Last week, Reykjavik hosted Iceland Airwaves festival with incredible, and diverse, performances from John Grant, Ho99o9, SOPHIE, Skepta and JME while – despite cancelling her live appearance – the Queen of Iceland herself (Björk) made her presence felt in the form of a press conference at Gamla Bíó. Held over five days with hundreds of acts spilling out from venues both official and unofficial, the i-D crew headed to the city to host our own stage at the impressive Reykjavik Art Museum on the Friday. Featuring Skepta, JME and Icelandic rap acts Gisli Pálmi, úlfur úlfur, Emmsjé Gauti and Sturla Atlas, we took the opportunity to roam about the Iceland capital to find out what the city – and country – is about. What we can say, right here right now, is that it is – to coin a Skepta ad-lib – very, very icy.
Here are a few things we learnt while on our travels in the land of the Vikings…
Iceland is not in Norway (it’s north of Scotland/south of Greenland), its currency is Krona not the Euro and there’s no time difference
We blame the Birmingham education system in the eighties for our dreadful lack of knowledge, specifically the ill-informed geography syllabus. Changing pounds sterling to euros to kronas is something we’d recommend avoiding tbf and tbh.
Icelandic hip hop is BIG
Like really big. In fact, Hip-hop from the Homeland particularly dominated the festival, with acts like the awesome 15-piece all-female rap crew Reykjavikurdaetur (Reykjavik’s Daughter) who rapped about the joy of anal sex, the Aaron Carter lookalike GKR who rapped about cereal and our most very favourite Gisli Pálmi who rapped about, well we’re not sure as it was all in Icelandic, but he told us after the show he most definitely doesn’t rhyme about girls.
The Blue Lagoon is heaven on earth
It’s hard to exactly distil in mere nouns and verbs and adjectives the utter magicality of the place, but we can only encourage you to experience this surreal swamp of smoky sulphur for yourself. And make sure you smear yourself in the silica mud, which looks a lot like burrata, but tastes not a bit like buratta. Take a waterproof go-pro, and you too can create memories that will live forever (on Instagram, if nowhere else).
The clubs know their UKG and Grime
Well, Prikid, on Höfuðborgarsvæði (no, we can’t pronounce it either) certainly does. By day, it’s one of the city’s oldest cafes, by night it’s a grimy den of delicious raving brilliance. After the i-D party, we joined Skepta, Shorty and DJ Plastician as the guests of Gisli at one of the gnarliest clubs we’ve been to in a hot cold minute. The DJ dropped Novelist, D Double E, old Dizzee freestyles and More Fire Crew. When the sound cut out, a Hotline Bling chant rang out (possibly started by i-D’s music editor, we can’t confirm or deny this) and the party was well and truly back in business.
Icelandic people are very careless with money
As we left Prikid at 5am (the hangover next day was real), we noticed coins all over the floor, and got straight to picking them up. A smooth £5.40 was collected, handy when buying pizzaburgers (it’s like a pizza inside a burger and yes it is everything) on the way home.
Talking of money…
Iceland is expensive but not as expensive as we were told. The city is filled with great, inexpensive options (see below), though the taxis were totally out of control. On the upside, the city is small, so you can walk everywhere.
Bye = bless
Everyone loves to learn the local lingo, and this was one of our favourite phrases.
There’s an Iceland in Iceland
This blew our tiny little minds tbf and tbh.
Incest
One taxi driver told us a very long and winding story about the perils of living in such a small nation, amounting to the fact you’re in danger of being first, second or third cousins with many potential partners you might meet. This mean it’s necessary to always call your mum to check people’s surnames when you chirpse.
They have Christmas on lock
Iceland has not just one Santa, but a 20-strong family of them called the ‘Yule lads’.
Björk really is their honorary queen
Because Björk.
Charlotte Church is a legit fan of Airwaves
Spotted on BA0800 on the way to and from Iceland. Voice of an angel…
Icelandic people put sanitary towels on dogs outside the penis museum
The whole of that above sentence is 100% true and was seen with our own eyes.
The Lobster stew at Seabaron is the nuts
Go really wild and order the fish skewers on the side (we recommend the Tusk), but maybe avoid the fermented shark. It smells of piss. Reykjavik’s culinary skills are very, very tight. We also particularly enjoyed Glo’s raw, veggie and vegan vibes (we took our new pals that we met at the top of the blindingly beautiful Hallgrimskirkja Church, American Septuagenarians Betsy and Zack for lunch and they loved it) and the fish and chips from the adroitly named Icelandic Fish & Chips. They came with a mango salad and some serious sauces on the side.
H99o9 are our new favourite band
They played Nasa and it blew our teeny tiny minds.
Reykjavik has a vibrant and industrious art scene
For Airwaves, graf artists were commissioned to paint the houses of the town. Before we left, Gisli Pálmi and his pals, the Glacier Mafia, took us to their studio where we met members of one of Iceland’s foremost art collective, who are painting the town red, blue, pink and green. Special mention to Gisli and Benedikt who totally took us under their Icelandic wings and took us on the best tour of the city.
It rains. A lot
But we’re British so we didn’t let it dampen our spirits notonetinybit.
If you go to Reykjavik make sure you leave the city and go to the Golden Circle to recreate Bieber’s I’ll Show You
Pure Instagram gold.
The Northern Lights really do exist
The rain ruins the view a lot, but on the last night those glorious Aurora Borealis lit up the skies and we cried tiny tears of joy. Iceland, you magical bastard, we really do love you.
Get tickets for Iceland Airwaves 2016 from here
Credits
Text Hattie Collins