The Reykjavík Grapevine

16/10/2026

It was a Monday afternoon at the end of September 2024, and the man was washing up in his kitchen in central Reykjavík when he heard a crash and someone shouting, “Lögreglan!” (“Police!”)

Two officers came bursting through the door they had just kicked in. One grabbed him and cuffed his hands behind his back. They sat him down on the sofa and started rummaging through his cupboards, drawers, and boxes. He offered no resistance. He had no idea why they were there.

The police had received a tip that an Albanian drug dealer was operating somewhere in the building. They did not know which flat. Instead of knocking or ringing a doorbell, the officers radioed their shift supervisor and asked for permission to break in. Their grounds, as later recorded in the official police report: a smell of cannabis in the stairwell, the sound of someone handling glass jars (more on the jars later), and the man stepping away from his window. The supervisor said yes. No judge was asked.

“Hearing someone handling glass jars, or smelling cannabis somewhere out in a stairwell, is not an emergency,” says Jóhannes S. Ólafsson, the man’s lawyer.

🔗 Full article in the comments.

15/10/2026

I mention that Björk once called the term trip hop lazy journalism in a podcast interview. A genre name that was put on anything experimental coming from the UK in the 90s. Howie gets riled up. “It is totally lazy.” He exclaims. “People would go, we want some of that trip hop stuff. I go, what do you mean? Trip hop? I don’t do acid. You know, it’s like, come on, it is not because of the drugs I do, I am making this music. This is my music. It’s not kids taking acid or smoking whatever. It’s very fu***ng serious. This is my life, this is my emotion, this is my love, this is what I feel.”

Still to this day people are calling it trip hop. “They’re now going there’s a revival of trip hop. Yeah. F**k off. There’s a revival of you don’t know how to describe this person’s feelings. Great. That’s what there might be a revival of. But there’s not a revival of trip hop. No, no, no.”

🔗 Full article in the comments.

15/10/2026

There’s more than a hint of smug industry insiderism to Jane Schoenbrun’s all-too self-aware slasher flick, but not so much that it gets in the way of Schoenbrun’s keen-eyed look at a far more complex and relevant topic: the cultural and commercial hegemony of the film franchise, and how it divides the generations that merely grew up with them versus those that came of age in a world absolutely dominated by them.

An ode to movie-watching as much as it is to movie-making, Miasma follows Kris (Hannah Einbinder), a young filmmaker who grew up obsessed with the fictional titular horror franchise. The title credits are set to close-ups of fake memorabilia detailing all the highs and lows that real franchises seem to go through with metronomic similarity: it begins with a box-office smash, then increasingly redundant sequels, followed by a kind of generational revisit and revival until it becomes a cult institution leading to the inevitable gritty reboot.

Kris has now been offered the chance to helm a new instalment of the franchise. Her diligence and loyalty to the history of the films lead her to cast Billy (Gillian Anderson), a largely forgotten scream queen from the original film. Their consequent exchanges, which form both the intellectual and emotional meat of Miasma, posit them as archetypes within their generations of both movie-makers and movie-goers.

🔗 Full article in the comments.

14/10/2026

My first impression of Howie B is through his cigarette butt. He points it at the camera, takes another hit, while sitting at his kitchen table. “Sorry I am a wee bit late. I just had to make a wee coffee first.” Howard Bernstein, “Howie B,” is a legendary producer and musician who has worked with artists such as Massive Attack, Tricky, U2 and Björk. Working as a sound engineer, producer and solo musician, Howie basically redefined the sound of a generation. On October 16th, Howie B and long-time collaborator and visual artist Hiraki Sawa will perform their project 3 Sticks at Gamla Bíó.

14/10/2026

13/10/2026

From Trieste to Tromsø, municipalities around Europe are doing everything they can to make their cities more pedestrian friendly and choosing to prioritise people over cars. But not Reykjavík! Earlier this month, the Sjálfstæðisflokkur, Framsóknarflokkur and Viðreisn majority announced that they would be removing benches, tables, bicycle parking and plants to create 15 new parking spots downtown. Among the spaces being demolished are the tables outside of Kaffibarinn and Kaldi and by Gamla Bíó.

Representatives of the Social Democratic Alliance point out that the city is at the same time running a campaign to get people using its downtown parking garages, which hold 2,000 spaces and sit underused. Ripping out tables and bike parking to claw back 15 spaces, they argue, makes little sense.

At this point can anyone tell that Miðflokkurinn isn’t in the municipal government? In fact, this is very unambitious, the square outside of Hallgrímskirkja has space for plenty of parking spaces. Just think of all the cars that could park if we paved over Austurvöllur. Beep, beep.

