Iceland review - 2002, Qupperneq 22

20 ICELAND REVIEW
SQUEEZE BOX
By EDWARD WEINMAN Photos SPESSI
Every three years the Icelandic Accordion Association gathers all its
members together for one massive shindig: the national accordion festival.
What the heck is an accordion festival like? Read on.
It starts with a phone call to book a hotel room. But the Landsmót Sambands Íslenskra
Harmoníkuunnenda (the Icelandic Accordion Festival) is so popular that when I call on
a Monday to reserve a room for the following Friday, I get the same answer from every
hotel manager in Ísafjördur: “We’re booked.”
I phone the next day and luckily there’s a cancellation. A small dorm room, barely big
enough for a single bed and a toothbrush, has opened up. I book it straight away.
You didn’t know that accordion festivals were so popular. I didn’t even know such
festivals existed until my editor sent me on assignment to the remote town of Ísafjör-
dur, located in Iceland’s wild West Fjords, to cover the 2002 Landsmót Sambands Íslen-
skra Harmoníkuunnenda (say that ten times fast).
Okay, before you begin cackling hysterically, let me assure you that the Landsmót
Sambands Íslenskra Harmoníkuunnenda (sorry, it’s fun to write), a gathering of the dif-
ferent accordion clubs from various towns across Iceland, is serious business. Over 800
accordion enthusiasts - most of them older than dirt - are expected to show up for the
national festival, which is held in a different host town every three years. That number
doesn’t even include the documentary filmmaker or his crew of one, nor myself or my
newly arrived American friend who flew in from Reykjavík to peak behind the curtains
of this exotic, bizarre subculture.
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