Reykjavík Grapevine - 07.04.2017, Page 18

SHOW ME THE MONEY:
Iconic
Fish And
Littering
Until the mid-to-late 19th century,
most financial transactions in
Iceland were conducted in vaðmál
(homespun wool). However, since
1922, Iceland has issued its own
currency, the króna. Iceland never
being the best at economic stabil-
ity, the króna has lost significant
value every decade since its initial
issue, and in 1981 we decided to
cut a couple of zeros from it, intro-
ducing the current króna. So, let’s
meet the…
10 Króna Coin
Fishing is one of the main indus-
tries in Iceland, so it is no wonder
that they’ve chosen to depict vari-
ous fish on all their coins. On the
10 króna coin is the capelin. Ah yes,
the capelin—what an icon. When
we imagine a North Atlantic fish,
don’t we all close our eyes and see
the capelin? If you’ve never heard
of the capelin and have to… I don’t
know… Wikipedia said fish, you
will discover four main things:

1. The males are really lame and
almost all die after the spawn-
ing process.
2. They are food for puffins.
3. They are food for sushi lovers in
the form of masago roe.
4. These are the only interesting
things about the capelin.
So, What’s It worth?
10 króna is currently worth $0.08,
€0.08 and £0.07. Which begs the
question: if you drop one on the
ground, is it actually worth pick-
ing it back up? Would you be able
to buy any sustenance to replenish
your body of the calories it took to
crouch down, scoop it up, stand up
again, rub off the debris and put it
back in your pocket? I haven’t done
the maths, but considering that
you can buy literally nothing with a
10 króna coin, I’m guessing the an-
swer is: no, it’s not worth it.
Disclaimer: Littering is bad for the
environment; so don’t actually leave
your coins all over the street. Not that
the 10 króna is trash but… it’s basi-
cally trash.
Words: Joanna Smith
18 The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 05 — 2017
Words:
Gabriel Dunsmith
Photos:
Art Bicnick
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Once a week, after schoolyards fall
quiet and workdays end, a handful
of musicians climb the stairs of a
whitewashed Reykjavík pub. They
hail from England, Scotland, France,
the United States, and Iceland too,
and the cases under their arms hold
guitars, fiddles and accordions.
One side of the pub steadily fills with in-
struments and chatter; players pull up
stools to form a circle. Then the music be-
gins: Irish reels and Scottish jigs, Dutch
sea shanties and Swedish polkas. Drinks
plunk down on tables, one song bleeds
into the next, revelers clap between
rounds of Gull. Under the pub’s dim
lights, by the edge of the pond, the mu-
sic swells for hours and washes over all.
Though Iceland may be known for
its music scene, this particular occur-
rence—where performers come together
not to write or rehearse, but
to celebrate old songs—is a
rarity.
It’s called the Reykjavík
Trad Sessions—“trad” be-
ing shorthand for “tradi-
tional music,” which refers
to songs passed down au-
rally or performed by rote
in a particular culture. In
minutes, the group might
swing from 19th century
Scottish song “Wild Moun-
tain Thyme” to modern
American folk classic
“Wagon Wheel.” Some evenings, singer
Bára Grímsdóttir introduces the crowd
to verses born amid Iceland’s fjords and
mountains. There’s even a group song-
book, updated on occasion to reflect play-
ers’ varying backgrounds, and replete
with lyrics for mournful Icelandic tune
CULTURE
The Eccentric Trad
Society of Ölsmiðjan
The Crazy World Of Icelandic Eurovision
“The songs
linger in the
land wher-
ever you are;
they come
from an era
when some-
times music
was all you
had.”
“Sofðu unga ástin mín” as well as the
Irish “Down by the Salley Gardens,” from
a William Butler Yeats poem. The god-
dess called spontaneity holds all the dice.
The musicians are of all ages and
come from varying walks of life—and
rather diverse musical interests.
“I've been playing hardcore punk mu-
sic since I was a teenager,” says Linus Orri
Gunnarsson Cederborg, “but when the
scene I was a part of died out, I was drawn
to the idea of folk music because it shares
some of the ideals of the punk scene. It's
inclusive, there is a community around it,
and they are both tied to social ideology.”
Linus first arrived at the sessions
in 2015 with a mandolin and little idea
of how to play, but within weeks he was
strumming along. “I didn’t actually like
Irish music when I started to play it,” he
says. “It grew on me as I learned it, and
now it's the center of my musical life.”
Sometimes, special guests descend
on the sessions: in late March, Danish
clarinetist Benjamin Bøgelund Bech
taught old Icelandic songs he studied
in university, while Wilma Young, a
Shetland native living in Iceland, led the
group in Celtic reels. Once, the group
hosted a musician from Mongolia.
For Hannah Boswell, a fiddler
from West Virginia, the sessions
are a way to connect to her roots.
“People sang these songs as they lived
and worked and died,” she says. “The
songs linger in the land wherever you are;
they come from an era when sometimes
music was all you had. And that creates
something incredibly spe-
cial, I think—something
you can still find in yourself
if you reach deep enough.”
The sessions serve a
broader social purpose as
well.
“Thousands of people in
Iceland learned to play in-
struments as kids,” says
Linus, “and their instru-
ments are lying in closets
and attics because there is
no culture for people play-
ing together unless you are
in a band.”
But, at the pub, music and
community flourish as one—creating,
in Linus’s words, ”a living, participatory
music culture where people can get to-
gether for the simple joy of playing.”
Linus killin' it on the
mandolin.
Benjamin Bech plays clarinet beside Chris
Foster and Wilma Young.
The Appalachian dulcimer, an
American lap instrument.
By all accounts the
atmosphere is warm
and friendly.