“Everything’s Going to Hell” Music Festival. Reykjavik; Iceland
Globetrotters October Challenge: Souvenirs
The bracelet that wouldn’t let go. Until it did.
I’m not much of a souvenir collector.
But a black and gold wristband from a four-day music festival once collected me.
Lemme tell you about it.
Christmas, 2017.
A dream come true! Sigur Rós, our all-time favourite post-rock band was to play their first concert in their hometown of Reykjavik for the first time in years. And not just any old end-of-tour concert, but a whole festival of music and art from the band themselves and all their Icelandic friends and collaborators. The music festival, Norður og niður, which translates colloquially to “straight to hell” in English, was being hosted by Sigur Rós and would feature some of their artist and musician friends. Together, they would transform Reykjavik’s Harpa music hall into a homecoming festival for local fans — and a few die-hard admirers such as yours truly.
After 24 hours of travel from a brisk, sunny winter in Tokyo, my wife and I arrived in a gloomy, wind-scoured Reykjavik.
Never mind.
We received our black-and-gold concert wristbands woven from some Icelandic fairy thread for, once we put them on, some Viking version of a Gordian knot drew tight and would not come undone, seemingly ever.
For four days we enjoyed the greatest music festival either of us has ever attended, hosted by our all-time favourite band in the coolest city in the most magical, fantastical country I’ve ever visited.
“How cool was it,” you ask? So cool that it hardly seemed like a “festival” at all. The fuinke as we say in Japan, the atmosphere, was more like an extended party at your coolest friend’s house, where everyone sleeps over and jams and performs and collaborates in each other’s work, and everyone knows everyone else and it’s all just one big inside scene but y’all are invited. Nice.
In any case, this here li’l fanboy page is devoted to Sigur Ros and all the other artists, musicians, festival goers, and others who rocked our world, including perhaps a few elves, trolls, and maybe an ancient god or two and any other huldufólk, and turned the rather cold, clean, ascetic interior of the Harpa concert hall on Reykjavik’s waterfront into the coolest happening this side of Christmas.
We could have stayed forever.
But our own magical, fantastical lives in Tokyo called us back and after another 24 hours of travel, we were home.
The knots released their hold on us.
We still have them. They’re upstairs now as I write this. The bracelets are still as lustrous as that day five years ago when we first put them on.
Shout outs to Anne Bonfert and Marianne O for their challenge contributions:
