abroad. The famous discos in Reykjavik have been Berlin, Hollywood, Casablanca, and Broadway; the new places to eat are Asia, Shanghai, Tokyo, and Siam. One of the trendiest joints in town is the L.A. Café; people downtown gather round the Texas snack bar. None of this would have much significance except in a culture that sees its identity reflected in its names.
One day an old man who was loitering outside a video arcade came up to me near the entrance of Tomma Hamborgarar. “There is so much new here,” he declared. “It is almost as if Iceland was built in 1900 and not ten centuries ago. I rememberwhen I was a child, hearing about the fairies who lived in the fields and everywhere. And the ghosts.” The ghosts, he added, “sometimes follow a family for two hundred years.”
For visitors, however, there are still enough ghosts to fill another planet. A middle-aged matron invited me one night into her solemn, sepulchral parlor. The first things I saw when I entered were a book on the Gestapo and a picture of a sea-blue sprite hiding inside a waterfall. Her grandchildren came out to stare at me, and when I explained that I was from India, they confessed that they did not know if that was near Pluto or Neptune. Then I was asked what kind of music I would like to hear. Icelandic, I replied, and on came a blast of local heavy metal.
There is, in fact, a deafening strain of rock ‘n’ roll in Iceland, and it is the voice of kids banging their fists against the narrow limits of their culture. With so few people in so vast a space, both elements are intensified, extreme: “wild” applies as much to society as to nature here. Iceland, then, is an inspired setting for the Hard Rock Café. It is not just that the island used to have the two largest discos in Europe; or that its most famous recent export is the eccentric dance band the Sugarcubes (“I’d never been in a skyscraper place before,” said their lead singer recently, after her first trip to Manhattan); or even that Amina, the belle of Carthage, was recently performing in Reykjavik. It is, rather, that rock ‘n’ roll is an almost primal statement of rebellion here, a spirit of release. It is the way the young advertise their impatience with the old ways and their hunger for the new. Garage bands are sizzling in Reykjavik, and local magazines are full of articles on such local heroes as Deep Jimi and the Zep Creams. The radio was blasting “Leader of the Pack” when I drove one night to Kringlan, the glittery new yupburb where the Hard Rock is situated, and inside which blondes indark glasses and boys in ties were clapping along to “The Wall” and shouting out, in English, “Unbelievable!” and “Give me five!”
It is, in fact, easy to feel in Iceland that one is caught up in some homemade Arctic version of
American Graffiti
. The first time I visited the country, I could not believe the “cruising” rituals that filled even the tiniest places on every weekend night; in the small northern town of Akureyri I watched a whole procession of Pontiacs, Range Rovers, and Porsches circling the tiny central square till 4:00 a.m., teenagers hanging out of their windows; motorcycle gangs (called Sniglar, or Snails) revving up along the sidewalks; twelve-year-old boys crying out
Gledileg Jól
(Merry Christmas) in the golden evening light. But this was in the middle of the saturnalian summer, when everything is topsy-turvy, and golf tournaments start at midnight, and three-year-old toddlers caper around till one in the morning each night (or one at night each morning). This was the time of midsummer madness, when people believe that rolling naked in the dew will cure you of nineteen separate ailments and that you will be granted a wish if you walk naked in the grass or cross seven fences, collecting a flower at each one of them.
When I returned to Iceland in the dark, though, I found that the same furious rites were taking place even in the freezing cold,
One day an old man who was loitering outside a video arcade came up to me near the entrance of Tomma Hamborgarar. “There is so much new here,” he declared. “It is almost as if Iceland was built in 1900 and not ten centuries ago. I rememberwhen I was a child, hearing about the fairies who lived in the fields and everywhere. And the ghosts.” The ghosts, he added, “sometimes follow a family for two hundred years.”
For visitors, however, there are still enough ghosts to fill another planet. A middle-aged matron invited me one night into her solemn, sepulchral parlor. The first things I saw when I entered were a book on the Gestapo and a picture of a sea-blue sprite hiding inside a waterfall. Her grandchildren came out to stare at me, and when I explained that I was from India, they confessed that they did not know if that was near Pluto or Neptune. Then I was asked what kind of music I would like to hear. Icelandic, I replied, and on came a blast of local heavy metal.
There is, in fact, a deafening strain of rock ‘n’ roll in Iceland, and it is the voice of kids banging their fists against the narrow limits of their culture. With so few people in so vast a space, both elements are intensified, extreme: “wild” applies as much to society as to nature here. Iceland, then, is an inspired setting for the Hard Rock Café. It is not just that the island used to have the two largest discos in Europe; or that its most famous recent export is the eccentric dance band the Sugarcubes (“I’d never been in a skyscraper place before,” said their lead singer recently, after her first trip to Manhattan); or even that Amina, the belle of Carthage, was recently performing in Reykjavik. It is, rather, that rock ‘n’ roll is an almost primal statement of rebellion here, a spirit of release. It is the way the young advertise their impatience with the old ways and their hunger for the new. Garage bands are sizzling in Reykjavik, and local magazines are full of articles on such local heroes as Deep Jimi and the Zep Creams. The radio was blasting “Leader of the Pack” when I drove one night to Kringlan, the glittery new yupburb where the Hard Rock is situated, and inside which blondes indark glasses and boys in ties were clapping along to “The Wall” and shouting out, in English, “Unbelievable!” and “Give me five!”
It is, in fact, easy to feel in Iceland that one is caught up in some homemade Arctic version of
American Graffiti
. The first time I visited the country, I could not believe the “cruising” rituals that filled even the tiniest places on every weekend night; in the small northern town of Akureyri I watched a whole procession of Pontiacs, Range Rovers, and Porsches circling the tiny central square till 4:00 a.m., teenagers hanging out of their windows; motorcycle gangs (called Sniglar, or Snails) revving up along the sidewalks; twelve-year-old boys crying out
Gledileg Jól
(Merry Christmas) in the golden evening light. But this was in the middle of the saturnalian summer, when everything is topsy-turvy, and golf tournaments start at midnight, and three-year-old toddlers caper around till one in the morning each night (or one at night each morning). This was the time of midsummer madness, when people believe that rolling naked in the dew will cure you of nineteen separate ailments and that you will be granted a wish if you walk naked in the grass or cross seven fences, collecting a flower at each one of them.
When I returned to Iceland in the dark, though, I found that the same furious rites were taking place even in the freezing cold,
Similar Books
