Reykjavík Grapevine - 02.06.2017, Side 44

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Tree Murder And
“Leaf” Erikson
Lóa’s observations show a different side of
Iceland
Words: John Rogers Photo: Art Bicnick
Why Are We Still Here?
Book, out now
Many visitors to Iceland might
be familiar with the work of Lóa
Hlín Hjálmtýsdóttir without
even knowing it. Her sharply ob-
served cartoons appear regularly
in various Icelandic publications
(including this one), and are of-
ten shared widely on social me-
dia. They vary between macabre
vignettes, hot takes on Reykjavík
streetlife and Ice-
landic politics, and
living room scenar-
ios, often featuring
chi ldren dispas-
sionately observing the innate
craziness of the grown-up world.
They are also, as it turns out,
largely autobiographical. “I re-
member these moments,” smiles
Lóa, “like watching the kids in
my neighbourhood running af-
ter the garbage truck and just
thinking ‘Why are they doing
that?’ And there were kids in the
neighbourhood who would pee in
buckets, and the other kids loved
it and shouted ‘They’re peeing in
the buckets again!’ I was watch-
ing and feeling lonely, because
it didn’t make me happy—I had
the feeling of being an observer
rather than a happy participant.”
T he ch i ldren
in Lóa’s books often
seem world-wea-
ry as they watch
adults binge drink-
ing, arguing, fighting, partying,
and passing out on the sofa. “My
mum and dad had a lot of alco-
holic friends when I was a kid,”
says Lóa, “so I was always watch-
ing them behaving like luna-
tics. Me and Hugleikur Dagsson
were at parties together when
we were kids, watching them all
and saying: ‘Well, it looks like
they’re going to get a divorce.’”
Lóa is now a mother herself, but
she still feels similar about things
today. “I always feel out of place,”
she explains, “so I always see things
as odd and noticeable. I have a hard
time at Christmas, for example—
if you overthink these things, they
get weird. I feel bad about having
a Christmas tree. I just think,
‘Someone decided to kill this tree.’
And then I can’t get over that.”
Puking from anxiety
Throughout her childhood and
teens, Lóa was fascinated by camp
glamour, uncanny art, and all
things macabre, from ‘The Add-
ams Family’ to John Waters, Tim
Burton and Edward Gorey. “I had
a Vincent Price phobia,” she says.
“I was puking from anxiety over
this film called ‘Monster Club’.
There was a guy who could whis-
tle and melt your face! And I had
a book with pictures of conjoined
twins and Joseph Merrick, the El-
ephant Man. I looked at that a lot.”
These influences peek out from
between the lines of her latest
book, ‘Why Are We Still Here?’ We
flick through the pages in fits of
laughter as Lóa explains the sit-
uations that led to each cartoon.
“This one is based on a true story,”
she says, “when a tourist was try-
ing to convince me that Leif Erik-
son is actually pronounced ‘Leaf
Erikson.’ And this one was based
on this disgusting, entitled tourist
guy who was complaining about
Icelandic women in the street...”
The cartoons sometimes be-
tray a weariness of Reykjavík
life. Indeed, Lóa and her fami-
ly have started slowly hatching a
plan to move out into the coun-
tryside. “I’m growing pine trees
in my living room,” she says.
“I have eighty little pine trees.
It’s because we can’t afford to
buy an apartment, so we bought
some land out East instead.”
But as she publishes her
fourth book, and works on a
play—amongst countless oth-
er projects—something tells me
that even if Lóa moves East, the
sheep will replace the tourists,
and her wry and affecting work
will continue just the same.
Lóa doesn't like watching
people pee in buckets
gpv.is/art
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