Reykjavík Grapevine - 17.06.2011, Blaðsíða 32

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32
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 8 — 2011
Travel | On yr. own
Grapevine pays a visit to the infa-
mous Skjaldborg documentary film
festival in Patreksfjörður. Fun times
ensue!
"Listen, none of us are famous like
Buddy Holly yet, so if we drive off a
cliff now it would be very sad and no-
body will remember us in sixty years".
This is a morbid (and historically inac-
curate, and somewhat tasteless) joke
overheard in a car on the road between
Patreksfjörður and Reykjavík last week.
And it was a nervous joke, uttered just
after the possibility of flying off a cliff
had seemed very real indeed.
But our reasons for visiting Patreks-
fjörður were not morbid at all; we just
wanted to see movies at a documentary
film festival called Skjaldborg. None of
us were famous like Buddy Holly, but it
didn't matter because the local world
ceased to matter. Because ‘Skjaldborg’
literally means “a wall of shields”, our
defence against the rest of the world—
our little shelter or even sanctuary. And
when we arrived, we were told that the
clock had been moved forward by an
hour, to Skjaldborg time, but only for
the weekend and only in this small town
in Iceland that had suddenly become
foreign.
This confused many of us, and some
were even angry. But then we became
kind of confused and forgot that we
brought a laptop and a cell phone. Yes,
we pretty much forgot those wonders
of modern technology for four whole
days. Because we came here to see
movies, Icelandic documentaries to be
exact, but ended up doing a lot of talk-
ing, eating fish and visiting hot springs
along the way. And drinking the occa-
sional beer in between. And that was
enough, the internet was not missed.
óMAR RAGNARSSON REVISITED
What happened at Skjaldborg? We saw
a lot of movies. Some of them are de-
tailed in the accompanying sidebar—
but we also saw the aforementioned
Ómar Ragnarsson being interviewed in
the cinema for two hours, in between
clips of his old documentaries. Every
Icelander under sixty grew up with
Ómar Ragnarsson, he has simply put,
been everywhere during the last fifty
years. On the television, doing shows
on the road, recording his own songs,
flying his own airplane dangerously
close to volcanic eruptions and even in
politics for a short while. Ómar evokes
mixed feelings with Icelanders, and my
friends and I aren’t too fond of his mu-
sical career. But deep down, we cher-
Skjaldborg: A Very Short Introduction
Time travelling at a documentary film festival in the Westfjords
Words
Ásgeir H. Ingólfsson
Photography
Courtesy of Skjaldborg
The annual Skjaldborg bash keeps getting more and more popular. Everyone loves it. That's cool. Have you been? Would
you go?
Photos from left to right:
1. Skjaldborg cinema, Patreksfjörður
2. Fun times at the film fest!
3. Spot the hipster!
4. AND THE WINNER IS...
5. Wouldn't it look cool if those guys
were all sporting 3D glasses