Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.05.2011, Qupperneq 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!
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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