Reykjavík Grapevine - 08.05.2015, Page 2

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The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 1 — 2011 2
The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 5 — 2015
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
Editor:
Anna Andersen / anna@grapevine.is
Journalist & Travel editor:
John Rogers / john@grapevine.is
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Contributing Writers:
Björn Teitsson
Bogi Bjarnason
Elliott Brandsma
Gabrielle Motola
Hildur María Friðriksdóttir
Joe Shooman
Kári Tulinius
Lani Yamamoto
Nanna Árnadóttir
Nathann Hall
Paul Fontaine
RX Beckett
Scott Shigeoka
Shruthi Basappa
Susanna Lam
Vera Illugadóttir
William Hooker
York Underwood
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Ragna Ólöf Guðmundsdóttir / ragna@grapevine.is
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Alisa Kalyanova
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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 repro-
duced in whole or in part without the written permission of
the publishers. The Reykjavík Grapevine is distributed around
Reykjavík, Akureyri, Egilsstaðir, Seyðisfjörður, Borgarnes,
Keflavík, Ísafjörður and at key locations along road #1, and all
major tourist 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’).
On the cover: Dagur Kári
Photographer: Nicolai Hansen
Our Prime Minister
Looking At Eating Things
The average Icelander probably doesn’t find parlia-
mentary debates all that exciting. This week, how-
ever, they’ve been all the buzz. Why is that? Because
our prime minister, the esteemed Sigmundur Davíð
Gunnlaugsson, left the parliament floor in the middle
of debates—to grab the last piece of cake from the caf-
eteria.
“Did he go speak with the International Monetary
Fund or the United Nations?” an upset MP asked the
Speaker before going on to answer her question. “He
left to have cake, esteemed Speaker. I must say that
I find it absolutely incredible. I must ask the Speaker
whether this can be considered acceptable behaviour
in parliament.”
Of course the media picked up the story: “PM
leaves floor for cake, MPs outraged.” Of course some
media outlets dug deeper into what they dubbed
#CAKEGATE. It was chocolate cake with whipped
cream and braised pears, if you must know. And, of
course, the internet laughed.
It occurred to me during this incident that it’s un-
canny how much has been reported about Sigmundur
Davíð and food—food that he’s eating, food that he
likes to eat, food that he doesn’t eat. Surely he must
have seen this coming. Surely the man running our
country must have realised that him going for a slice
of cake would become big news.
Let’s review: Four years ago, Sigmundur Davíð
announced on his blog that he would be starting a
diet: “Well, it’s come to this,” he wrote. “Tomorrow
I’m going on a serious diet that should certainly be
called ‘the Icelandic diet’, as it involves eating only
Icelandic food.”
He reasoned a) that a gastroenterologist told him
that Icelandic food was the healthiest in the world and
b) only half of the food consumed in Iceland is pro-
duced here, so if you only eat Icelandic food, you will
eat half as much. By increasing your intake of Icelan-
dic food by 50%, you end up eating 75% of what you
used to eat.
For some reason though, he didn’t lose weight,
and he abandoned the diet as was evident in an in-
terview that appeared in Fréttatíminn just before he
was elected prime minister. For that story, the editor
took him on a drive to Þingvellir and he apparently
asked to stop for ice cream multiple times. When they
finally made that pit stop, the editor reports that he
came back to the car with ice cream for everyone
and a Mountain Dew for himself. “And I thought only
teenage boys drank Mountain Dew,” the editor wrote.
After he was elected Prime Minister, one of
the first news stories about him was about how he
stopped to buy waffle mix on his way to a meeting in
the countryside with now Minister of Finance Bjarni
Benediktsson to talk about forming a coalition gov-
ernment with the Independence Party. Interestingly
enough, it was his assistant who divulged this fact
to reporters, who were evidently really hungry for a
story.
Then there were all of those articles about his
views on foreign meat (if you google Sigmundur
Davíð, second on the list of related searches is “Sig-
mundur Davíð kjöt”—“kjöt” is Icelandic for “meat”).
When news broke that Costco was perhaps on its way
to our shores, Sigmundur Davíð argued that eating
the chain’s foreign meat would get us Toxoplasmosis,
which apparently affects a third of the world’s popu-
lation and can, according to Sigmundur logic, lead to
all kinds of behaviour changes. Again, the internet
laughed.
Considering how much Sigmundur Davíð has
been picked on for his eating habits and views on food,
surely he must have stopped to think before dashing
off for cake. Considering that he is the least trusted
politician leading one of the least popular political
parties in Iceland, surely he would be more careful at
this point not to provide the media and his opponents
with this kind of fodder. Considering that only 5% of
the nation thinks he is in touch with the average Ice-
lander, surely the cake grab must have been a ploy to
make himself seem more human. Surely he saw this
as an opportunity to get people to put themselves in
his shoes for once.
And surely he anticipated that it would work, too:
“I see nothing wrong with this. I would do the same,”
someone commented on our news story. “I will not
criticise. Cake is also my downfall,” another person
said. “I WOULD HAVE DONE THE SAME,” some-
one screamed. “That is to be fat at soul. I'd done the
same. And if ever I couldn't get a piece of the cake, I
would have been mad for the rest of the session,” yet
another person commented.
Someone even saw it as an act of modesty: “I'd
have sent my chauffeur to Sandholt to buy me a whole
new cake with the state's credit card.”
Food for thought?
Anna’s (I stopped counting...) Editorial
TRACK OF THE ISSUE : AND - GOOD MOON DEER
Good Moon Deer is the project of one Guð-
mundur Úlfarsson, a solo artist who makes a
propulsive, glitchy, ever-evolving brand of im-
provised electronica. Live, and in his artwork
and videos, the music is accompanied by slick
visuals that hint at Guðmundur’s day job as one
of the figures behind Icelandic design compa-
ny Or Type, whose typefaces have been used in
The New York Times and WIRE magazine.
Guðmundur applies a similarly crisp aes-
thetic to his sonic work, which is all about
mechanical-sounding loops, neatly clipped
samples and minimalistic sound collage. Pin-
ning down his intentionally scattershot, ever-
evolving sound in studio recordings has taken
quite a while, but the debut album ‘Dot’ was
worth the wait.
Head to grapevine.is to download the open-
ing track on our website, go check out the al-
bum at www.goodmoondeer.com. It’ll be avail-
able for MP3 (free) or WAV (paid) download.
Enjoy!
“And”
Good Moon Deer
Dot
Download the FREE track at www.grapevine.is
Comic | Lóa Hjálmtýsdóttir