Reykjavík Grapevine - 14.03.2014, Blaðsíða 6

Arriving about a month ago one of the
first things I noticed about the face of Ice-
land was the fact that it was, well, fuzzy. It
seems that wherever I look I see another
beard waiting to be tugged. The streets
are flooded with beards—beards push-
ing baby strollers through the park, beards
having lunch at cafés, beards washing
shop windows. Red goatees, blonde side-
burns, black imperials. Here a beard, there
a beard, everywhere a BEARD! So I became
determined to find out why so many more
Icelanders seem to have facial hair than
men elsewhere, and what exactly this pro-
fusion of bearded men had to say about
Iceland's fuzzy face.
Facial Hair Is In
My quest brings me to this barbershop
called Hárhornið. After explaining my
interest in facial hair, owner Torfi Geir-
mundsson pulls out his iPad to show me
a photo blog called 'Beards in Iceland' by
American photographer Pat Moriearty.
As we scroll through the pictures of Ice-
landic men with giant bushels of facial
hair, Torfi tells me that he's been a hair-
dresser in Iceland for more than forty
years and taught barbering at the Techni-
cal College Reykjavík before going on to
open his own shop.
As a teacher many years ago, Torfi
says he couldn't find models with large
enough beards for his students to practice
their full beard trimming techniques. But
nowadays it seems there's a large beard
looking for a free trim on every street
corner in downtown Reykjavík. The blog
displays photograph after photograph of
Icelandic men with full Santa Claus-like
beards hanging down to their chests that
might surprise an outsider. For anyone
used to walking down Laugavegur, how-
ever, these photos are far from shocking
and feel more like a montage of the more
expansive beards you'll see on your Sat-
urday morning walk to the grocery store
than anything exotic or outrageous.
Torfi explains to me that Icelanders
are participating in a greater worldwide
beard-growing trend, but the beards may
be more obvious in Iceland, a country
where everyone follows the latest fashion
trends, be it a pair of wingtips or a par-
ticular haircut. As beard fashion makes its
comeback there's been more and more
interest in shaving with a straight razor,
harkening back to that classier James
Bond-esque masculinity. Being able to
touch up your beard with a straight razor
has become a sign-post of manly sophisti-
cation, he says, waving his hand at shelves
of brightly-coloured boxes of straight ra-
zors to my right, which he started selling
five years ago and range in price anywhere
from 10,000 to 28,000 ISK (90–250 USD).
Hands Off My Beard!
Modern beard fashion isn't all champagne
and tuxedos, however, as neglected scrag-
gly beards—like those featured in the
'Beards in Iceland' blog—have become
more and more popular as well. Torfi tells
me that the majority of modern beard
growers, at least in Iceland, are in their
twenties and prefer a 'hands off' beard-
style, wanting their facial hair to look as
if nobody has done anything to maintain
it. “They want their beard to look like Karl
Marx’s or something—long, especially
in the front. They don't like straight lines
here,” Torfi says, tracing a line under his
neck in the classic decapitation gesture.
Twenty-eight-year-old Kristján Aage,
who has been a hairstylist and owner
of the Sjoppan hair salon in Iceland for
the past four years, seems to agree. “Too
stylised a beard doesn't look that good,”
says Kristján, who's had his own neatly
cropped brown beard for ten years. “You
have to maintain it a little bit or else you're
going to look like a homeless person. It's
about finding a balance. You can trim it
a little bit, but it still has to look like it’s
grown out naturally.”
While modern beard fashion stresses
that it's not cool to look like you put too
much effort into grooming, when it
comes to having a full beard, Kristján and
Torfi are adamant that maintenance is
key. “Sometimes you take off a long beard
and it's dirty, full of dead skin cells and
everything else because it hasn’t been
washed enough,” Torfi explains, his voice
rising in frustration. “Hair gets ten times
dirtier than your hands, and you wash
your hands all the time. Why not your
beard?”
That’s not to say that everyone with
a big beard is growing it out of pure la-
ziness. Real beard aficionados know
the importance of keeping a large beard
healthy and clean. “It's somewhat ironic,”
says Thomas Brorsen Smidt, a 28-year-old
kindergarten teacher who has grown his
beard for eight years. “Back in the day, a
big beard would smell like motor oil and
yesterday's food, but today you know, it
smells like tea tree oil or whatever it is
people put in it.”
Hobo No More
With facial hair fashion shifting towards
more unkempt, hands-off styles, the
negative stereotype around large scraggly
beards has been on the decline in Iceland.
Most Icelanders I’ve spoken to claim that
it wouldn’t be out of place to show up to
a job interview with a full beard and that
it wouldn’t be strange to be greeted by a
scruffy bank teller.
There's a marked difference, however,
between how Icelanders and foreigners
interact with people sporting grungy
beards. “Tourists have actually literally
crossed the street to get away from me,”
says 29-year-old fiction author Kjartan
Yngvi Björnsson. “It tends to happen
when I'm with a friend of mine, Árni, as
we're both kind of tall and have big bushy
beards,” Kjartan says. “The other day we
were walking up Laugavegur and we had
the whole sidewalk to ourselves. It’s kind
of funny; I suppose people get scared.”
That’s not to say that Icelanders have
always been so tolerant. Shortly after my
visit to Torfi's shop I meet 44-year-old Óla-
fur Örn Ólafsson, who has been growing
his Charles Darwin-esque beard for the
past ten years. “When I first started grow-
ing my beard people didn't hesitate to tell
me what a hobo I was,” Ólafur tells me, re-
calling the general stigma of laziness and
uncouthness that traditionally surrounds
beards. “But it's not like that anymore,” he
goes on with a chuckle, “we're winning.”
6The Reykjavík Grapevine Issue 3 — 2014
Fashion | Facial Hair
The silence of the barbershop is accentuated by the sharp metallic snipping of scissors. In the centre of
the room three barber chairs occupied by patrons face full-length mirrors decorated by antique, gold-
painted frames. I know I've come to the right place for some serious barbering. One of the hair dressers,
a hulking man with spectacles and large, immaculate hands approaches me and gestures that I should
take a seat, but I shake my head and begin to explain that I'm not here for a haircut: I'm here for answers.
The Fuzzy Face Of Iceland
What do Icelandic men have to say about their facial hair?
— By Ben Smick
Alisa Kalyanova
Continues over
February, short month though it
is, was chock-full of newsworthy
debates, debacles, happenings and
protests. But although the issues
range broadly, it’s clear that many
Icelanders aren’t in the mood to take
much sitting down.

