Reykjavík Grapevine - 01.03.2013, Blaðsíða 2

We are now officially accepting nominations for
“Tourist of the year 2013.” Please submit your
nominations to editor@grapevine.is to be consid-
ered. We will read them, post them to our website
and print the best one come next January.
Note: To be eligible, the tourist (this can be you)
must have visited Iceland in 2013.
Once again, DesignMarch is upon us. This annual celebration of
Icelandic design in all its forms features something for everyone,
and has quickly become an essential event for professionals and
enthusiasts alike. As usual, we partake in the party by featuring loads
of design-related stories and handing out our very own Design Awards!
LOOK INSIDE!

ARTPOLITICS TRAVEL THE INTERNET FASHION
YOUR FREE COPY THE ESSENTIAL GUIDE TO LIFE, TRAVEL & ENTERTAINMENT IN ICELAND
× 2013
March 1 - April 4
Issue 3
What does
“Iceland’s Minister
of Everything” do?
Kunstschlager
kicks o‹
Super exotic ski
trips!
No porn for you,
Iceland
There's a whole
festival for that
Design team Ármann & Jónas pieced together four great designers and some huge letters for this year's DesignMarch.
Complete
Reykjavík Listings
Lots of
cool events+ Download the FREE Grapevine Appy Hour app!Every happy hour in town in your pocket. Available on the App store and on Android Market.
FULL
SCHEDULE
INSIDE
Putting
together the
pieces for
DesignMarch
HönnunarMars
DesignMarch
Reykjavík
.– . .

× 2013
January 11
- February 7
Issue 1
Missing
Your Free Copy
TOURIST OF THE YEAR
TH
E G
RA
PE
VI
NE
M
US
IC
AW
AR
DS

