Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.07.2011, Qupperneq 31

31
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 11 — 2011
The Viking Tavern In Reykjavík
restaurant & bar
VÍKINGAKRÁIN - HAFNARSTRÆTI - TEL+ 354 861 7712 WWW.VIKINGAKRAIN.IS
Let’s talk Iceland
The history of Iceland
in one funny hour
shown every day at 8pm
Viking market
Handmade Icelandic
design for sale outside
open when the weather allows
Noodle soup with chicken IKR 930
IKR 930 Noodle soup with beef
Home of the best noodle soup!
Skólavörðustígur 21A
“It’s out of my hands,” he says. There
are plenty of grills in stock, which is
more than I can say for the ostensibly
waning condom reserves behind the
counter. VÞ
18:00 Between acts I decide to stroll
down the main drag Austurvegur, and
pay a visit to Arní Sveinsson (director
of Backyard). People huddled together
between vehicles; the scene is reminis-
cent of a tailgate—the guzzling of booze
and blasting of disco beats. There is a
small fold up table littered with beer
cans, cigarette fixings, and mittens sur-
rounded with foldout chairs and stolen
seats from the guesthouse kitchen. I
had joined them with the assumption
that dinner was next on schedule, but
once the pint of vodka is introduced,
the bad stories and ski gear keep piling
on. Though the sun provided light, the
evening air had an unforgiving nip. The
idea of a steadfast meal was no longer a
main concern. Following a bout of ban-
ter about Arnþrúður’s attire and her il-
logical choice for fashion over comfort,
we finally conclude to venture to the
local restaurant and hotel, Skaftfell. ML
20:00 A group of four bickering, mid-
fifties women occupy the table next to
ours, and are clearly at home amidst
the buzzing energies of small children
and drunken customers. They are all
residents of Seyðisfjörður, and wel-
come me whole-heartedly to join them.
The festival is something they had seen
grow from a small gathering estab-
lished by bored art-deprived teenag-
ers, into a full-blown festival attracting
Icelanders from across the country. “I
think this festival is wonderful,” one
woman comments enthusiastically. “To
have so many young people come here
for a whole week and work on art has
really created quite the hype for this
town,” she adds. “Yes, but it would be
interesting to see how much it costs
this town in the end,” argues the scep-
tic of the bunch. “Last year there was
a lot of drunken partying going on and
I know it cost a lot to regulate and fix
damages.” ML
00:00 People are desperate to forget,
aren’t they? I mean, entire countries are
founded on a certain historical forget-
fulness. The washing away of the blood
spilled the night before. And isn’t it
just so that we dive head first into the
deep end of alcoholic oblivion? Where
we can adopt a new persona, discover
an internal landscape where the world
melts into something bigger than our
tiny, muddled heads—something more
expansive and exotic than this tiny is-
land? VÞ
00:30 Outside Herðubreið, I witness a
‘balloon shakedown’ as a young man
climbs onto the roof of the awning and
snatches the string of one of the yellow
helium balloons fastened to the house.
A woman in red—a red fleece—comes
tearing through the crowd, grabbing
him by the collar and shaking him as
she presses her face to his. VÞ
01:00 Horseplay and drunken buf-
foonery are indeed major themes of this
festival, and provide an easy playing
field for singles. Come the A.M. hours
smooching and ‘knúsing’ envelope the
premises, especially at the local bar
Lára. It is jam packed and even offers
special LungA cocktails, which natu-
rally include a double shot. ML
02:00 At Láran—the ‘kaffibarinn of
the east’—someone is shouting: “I’m
not backwards, you see. I’m not back-
wards like a sailor!” Outside there are
‘security’ everywhere, not cops, but
men walking around in vests, patrolling
parking lots, picking up bottles from
the street. The sound of breaking glass
somehow manages not to be sinister in
this environment. VÞ
03:00 The bridge serves as a kind of
runway as people drunkenly pass back
and forth between the dance at Herðu-
breið and Láran, on the way perhaps
stopping to greet friends, perhaps look-
ing for a moment out at the still water. A
man passes by me with a beer in every
available pocket. He eyes me and ev-
eryone around me leeringly, as though
looking to pick a fight. A moment later a
very drunk girl, being carried by one of
her friends, accidentally kicks someone
in the face. VÞ
03:30 Back from smoking a cigarette
at the dance, my friend looks visibly
agitated, and says he has just been told
that he deserves to be punched for be-
ing from Reykjavík. VÞ
04:00 Daníel Ágúst performs the 1999
GusGus song 'Ladyshave' with sup-
port from the Hjaltalín band. Urður
Hákonardóttir, Sigríður Thorlacius and
President Bongo singing backup vocals
into a single microphone, swaying in
tandem, snapping with one hand, drink
in the other. Everyone is dripping with
sweat, clothes drooping off them, sexy,
serious. VÞ
05:00 Not being aware of the track
record, someone else attempts to nab
the helium balloon as his friends watch
on. Yet another player on defence shuts
him down, this one clearly a civilian. VÞ
06:00 A group of spun motherfuck-
ers are gathered on a patch of grass.
Avoiding sleep is like a teasing game at
this point. We join in belting out Sub-
lime, and rolling around on our backs.
"What time is it?"
"Uh, I think almost six"
"Shit. I got a plane to catch at 11:00"
"Want some magic mushrooms?"
"Fuck it, why not?" ML
SUNDAY
13:00 The rain finally fell. Sitting at the
kitchen table of the old lady’s house—
the woman we had never seen but who
had graciously donated us her space;
the woman we had probably been
keeping awake for two days now—I look
out the open door. The fog, which had
been blanketing us for days, has finally
come to enfold us, and my eyes can't
reach beyond the inlet. The water still,
the campsite abandoned, nothing left
in the house but an empty 2 Litre Coke
bottle. The door unlocked as it had al-
ways been. VÞ
Flight provided by Air Iceland. Air Iceland flights are to Egilsstaðir then a 20 minutes
drive to Seyðisfjörður. Book flight at www.airiceland.is or phone +354-5703000