes to the swelling urbanisa- tion of Icelandic society. Though fishing has been the main industry of Ísafjörður for centuries, political fishing restric- tions in the early 1980s and a decline in the fish population has caused the Ísafjörður natives to seek work in Reyk- javík or abroad, leading to a decline in the town's population. Now in its eighth year, AFÉS came when a revival of unity was needed. Already on Friday evening, during the community seafood feast in the town's centre, I could tell a sense of community would run deep throughout the festival: an owner of a local restau- rant cooked up huge pots of seafood soup and fish stew, and cheap beer was piled on ice in the back of a pick- up truck. Mugison, who conceived AFÉS over a beer in London with his father in 2003, remarked, "This festival is all about the love. There are no sound checks and mostly everyone uses the same equip- ment. We just want to have a good time this weekend and enjoy each other". The night of AFÉS' conception, Mu- gison and his father made a list of all the things they disliked about the structure of most music festivals: lesser known bands play first; sound checks take as long as the set itself; money reigns, and thus advertisement infiltrates every- thing from the napkins at the hot dog stand to the stage décor. Mugison said he wanted to start a festival in Iceland that replaced this for- mal structure with a relaxed, communal atmosphere, where the musicians and the town's residents volunteer their time and donate their goods. COMMUNITY BRENNIVÍN IS GOOD FOR THE SOUL After sitting on the shore and passing around a bottle Brennivín, my friends and I sauntered over to the venue, a large warehouse situated on the out- skirts of town. The stage was decorated with commercial fishing equipment that hung from the ceiling on thick rope. Large plastic tubs used for storing freshly caught fish held the festival's ever-growing empty beer can collec- tion. As the Brennivín began to take hold, the concerts started to blend together, as if the musicians had all played simul- taneously. But my hazy memory of this musical melding was no dream: Ice- landic musicians are an especially in- cestuous bunch. FM Belfast's Lóa Hlín Hjálmtýsdóttir, for example, is also in Prinspóló and múm's Örvar Þóreyjarson Smárason plays with FM Belfast, Borko, and Skakkamanage from time to time. SINKING EYELIDS The sun, even in April, lingers late and rises early, making a viewing of the- Northern Lights this late in the sea- son especially rare. Despite the odds and bright lights that beamed over the crowd, the sky graced me with my first viewing of Aurora Borealis, a subtle tinge of green that accented Ísafjörður's rural stars. As we lay on a hill above the concert venue in the plush Icelandic grass, the music still droning in the background, the sky sunk into the depths of my heavy eyelids. Before falling asleep completely, we walked back to a warm Icelandic home and opened a door that we had been told remains unlocked at all hours of the night. WARMLY WELCOMED RISING We awoke late Saturday morning in what we realised was the room of a teenage Icelandic girl: the full collec- tion of Twilight novels gave her away. Our hosts had kicked not one but both of their children out their rooms for us. The second room was across the attic hallway, its door adorned with stencils of planets and the names of Icelandic boys. Maybe it was the smell of eggs per- meating the house that morning that Music | Festivals Tales of a weekend in Ísafjörður during the Aldrei fór ég suður festival All About The Love

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