Hafnarstræti 15, 101 Reykjavík
www.grapevine.is
grapevine@grapevine.is
Published by Fröken ehf.
www.froken.is
Member of the Icelandic Travel Industry Association
www.saf.is
Printed by Landsprent ehf. in 25.000 copies.
Editor In Chief:
Haukur S Magnússon / haukur@grapevine.is
Managing Editor:
Anna Andersen / anna@grapevine.is
Editorial:
+354 540 3600 / editor@grapevine.is
Advertising:
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+354 40 3610
Publisher:
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Contributing Writers:
Paul Fontaine
Bob Cluness
Kári Tulinius
Catharine Fulton
Mark O'Brien
Thomas L. Moir
Snorri Páll Jónsson Úlfhildarson
Eiríkur Örn Norðdahl
Sindri Eldon
Larissa Kyzer
Alf Alderson
Kirsten O'Brien
Sigurður Kjartan Kristinsson
Sari Peltonen
Valur Gunnarsson
Valgerður Þóroddsdóttir
Journalist & Listings editor:
Rebecca Louder / rebecca@grapevine.is
Editorial Interns:
Pablo Punyed / pablo@grapevine.is
Puja Matta / puja@grapevine.is
On-line News Editor
Catharine Fulton / press@grapevine.is
Art Director
Hörður Kristbjörnsson / hoddi@grapevine.is
Design:
Guðmundur Úlfarsson / mail@gudmundurulfarsson.com
Photographer:
Alísa Kalyanova / www. alisakalyanova.com
Music Manager:
Bob Cluness / bob@grapevine.is
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Founders:
Hilmar Steinn Grétarsson,
Hörður Kristbjörnsson,
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Oddur Óskar Kjartansson,
Valur Gunnarsson
The Reykjavík Grapevine is published 18 times a year by Fröken
ltd. Monthly from November through April, and fortnightly from
May til October. Nothing in this magazine may be reproduced in
whole or in part without the written permission of the publish-
ers. The Reykjavík Grapevine is distributed around Reykjavík,
Akureyri, Egilsstaðir, Seyðisfjörður, Borgarnes, Keflavík,
Ísafjörður and at key locations along road #1, and all major tour-
ist attractions and tourist information centres in the country.
You may not like it, but at least it's not sponsored (no articles
in the Reykjavík Grapevine are pay-for articles. The opinions
expressed are the writers’ own, not the advertisers’).
Editorial | Anna Andersen TRACK OF THE ISSUE
Wherever you go, there you aren’t. Pétur
Ben might not be in the same place as he
used to be but with the release of his lat-
est album, ‘God’s Lonely Man’, his music
has not moved away from being great.
With gauzy muffled guitars that sound
like they were recorded underwater, this
wonderful track struggles and surges
against itself as it builds to a sudden
stop, leaving one wondering where Pétur
is now. Download this beauty and figure
it out.
Visions
Pétur Ben
Download for FREE at www.grapevine.is
BAD BUSINESS MAKES FOR GREAT ART
Anna’s 22nd Editorial
Will You Be Grape-
vine’s ‘Tourist Of
The Year 2013’?
Once again we’ve dedi-
cated our third issue of the
year to the annual Design-
March festival. Once again
we’ve created a special
pull-out with lots of design-
related stuff including our
annual Design Awards.
And once again we’ve relinquished control of our cover
to the designers behind the festival identity.
This time around, those designers are Jónas Valtýs-
son and Ármann Agnarsson (psst, they’re the guys on
our cover) and to represent the festival’s identity they
made these huge wooden letters that spell out HÖN-
NUNARMARS (“DESIGNMARCH”). But they’re
not just ordinary wooden letters, of course. The graphic
designers collaborated with four designers from various
disciplines, a decision they told us was key to creating
something that could represent all design.
And it’s this push to unite all design—from graphic
designers to fashion designers to architects—that seems
to stand out this year more than in past years. When I
stopped by the Iceland Design Centre a few weeks be-
fore print, Director Halla Helgadóttir was getting ready
to send off a proposal for the nation’s first ever design
policy, a comprehensive vision for the scene as a whole.
Despite this push to unite, however, Iceland’s design
scene is still young, still finding its roots and, as Halla
noted, still benefiting from a lack of tradition. “We have
this uninhibited power, you could call it naiveté. We’re
not weighed down by knowledge of what you can and
cannot do,” she explained. “And everybody knows ev-
erybody. If you see a celebrity in Iceland, you’re prob-
ably somehow related to that person or you know them.
It feels like it could be you. We all think, ‘it could be
me.’”
And perhaps it’s this trait, the same one that led Ice-
landers to think they could be the greatest bankers in
the world, despite the fact that they didn’t have a bank-
ing tradition, that is now guiding Iceland’s burgeon-
ing design scene, which is full of individuals who are
all confident that they can make it big. So it seems, as
Halla said, that this grandiose thinking, which might be
our greatest weakness, might also just be our greatest
strength.
At least the DesignMarch festival is bigger than ever
this year and the panel of experts who we got to pick
this year’s crop of Grapevine Design Award winners
decided to make the awards bigger than ever, too.
Turn to our special DesignMarch pullout inside to
read more.
What’s The Deal With
Those Crazy Icelandic
Letters Yo?
Here Is Your Kreisí Æcelandic Frase For Þis Issue!
ÐðÞþÆæÖö
æ
ð
þ
We thought we’d explain. We’re ripping the idea off from
the Icelandair magazine. Go read that magazine if you can.
It’s free.
We like spelling things using Icelandic letters like ‘æ’
and ‘þ’ and also those crazy accents over the vowels. Like
Icelandair’s inflight magazine—IcelandairInfo—says, the
Icelandic language can use accents on all of the vowels,
making them look all unique, like this: á, é, í, ó, ú, ö, ý (the
accent also changes the pronounciation of the letters. The
á in “kjáni” sounds quite different from the a in “asni”,
for instance). We also have an additional three letters. As
IcealandairInfo notes:
(often written as ae) is pro-
nounced like the i in tide.
(often written as d) is pronounced
like the th in there
(often written as th) is pro-
nounced like the th in think”
“Hvar keyptirðu þennan æðislega trefil?” (kvar kayp-tir-thoo then-naan eye-this-layga
tre-fyl?)
Where did you buy this amazing scarf?
Cover by:
Jónas Valtýsson
& Ármann Agnarsson
www.jonasval.com
www.armannagnarsson.com
FUN TRIVIA QUESTION!
Taken from the educational trivia
game Instant Iceland
Q: The Nordic House in Reykjavík is
designed by the acclaimed, modern-
ist architect Alvar Aalto. With its ul-
tramarine blue ceramic rooftop, the
house is different from any other in
the city. Where is Alvar Aalto from?
A Finland
B Akureyri
C France
Turn to page 24 for the answer!
YOUR
FACE
HERE
2The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 3 — 2013
BSÍ Bus Terminal
101 Reykjavík
+354 580 5400
main@re.is • www.re.is
OR
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