Category: Interview

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Culture

Velvet Terrorism

“Resistance is always a choice. And there are always new moments for resistance. It’s not just in the prisons, it’s in everyday life.” UP IN ARMS Visiting

Erik Pomrenke April 12, 2023

Culture

Power Player

One of Diljá’s favourite Eurovision Song Contest performances ever is fellow-Icelander Yohanna’s song, Is It True, from 2009. Yohanna’s performance, the furthest Iceland has ever

Erik Pomrenke April 4, 2023

vigdís finnbogadóttir president of iceland

From the Archive: President Vigdís

From the archive: This article was published in Iceland Review magazine in 1982. Archival content may not necessarily reflect the current editorial standards of Iceland

Iceland Review March 21, 2023

Culture

Man of the Year

This is Haraldur Þorleifsson. In 2021 he sold his company, Ueno, to Twitter. During the sale process, he was advised how to legally avoid paying taxes on

Erik Pomrenke February 8, 2023

Culture

Unnsteinn’s insights from half a lifetime in the music industry. It’s the last night of the Iceland Airwaves festival. There have been some good shows and a few bad ones. I’ve stopped trying to adhere to my thoroughly-researched festival plan in favour of a more vibe-based approach. What sounds like fun?As a more-interesting-than-expected act wraps […]

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Gréta Sigríður Einarsdóttir February 6, 2023

Culture

Material World

When Canadian media theorist and philosopher Marshall McLuhan wrote that “the medium is the message,” he did not mean that the content of all emails is somehow the same, given their common encoding as emails. Rather, he meant to critique the idea that communication is like a parcel service: we pack down messages into their containers, send them off, and they are received by their recipients in just the same state as when we sent them. Just as all language is not the same: a short “hey” can, depending on the situation, mood, interlocutors, volume, and so on be a greeting, a warning, a verbal touch on the shoulder.

The medium is not a neutral space through which a message passes, untouched. Rather, the medium plays a constituting role in the creative process, and when we interpret the artwork, we must pay just as much attention to the technologies, processes, and materials that made the work of art as the ideas and forms that shaped them.

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Erik Pomrenke December 7, 2022

Culture

Mad World

“Exceptionally rudimentary software” On Friday, November 11, I attended an appointment with a psychologist in Reykjavík. For weeks leading up to the appointment, my wife had encouraged me to “see someone,” for my moods were vacillating, my fuse was growing increasingly shorter, and I was prone to habitual crashes. I didn’t, she observed, seem “all that […]

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Ragnar Tómas December 7, 2022

Culture

Staying Power

Elsa Pálsdóttir was doing what she loved most: Deadlifting. As she rested between sets, she chit-chatted with a man of Polish extraction, who was likewise availing himself of the equipment in the snug Massi gym in Njarðvík. When their conversation came to a close, Elsa’s interlocutor turned to another gym patron, an older Icelander, and observed, “that […]

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Danni December 6, 2022

Culture

Disaster on Dark Seas

U-300On the morning of November 20, 1944, a single U-boat cruised silently at periscope depth beneath the rough waves of the North Atlantic, lurking just a few kilometres off the Northwest coast of Iceland’s Reykjanes peninsula. The lone periscope was virtually invisible in the turbulent grey ocean waters. The German submarine, type VIIC/41, designated U-300, […]

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Danni December 6, 2022

Culture

Getting the Word Out

The Icelandic Literature Centre awards grants to some 80-100 translations from Icelandic to other languages each year. The number of applications for translation grants has been steadily increasing. Icelandic books have been translated into around 50 languages. Three recently published Icelandic to English translations:Three recently published Icelandic to English translations:Quake (Stóri skjálfti) by Auður Jónsdóttir (trans. Meg Matich).Salka Valka […]

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Jelena Ćirić December 6, 2022