🔗 Full roundup in the comments.

13/10/2026

Bad weather coming, especially in the north. “Between Akureyri and Bifröst, in the Westfjords and the highlands. Strong wind with sleet/snow. Poor visibility and icy/snowy roads. Very difficult travelling conditions, transportation disruption possible, loose objects outside can be blown away. Adjust travel plans.”

12/10/2026

We are preparing the magazine for our annual Iceland Airwaves coverage, which in this case will include our new public-access storefront. Since I started working with this paper, music and music coverage has been one of our touchpoints. We originally wanted to give the many unknown locals equal coverage to the overly promoted breakthrough artists at the time. You could turn to our pages and find a glowing review of Graveslime, or a takedown of Bubbi – all were treated on equal footing. We also believed that being honest about music, something that our readers could verify by listening, would give us credibility if we talked about other subjects.

Then in 2005, we went all in on music by recruiting international music writers to come cover the Iceland Airwaves music festival in a daily paper. (The biggest attraction: We promised they could tell the truth.) For a few years thereafter our sleepy little city felt like the hotbed of culturally relevant music, in part because so many journalists were gathered and competing with one another to find and promote relevance.
When I returned in 2025, we reinvested in Airwaves coverage, with the help of Iceland Music. Last year, we covered every performer. You can access the coverage at www.grapevine.is/airwaves. We’ll do that again this year.

Getting in the way of us dedicating our time to writing about music is the fact that politicians now dominate all news, including cultural news. For this issue, we are celebrating a local politician who broke through internationally with a hit speech. When political speech gets absorbed and distributed on the algorithm, it goes viral in ways that are difficult to document. However, given that just one Facebook post containing one paragraph of the speech garnered 700,000 views at the time of this writing, it is likely more people streamed our Foreign minister’s speech than streamed any music event this month.

🔗 Full article in the comments.

11/10/2026

On September 26, 2026, Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir stood at the podium of the General Assembly of the United Nations and unloaded one of the most formidable speeches in Icelandic history. A multi-pronged declaration of shared values, and the need for shared values, it also served as a harsh correction to Benjamin Netanyahu, specifically taking the phrase “moral cowards” that the prime minister of Israel had uttered, and wielding it like a hammer.

Her initial and most memed volley from the speech was, “We have heard the words ‘moral cowards’ from this podium. To me, moral cowards are those leaders around the world who refuse to sit down and negotiate a just and lasting peace. Those who deny access to humanitarian aid for people in desperate need. And moral cowards are those leaders who repeatedly go against and disrespect international law.”

For 20 minutes and 33 seconds, Þorgerður crystallised the argument for a rules-based order, for dignity, and for a return to respect for the disenfranchised and at-risk populations. But the “moral coward” line allowed for momentum.

Adam Daniel Fishwick, Adjunct Lecturer at the University of Iceland, summed it up for us: “The speech was both a restatement of Iceland’s wider public condemnation of Israel and its actions in Gaza and the West Bank, and an assertive defence of the rules-based international order that is so important to Iceland’s place in the international system. The increasing threat and uncertainty in the current global order — not least from Trump’s claims on Greenland and the inclusion of Iceland in his (in)famous new map of the United States — may help explain the timing and assertiveness of the speech. As well as making a statement on Israel’s continual flouting of international law that would connect well with a domestic audience, it also marks a public intervention into the debate on the new global insecurity and how Iceland can continue to maintain its place in any future global order.”

How did such a speech come forward, and what does it mean for the Icelandic government?

🔗 Full article in the comments.

09/10/2026

BEHOLD! A new issue of the Grapevine with our new cover design.

As usual 20,000 copies have been printed and distributed around this stark beautiful cold island. No swimming pool is safe, no supermarket or hotel lobby will be left ungrapevined.

This issue’s main feature is an interview with Iceland’s Foreign Minister Þorgerður Katrín Gunnarsdóttir. In her 26 September speech at the UN General Assembly, she defended minority rights, the rules-based international order and, significantly, singled out Israel’s prime minister for his country’s conduct in Gaza and the West Bank. The speech was historic for two reasons: hitherto it’s been uncommon for Icelandic politicians to give hard-hitting speeches abroad and speaking up for views that were until recently the “norm” has now become an act of courage and defiance in itself.

There’s much more. In this issue we also look into expanding police powers, consider the limited ways you can prove your Icelandic language ability to the state, report on a 2.2 million ISK dinner that Independence Party members enjoyed on a US lobbyist’s dime, talk about some Icelandic rappers (Saint Pete and Alaska 1867), review pizzas in Álftanes and two different films, talk about a new opera company (hinÓperan) and look into cake as ART.

Get your grubby hands on a copy today.