When it comes to hairdressers, I have trouble with monogamy. Over the years, I’ve flirted with a few different places, occasionally being loyal beyond the first encounter. I thought I had found salon love back in my undergrad days when I used to see friendly Peggy at the gloriously named “Hair’s to You” on Toronto’s Spadina Avenue. But then Peggy moved to Vancouver to become an aromatherapist and my days of commitment were over.

Until last year in Reykjavík.

I first visited Jói og Félagar on Skólavördustígur in June 2005. I was writing a review of the salon for a local paper, and was offered a free haircut. In the article, I recalled that I was a person who had felt the sinister consequences of saying “do whatever you feel like” in the past and was rather nervous about the experience.

But Nína Kristjánsdóttir, my able hair stylist, gave me a cut which generated more compliments than Peggy ever had. Even better, the cut had a name. She called it the “Across the Street.”  I felt almost completely like a trendy Icelander.

I returned faithfully to Nína every few months to top up my coiffure. I did not quite treat my hair in the extravagant way Icelandic women seem wont to do. According to Nína, more than 80 percent of women colour their hair in some way, and the average monthly expenditure on hair, excluding styling products, is over 10,000 ISK ($140 USD).

But time goes by and the initial flush of a new hair cut wears off. I let the bangs grow out. The split ends began to appear. On down days I became convinced I had sprouted a gray hair or even two. The Across the Street had disappeared.

After a five-month absence without so much as a phone call, yesterday I returned sheepishly to Jói og Félegar to recant and fix myself up. But Nína was gone, departed to Denmark without so much as a farewell.

I was left in the hands of Jóhanna, a young and friendly woman whose first baby, a boy, is due in January. Jóhanna didn’t know it when I walked in to the second floor salon, but I was going to ask a lot of her for our first encounter: I wanted all my hair cut off.

Jóhanna was up for the challenge. She clipped away with increasing voracity, leaving a pile of chestnut hair on the floor and a short pixie cut on my head. Knowing my fondness for names, she dubbed it the “à la Jóhanna”. 

So I will now publicly declare that, for the first time since Hair’s to You, I am once again committing myself to a single salon. I just hope Jóhanna never becomes an aromatherapist.

ER eliza@icelandreview.com

PS – There is a practical reason for my big hair chop. I’m off to the heat and dust and fun of West Africa for seven weeks, and can’t be bothered to pack a hair brush. (I must admit, I felt a little more nervous at the prospect of having all my hair cut off at the hands of a new hair stylist than traipsing around West Africa alone for two months.)  See you back at this space at the end of November.
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