Iceland review - 2002, Qupperneq 23

ICELAND REVIEW 21
Tent City
They’ve been pitching tents in this campground since Wednesday, having arrived from
all points across Iceland in a massive caravan of rusty campers and shiny RVs that must
have looked like a wagon train rambling through the Wild West back in 1849, en route
to California for gold. Members of this quirky group have not circled the Ring Road to
the West Fjords seeking riches. Instead, they’ve travelled here to meet up with old
friends, play music throughout the night, and to preserve Iceland’s tradition of accor-
dion music, which began when Norwegian whalers brought the first diatonic accor-
dions to Iceland in the late 1800s.
The campground is located next to an old graveyard. At the moment, this tent city is
boiling over with activity: a slew of campers adorned in the colours of their different
accordion clubs and looking like packs of football fans before a big tournament, bar-
becue, drink beers, and tell stories to the wheeze of literally hundreds of accordions
playing at once. There are so many musicians performing beneath this light sprinkle of
rain that the circus sounds have merged into one cloud of noise, like children screech-
ing on a playground.
Looking as weathered as the scarred mountains surrounding Ísafjördur, a drummer
named Thórir Magnússon emerges from a dirt-stained camper. He’s dressed in a red V-
OPPOSITE PAGE: ísafjördur campground. ABOVE: Squeezing the night away.
necked sweater with a patch on it sig-
nalling that he belongs to a Reykjavík
accordion club. Thórir once played in a rock
‘n’ roll band called THM (his initials), and
he’s rather famous in this circle of
vagabonds. I’m told that Thórir is a ringer;
he sits in for any band that needs a drum-
mer, although I’m curious as to how this
hunched over man can still jam.
“I’m only 34,” he laughs. Actually, Thórir
is 64, but with blood vessels bulging in his
nose and pegged ears, a cowlick on the
right side of his head, hands folded as if
desperately trying to hold himself upright,
he looks much older. He travels to accor-
dion festivals because he enjoys meeting all
the people. “Everyone is together, playing
all types of music.” He also likes the girls.
“If there were only men, it wouldn’t be no
fun,” he grins mischievously.
Groupies at an accordion festival? While
Thórir might be exaggerating, he doesn’t
hang around long enough for me to find
out. He’s met up with an old friend, and
the two wander the campsite, I suspect,
looking for those groupies.
Soon I come across two accordion mas-
ters. “Grettir Björnsson and Bragi Hlídberg
are the most technical players in Iceland,”
20 IR302 - Harmonikkumót bs-km 2.9.2002 14:26 Page 21