Iceland review - 2002, Qupperneq 60

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It’s 12 AM on Saturday. New in town? Sit tight. There are still two
hours to go before downtown Reykjavík hits its peak. On week-
ends, bars fill up at 2 AM and the last tenacious few are booted,
pint in jacket, into the grey morning light as late – or early – as 7
AM. Understandably, many out-of-towners arrive wanting to
match the internationally famous pace of this city, whose DJs spin
just south of the Arctic Circle.
So you either wait it out at home, (which begs the question, how
does one pass the time from midnight to 2 AM?) or head out early
into the half-empty cafés, opening the vein from which krónur will
flow for hours to come. Either way, it’s going to be a long night.
It’s no simple task to keep up with the celebrated Reykjavík
nightlife. I say so to a Reykjavík native. Her reply: “Try being a
teenager here.” I think I have. In exercising the ‘When in Rome’
theory, the non-native easily regresses into a kind of adolescence;
a bacchanalian mimicry of what it looks like everyone else is doing,
but are they?
In Reykjavík, cultural differences haven’t always hit me over my
thick Western head. Maybe the general population’s command of
English or the proliferation of Coca Cola and Wrangler jeans that
lulls me into cultural laziness. Three things to keep in mind while
embarking on a round of ‘keeping with the locals’:
(Excess is fun. It’s also a cultural instinct that you give up at cus-
toms, with your fashion sense and sharp objects. Fine. Part of going
abroad is testing boundaries to see how the rest of the world lives.
You try new food, talk to new people. No need to wreck yourself.
Potential embarrassment aside, how far are you willing to fly to
sleep the weekend away? It goes without saying that this country
has more to offer than a late night tap.
(Icelanders work long hours. In 2000, the average workweek for
a full-time employee in Iceland was 50.6 hours. And, as the saying
goes, the city that works hard, plays hard. Sound like a Nike cam-
paign? It deserves a sponsor. At least you’d end up with some offi-
cially endorsed merchandise after subjecting yourself to a
marathon night with players who’ve had a lifetime of training.
Appearances aside, I guarantee Icelanders are spending less money
and waking up feeling better.
(Reykjavík has seen huge economic growth and cultural change
in the past decade, and some who’ve grown up here feel it still
hasn’t hit its stride. This time last century, the city had a population
of 12,000. Today, it’s 180,000. Consumption of beer in Iceland dou-
bled between 1990 and 2000 - statistically, a major change in
lifestyle for this island. Maybe it’s not only you who’s adjusting.
The moral of the story: Never underestimate awareness and bal-
ance in a place where foreign media frenzy and the domestic
tourist industry encourages you to abandon them. Enjoy yourself,
as any Icelander would, but rethink being a slave to marketing
campaigns telling you that the best thing to do in this capital city
is debauch. Mull it over between midnight and 2.
Krista Mahr wrote the final word
Running with the Pack
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