Reykjavík Grapevine - 20.06.2014, Qupperneq 23

23The Reykjavík GrapevineIssue 08 — 2014
Love In The
Land Of The
Midnight Sun
Or: Why There Is No Dating
Culture In Iceland
Words by Valur Gunnarsson
Photos by Daníel Freyr Atlason
It’s nearing four o‘clock and the boys at the bar are tearing their shirts off. Bare chests
multiply on the dance floor like drunken amoeba—three, four, five. This is a high-stakes
game and all stops are pulled. You don’t go gently into that good night, unless you want
to go home alone. Succeed once and you might never have to play again. If you don’t,
there will always be another Saturday night.
There have been so many Saturday
nights, each one a repetition of the last.
Bill Murray ain’t got nothing on me as
the weeks turn into months, then years,
then decades. And yet I never seem to
learn. I am sobering up far too soon,
and I still have my shirt on—two car-
dinal sins that lead to sexual exile. A
thousand years since the end of the Vi-
king Age and we still have not mastered
the art of conversation.
A Strange Kind
Of Paradise
In his novel ‘Paradise Reclaimed,’
('Paradísarheimt') Iceland’s Nobel Lau-
reate Halldór Laxness writes of the
time romantic love came to Iceland.
He suggests this happened sometime
around the year 1874, on the 1000-year
anniversary of settlement, and de-
scribes it thusly:
“That which we now call love had
not yet come to Iceland. People mated
without romance, according to the
wordless laws of nature and in confor-
mity with the German pietism of the
Danish king. The word love survived
in the language, certainly, but only as a
relic from a distant unknown age when
words meant something quite differ-
ent from now; perhaps it had been used
about horses.” [Translation by Magnús
Magnússon].
Old Laxness may have been exagger-
ating somewhat, for evidence suggests
that romantic love never really made it
to Iceland at all, and contemporary texts
seem to agree. In the charmingly titled e-
book ‘Bang Iceland,’ an American calling
himself Roosh V. documents his findings
after a 2011 visit, during which he con-
ducted extensive research (well, at least a
couple of weeks). Surprisingly, he seems
to broadly reach the same conclusions as
our Nobel poet. (Disclaimer: In no way
is this an endorsement of the politics or
worldview of Roosh V).
Icelandic Hookup Culture
One reading of Laxness suggests that the
half-naked men dancing drunkenly in
bars in 21st Century Iceland are a direct
result of the Danish pietism of the 17th
Century, a period when drinking and
dancing were prohibited. Perhaps this
is, then, a belated middle finger to our
former king, in the same way that Ameri-
cans still carry guns to spite George III.
If true, the same aversion to romanticism
would logically apply to the Danes them-
selves, who were, and still are, ruled by
these very same kings and queens. Roosh
appears to concur:
“It’s safe to say that Icelandic guys
can’t approach. Until I got to Denmark,
I’ve never seen such piss-poor all-around
game. I’ll give them a pass because the
Icelandic environment promotes passiv-
ity, a strategy that may actually increase
the chance for a permanent male resident
to land a girlfriend. While sometimes
they do approach while drunk, the only
time I saw ‘normal’ approaches was from
Icelandic guys who had lived abroad...”
At the end of ‘Bang Iceland,’ Roosh
sums up his conclusions under the head-
ing ‘Icelandic hookup culture is kind of
fucked up, and that’s coming from me’:
“I still can’t get my head wrapped around
how strange Icelandic hookup culture is.
It’s basically backwards: they have sex
first before having an extended conver-
sation that women from almost any other
country in the world would require as a
prerequisite to sex.”
Admittedly, Roosh does not strike one
as a particularly sympathetic character.
However, more reputable observers, such
as Alda Sigmundsdóttir, who grew up in
North America and relocated to Iceland,
tend to make the
same points. In her
‘Little Book of the Ice-
landers’ (2012), Alda
claims Icelandic men
are “renowned for
being hopeless at hit-
ting on women.” She
goes on to quote her
22-year-old daugh-
ter, raised in Iceland,
who explains that she
would never consider
going on a date with
someone. After all,
what if the guy turned out to be boring?
Why then, one might add, leave the
selection process to the morning after?
What if his alimony payments are as bad
as his jokes? This is something you might
want to consider before rather than after
coitus.
Alda further describes the natural
course of an Icelandic relationship as:
sex, a movie, kids, moving in, and per-
haps marriage, pointing out that every-
thing here is done in a different order
than it is most other places.
The Long Walk Up
Laugavegur
Leaving the bar and heading out on the
long, lonely walk up Laugavegur, we
move from literature
to conjecture. Yes,
Icelandic men are
hopeless. Most sourc-
es agree on this. But,
why?
A Swiss girl once
told me that going up
Laugavegur on a Sat-
urday night was one
of the most harrow-
ing experiences of her
life beset, as she was,
on all sides by jovial,
obnoxious, drunken
barbarians getting grabby. She further
noted that on mainland Europe, it was
quite normal for a man and a woman to
“Sex, a movie, kids,
moving in, perhaps
marriage. In that order.”