Reykjavík Grapevine - 29.07.2016, Qupperneq 22

The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 11 — 2016
22
For a bright moment in Icelandic his-
tory, late-stage capitalism seemed tri-
umphant, a utopia beyond nature and
need. Over just a handful of decades,
Iceland moved from being a post-colo-
nial outpost on the fringes of the Euro-
pean empire to a fully modernised na-
tion replete with paved roads, running
water and indoor electricity. However,
not everyone was allowed to tag along
for the ride. Some Icelandic institu-
tions were left behind, dead branches
on the evolutionary tree of business.
The Icelandic mini-mall was one
such evolutionary dead-end.
For centuries, most retail com-
merce in Iceland was done at indi-
vidual stores in town and village
centres. Many, if not most, of these
stores were family-owned and -oper-
ated. But as the economy grew, so too
did demand for more ice cream, more
florists, more bakeries. The invis-
ible hand of the market began to push
these businesses together into clumps
that would become the Icelandic mini-
mall, concentrated masses of incon-
gruous shops erected at locations that
seemed to defy all rhyme or reason;
neither visually appealing nor neces-
sarily accessible, offering the promise
of easier retail but not entirely deliv-
ering. They floundered and struggled
for years to compete with more es-
tablished businesses closer to town
centres. But it was not until Kringlan,
Iceland’s first “real” mall, was built in
1987 that the Icelandic mini-mall’s fate
would be sealed.
Today, these mini-malls still exist,
clinging to survival through charac-
teristic Scandinavian tenacity. To visit
one is to step into another decade.
They are frozen in time, and as such,
they can give us a glimpse at what life
was like in Iceland, pre-Kringlan. Be-
fore the merciless wheels of capitalism
would flatten these strange little retail
islands into the mud.
First stop: Austurver
My photography crew and I set out one
dreary summer afternoon for the first
place on our list: an unremarkable
mini-mall located in a neighbourhood
of Soviet-style block apartment build-
ings in Reykjavík’s scattershot eastern
portion. The flat, gray structure is
wedge under the foot of Landsvirkjun,
Iceland’s national power company.
From the outside, we were under-
whelmed. But once we entered, we
understood we had found a priceless
artifact from 1970s Iceland.
Shoe repair, used women’s clothing,
a flower booth, a bakery, a charity shop
of the strangest collection of donated
bric-a-brac I had ever laid eyes upon—
it was as if this mini-mall were delib-
erately planned to be a time capsule of
late-1970s bourgeois sensibility. But
that was only the ground floor.
The entrance to the upper level
was paved with faux green marble;
the same material one might use to
make a paperweight, or the base for
a bowling trophy. Upon arriving up-
stairs, we were greeted by thin sea-
green carpet, fake wood panelling on
the walls, and, of course, a drop ceil-
ing. This Kubrickesque hallway looped
around itself in a perfect square. All of
the doors were identical, most of them
unlabeled. We determined that this
must be the place where time came to
a screeching halt in 1978. Even the very
air we breathed smelled of feathered
hair, burnt orange kitchen appliances,
and the Bee Gees.
Next stop: Miðbær
The name is misleading. “Miðbær”
means “downtown,” but we are no
closer to the heart of Reykjavík than
we were at Austurver. Miðbær is a
significantly larger structure than
Austurver, but with no interior lobby.
It feels like approaching a fortress sur-
rounded by a high wall, defying the
curious who might want to take a look
inside.
We were nonetheless able to find
one entrance to the structure. A lonely
stairwell leading up to the offices of
some lonely healthcare workers. On
the very first landing of these stairs,
we encountered a pair of plastic bam-
boo plants, a wicker chair, and an in-
jured painting. There were no maga-
zines, no piped-in elevator music,
nothing but this utterly silent and for-
gotten corner of an utterly silent and
forgotten building. I imagined that
this is what the waiting room for Hell
must look like.
Before the howling winds of what
is ultimately the despairing loneliness
of existence could overtake us, we de-
cided to head off for our next mission.
Last Stop: Mjódd
If any Icelandic mini-mall could be
said to be “successful,” it would be
Mjódd. Conveniently located next to
a major bus terminal—itself a dying
form of transportation in a country
that seems to worship the superjeep—
in a neighbourhood with few social
and commercial centres, Mjódd’s very
existence depends on the circum-
stances into which it was born.
It is for this reason that it was al-
most refreshing to step inside Mjódd,
which apart from being comparatively
teeming with life, also bore the dis-
tinction of having outdoor pavement
indoors. We concluded that this may
have been an outdoor market at some
point, only for a roof to be built over
the structure, perhaps in the hopes of
attracting more clientele. Judging by
the level of activity we saw, this plan
appears to have worked.
Even with the hustle and bustle, and
every attempt made to display its rele-
vance in the 21st century, we could still
see traces of Mjódd rapidly approach-
ing anachronism. A pair of lonely claw
games, half-filled with dusty plush
toys of a once-popular children’s show,
seemed to moan a silent lament: “The
world has left us behind; remember
me, remember me.”
We decided that we had had enough.
We decided to head back home.
We took this journey hoping to
better understand an Iceland in the
throes of capitalist ecstasy; an era
when everything seemed possible,
when everyone seemed to have wal-
lets bursting with 5,000 krónur notes,
when the promise of a brighter future
seemed guaranteed for this post-colo-
nial outpost on the edge of the Europe-
an empire. But we had not prepared for
the despairing effect this would have.
To see these artifacts within the con-
text of the modern nation, they now
resemble a cautionary tale: that all of
life’s promises are ultimately made to
be broken, and Iceland is no exception.
The Icelandic mini-mall is a monu-
ment to the illusion of capitalism’s
Promised Land.
*(Article not actually written by Werner
Herzog.)
Icelandic Mini-
Malls, Capitalism
& The Human
Condition
Words WERNER HERZOG* Photos ART BICNICK
“Even the very
air we breathed
smelled of feathered
hair, burnt orange
kitchen appliances,
and the Bee Gees.”