Reykjavík Grapevine - May 2021, Page 26

W hen Bia nc a Ha l lveig Sig-
ur!ardóttir and her mother, Car-
lotta Tate-Olason, were in quar-
antine a year ago, they were going
through Icelandic media. At that
moment, they realised something
was seriously missing in the main-
stream publications: diversity.
Feeling left out of the dis-
cussion, they decided to found
their own magazine, Erlendur,
which means ‘foreign’ and serves
as an Icelandic male name.
Small headline, big
story
“We wanted to promote cultural
diversity. We quickly felt that Ice-
landic media was not promoting
diverse voices well enough, so we
made a list of these platforms,
finding out that there was not
much to offer,” Bianca Hallveig
explains. She says that she and her
mother, who is the editor-in-chief
of the magazine, set out to show-
case the immense talents of immi-
grants in Iceland, who are often ig-
nored due to the notorious barrier
created by the Icelandic language.
“It was very challenging to
start the magazine. It was rocky
at the beginning, but as soon as
the first magazine was launched,
people became more engaged,”
says Bianca Hallveig of their first
issue, which sported Patience A.
Karlsson, a Ghanaian transplant
and proud co-owner of Afrozone,
standing in the snow, with the
Hafnarfjör!ur harbour serving as
a backdrop. It could not be more
Icelandic. The headline: “It takes
patience to bring Africa to Iceland''.
“It was definitely a success
and messages started pour-
ing in,” says Bianca Hallveig.
Since then, they’ve published
six issues, covering subjects as di-
verse as fashion designers, nurses,
coffee shop owners, adventure
guides and musicians—all of
whom are immigrants. They even
covered some of the Grapevine’s fa-
vourites, such as Venezuelan-born
author Helen Cova, whose most
recent book ‘AUTOSARCOPHAGY,
to eat oneself’ wowed the Grape-
vine staff, as well as fashion de-
signer Marko Svart, originally
from Stockholm, whose brand and
store SVART by Svart has been a
long time favourite of ours. Erlen-
dur’s got their finger on the pulsy.
From England to
Akranes
Bianca is half-Icelandic. Her moth-
er is a Jamaican immigrant, while
her father is Icelandic. Though she
spent most of her summers in Ice-
land as a child, she lived with her
mother abroad until she was 13 at
which point she moved to Iceland.
It was a big change, even more so
due to the fact that she moved to
Akranes, a small fishing village 40
kilometres away from the capital
city. The transition was extreme, to
say the least, for the young women
coming from the bustling and mul-
ticultural environment in the U.K.
“I moved here from England,
st ra ig ht to A k ra nes. Grow-
ing up there, as a mixed child, I
felt that people behaved differ-
ently around me,” she explains.
Akranes is no stranger to im-
migration. In fact, the town has re-
peatedly hit the national news for
their positive attitude towards ref-
ugees. In 2008, they took in 30 Pal-
estinian refugees and, in 2015, they
gained national attention by im-
ploring the government of Iceland
to send them refugees from Syria.
This was at the same time as preju-
dice against refugees and asylum
seekers was prevalent in Iceland.
But Bianca Hallveig was no im-
migrant. She was half-Icelandic,
with an Icelandic middle name
and, as is tradition in Iceland, a
patronymic last name. So the
fact that people treated her dif-
ferently definitely revealed the
subconscious discrimination in
the hearts of her countrymen.
She was Icelandic, yet, some-
how, she wasn’t part of Iceland.
“It took some time for people
getting used to that I was differ-
ent,” says Bianca Hallveig. “But
I definitely feel like Iceland is
still growing and learning about
different cultures. They are be-
coming more accepting of dif-
ferent cultures, but there were
people in the countryside, indi-
viduals that were not that open
when I moved here at 13 years old.”
“But where are you
really from?”
Many Icelanders are still get-
ting used to the idea that well
over 15% of the population are
immigrants with different back-
grounds. And many immigrants
and non-white Icelanders feel
this divide almost ever yday.
“Everytime I leave the house,
I'm asked where I'm really from,”
Bianca Hallveig explains. She
says that she doesn't experi-
ence it as racism or meanness,
but it does become tiresome
when she’s repeatingly explain-
ing that she is, in fact, Icelandic.
“Perhaps this is understand-
able,” she says, “Icelanders see each
other as white people,“ she adds.
But she believes that is changing.
Big dreams and perhaps
a book
Bianca Hallveig and her mother
have big dreams for Erlendur.
They celebrated their first anni-
versary in April—no small feat
for any new magazine in the pan-
demic. Now they want to go global.
“We want to try to go global
with the magazine,” Bianca Hall-
veig says. “That’s the next step.“
Bianca Hallveig says that she
is especially proud of the fashion
section in the magazine. She wants
to become a designer in the future
and is currently working as a free-
lance stylist. She also has a popular
cultural podcast in Iceland called
IceBloomers that she says has
helped a lot of people in Iceland.
“I ’m a lso th i n k i ng about
writing a small book about how
it was for me to move to Ice-
land. It was such a different ex-
perience, and I would love to
write a book about it,” she says.
As Erlendur has proved, not
much is published in Iceland about
an experience like that—but it
should be and we can’t wait to read it.
Check out Erlendur Magazine at
erlendurmagazine.com.
26The Reykjavík Grapevine
Issue 05— 2021
!"# KR. !"# KR.
SÆTA SVÍNI$ / Hafnarstræti 1-3 / Tel. 555 2900 / saetasvinid.is
ICELANDIC GASTROPUB
Erlendur Magazine will probably put the Grapevine out of business one day, let's not lie...
From En!land
To Akranes To
Erlendur
Erlendur Ma!azine promotes diversity in the
Icelandic media
Words: Valur Grettisson Photo: Art Bicnick
Books