Reykjavík Grapevine - 05.07.2013, Blaðsíða 32

THE NUMBER 1 MUSIC STORE
IN EUROPE ACCORDING TO
LONELY PLANET
SKÓLAVÖRÐUSTÍG 15, 101 REYKJAVÍK AND HARPA CONCERT HALL
32The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 9 — 2013
Sex In The City: Reykjavík
A brisk parade through the dating jungle
In the context of the cosmos, the Big Bang theory is disputed. In the context of Reykjavík, it’s widely accepted that ev-
erything begins with a bang. Beer at Kaffibarinn. Dancing at Harlem. A bang. And then maybe a date, maybe a kid,
maybe a marriage. Or, maybe not. But regardless, the bang comes first.
María Ólafsdóttir told me to meet her in front
of Uno restaurant at 8 PM. From a few blocks
away I saw her standing there, a lone wolf—
she glanced at the ducks in the small, strange
fountain next to the lesser hot dog stand. One
male and one female, they swam in confused
circles. I wondered what María was thinking
about them. Maybe she was idealising their
romantic world. Or maybe she was thinking
what I was thinking, that the ducks were like
the young people of Reykjavík, afloat in a tiny
pool, swimming laps until their beaks finally
touched. Then because they keep running into
one another and because there’s no one else
(and probably because it’s cold and they’re
bored) they have repeated duck relations that
soon result in multiple ducklings.
Iceland’s Carrie Bradshaw
María checked her watch. “Well, I think we will
start,” she said. You get a private tour.” The
tour is her newly launched guided “Courtship
in the City” walk through downtown Reykjavík.
María is a little like Carrie Bradshaw. She’s
not excessively fashionable, and she doesn’t
giggle and jump in stilettos or rent a five
bedroom New York apartment on a writer’s
salary. But she had been a journalist for Mor-
gunblaðið where she wrote a column, “Heimur
Maríu” (“The World Of María) that included
her personal dating stories and accounts of the
Reykjavík nightlife (Sex And The City fans will
recognize the mildly nuanced similarity).
It quickly came out that María was indeed
a fan of the TV show, had visited New York,
and had gone on one of the notorious Sex And
The City tours where guides show enthusiasts
everything from where ‘the girls’ dined out to
where they bought their sex toys. “In a way
[Courtship In The City] is based on that tour,
but it’s a bit different,” she said. While Carrie
Bradshaw stopped at print articles, María, a
true martyr, has taken it a step further and
transferred her written content into a walking
tour with the same plot: her own dating life. It’s
a bold move.
Into the dating jungle
María wanted to meet in front of Uno because
it’s where she had her “last first date” with her
soon-to-be husband. “So we are going to begin
the tour and go into what I like to call the dating
jungle,” she said. “It’s a little wild and you have
to be persistent.” We started walking. I men-
tioned that a lot of people come to Iceland with
high aesthetic expectations for both the land
and the people. “Yes,” she said, adjusting her
glasses, “many Icelandic men are the tall, dark,
and handsome type. But then they start talking
and it’s just, bluddddubluuhhhggaaa.” She
stopped in the middle of Ingólfstorg, a square
where some boys were skateboarding. “So I’ll
tell a story here. I went out with my sister and
we were walking home just here, and some
guys in a taxi yelled to us, ‘hey, come to an
after party with us’, and we thought, oh okay,
so we turned around and went to the taxi and
the guys said, ‘never mind, you looked better
from behind.”
She walked on and stopped again in front of
English Pub to give a description of when she
was invited to join in a threesome (you’ll have
to go on the tour if you want to known whether
or not she accepted). As she was laying out the
scenario, an intoxicated man stumbled by. “We
don’t want you on this tour,” María said under
her breath.
She went on and led me up Laugavegur. In
front of B5, a “tall, dark, and handsome” indi-
vidual playing a game on his iPhone casually
listened in as María expanded on her analysis
of the Icelandic man. He turned and looked at
his reflection in the window. A sad violin played
in the background.
Each of María’s stories was just as blunt as
the one before. Everything was matter-of-fact,
with very little eye roll worthy embellishment
(of course there was the occasional gem of a
quote: “I went into Loftið in a cowboy hat and
a pink boa” and “I was a jungle cat,” followed
by no explanation). In front of Sushi Samba she
told one of two truly gimmicky stories on the
whole tour. “This is where Tom Cruise and Ka-
tie had their last dinner as a couple, before they
divorced. Maybe it was the Icelandic women,
or maybe Tom went crazy because he wasn’t
getting any sleep in the light. Whatever it was,
Iceland was not good for their marriage.” She
paused before ushering me to the next stop—
an eerie moment of silence for Tom and Katie’s
broken marriage.
Ending on a semi-hopeful note
Disclosing all the details of the Courtship In The
City tour would be like listings the measure-
ments of all the penises in the Icelandic Phal-
lological Museum, so I’ll refrain from specifics.
I will say that the tour ended on a hopeful note
(after all, she was getting married), but María
isn’t trying to paint a flowery portrait of Reykja-
vík’s dating culture. “My personal opinion is we
don’t have much of a dating scene here. Most
often people start off on the ‘wrong end’ by
going home together and then perhaps dating.
We are quite few here so I’m not sure it would
work very well to be dating a few people at a
time since some people might be put off by
seeing this girl/boy on a date with one of his/
her friends or relative for example.”
The overall tone of the tour was grounded,
not in the fantasies of love or the gross exploi-
tation of Reykjavík’s party reputation, but in
reality—or perhaps even more so, in literary
realism. María delivered her stories like an
Icelandic Hemmingway—sometimes grim,
sometimes dry, but never beating around the
bush and always just a little alluring. It’s not
often (if ever) that someone invites you into
his or her life in the strange yet creative way
that María has. When I asked why she thought
tourists would be interested in her dating
stories, she said that personal is always best.
“It’s like when you watch stand-up. It’s always
funniest when the comedian makes fun of him/
herself,” she said. “The personal aspect brings
greater depth and more humour.” Plus, if you
are intrigued enough to wander into María’s
personal dating saga, you are going to pick up
some good bar tips along the way.
“Maybe it was the Ice-
landic women, or may-
be Tom went crazy be-
cause he wasn’t getting
any sleep in the light.
Whatever it was, Iceland
was not good for their
marriage.”
by Shea Sweeney
Nanna Dís