Perhaps most notable on the inter-
national stage is the ruling coalition’s
proposal to preemptively end EU
accession talks. This proposal has
sparked a series of protests as well
as the circulation of a petition against
the withdrawal which has garnered
roughly 48,000 signatures. It also
contradicts the Independence Party’s
election stance that "the people will
make the decision on EU accession by
public referendum during the election
term,” although this hasn’t seemed
terribly important to Prime Minister
Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson. As
he stated in a late-February interview,
it’s the government’s stance that “Ice-
land is better off without the European
Union.” He also suggested that the
angry protesters should “maybe calm
down a little.”

Right. Who else is unlikely to “calm
down” this month? How about the
upper-secondary school teachers
who have been in contract debates
and protesting insufficient wages
since December? Citing “the apathy
of the Icelandic government,” and
“harsh budget cuts,” these educators
have received vocal support from stu-
dents who have shown their solidarity
through rallies outside of parliament
and t-shirts with supportive slogans.
They’ve not yet come to any agree-
ments on salary increases, however,
and may go on strike in March.

One glimmer of positivity this month
came, unsurprisingly, thanks to
Eurovision. Iceland’s contender for the
2014 Song Contest will be the quartet
Pollapönk, the members of which
are all kindergarten teachers from
Hafnarfjörður (two members used to
be in the post-punk band Botnleðja).
Their song, “Enga Fordoma” (“No
Prejudice”), will be performed in
English at Eurovision, featuring lyrics
translated by John Grant. Bright
Future MP Óttarr Proppé is a backup
singer in the band, although it is
unclear if he will be able to leave his
parliamentary duties to take part in
the contest.

NEWS IN BRIEF
FEBRUARY
by Larissa Kyzer
“The streets are flooded
with beards—beards push-
ing baby strollers through
the park, beards having
lunch at cafés, beards wash-
ing shop windows.”
The face of Iceland is actually unrep-
resentatively fuzzy this month thanks
to Mottumars or “Moustache March.”
The Icelandic Cancer Society's re-
sponse to Movember and other new
lifestyle fundraising programmes,
Mottumars is a month-long mous-
tache growing competition in which
participants from around Iceland raise
money to help fight cancers affecting
men. Participants raise money for the
cause and enter their photo to the
Mottumars website where people do-
nate to their favourite 'stache. At the
end of the competition a winner is se-
lected based in part on the amount of
money a participant raised and in part
by a committee's vote. As Mottumars
begins its seventh year, the Icelandic
Cancer Society hopes to raise around
30 million ISK, which is what they’ve
been raising for the past few years.
Anyone wishing to compete can regis-
ter individually or as part of a team by
visiting the Mottumars website, www.
mottumars.is. Also go there to donate.
The Face Of Iceland Is Extra
Fuzzy This Month
Hörður Sveinsson