Iceland review - 2015, Side 52

50 ICELAND REVIEW
a&a
alfreð Gíslason is big, bigger than I
remembered. “Mættur” (‘present’),
he announces in perfect North
Icelandic dialect when he walks towards me
in the Sparkasse-arena in kiel, Germany,
just before the handball game between
THW kiel and TuS Nettelstedt-lübbecke.
alfreð, from akureyri, the likeable coach
of German champions THW kiel, is not
only tall; he is a real giant in the world of
handball.
Handball, in which two teams of seven
players each pass a ball to throw it into the
opponent’s goal, is big in Iceland. The play
is fast and often each team scores 20-30
goals in a game. The Icelandic national
team has been very successful in recent
years, winning the silver at the 2008 Beijing
Olympics, bronze at the 2010 European
Championship in austria and placing
sixth at the 2011 World Championship
in Sweden. Worldwide handball is not
a popular sport but it’s big in Northern
and Eastern Europe, the Nordic countries
(apart from Finland), Spain, France and
Northern africa and its popularity is said
to be growing elsewhere.
a host of Icelandic players have played
professionally in Europe, especially in
Germany, which has the strongest league.
Icelandic coaches have experienced great
success coaching the best teams in Europe,
and none has been more successful—win-
ning more silverware—in recent years than
alfreð. Today, three national teams are
coached by Icelanders: austria by patrekur
Jóhannesson, Denmark by Guðmundur
Guðmundsson and Germany by Dagur
Sigurðsson.
It didn’t take me long to find the hand-
ball arena in the very small city of kiel,
the capital of the North German state
By Páll StefánSSon.
alfreð giving orders in
the heat of the game.