Having gotten a proper night's sleep, the next morning we headed back to the center. We dropped by the arthouse cinema Bio Paradis, they were just running a Cool Cuts series — Scandinavian cinema classics. The cinema is very stylishly furnished with retro items like vinyl record players, old advertising posters, and newspaper clippings, and there was even a genuine horn-rimmed-glasses-wearing hipster standing behind the counter, listening to Stereolab on vinyl. I asked him what was playing, and he immediately handed me the record to look at. After that, though, it was unclear what else we could chat about, so the conversation died down. I wanted to say that he and the cinema looked very organic together, and that Stereolab fit perfectly sound-wise, but I felt too shy — it sounded way too cliché.
We got into a 1984 movie called When The Raven Flies about an Irishman who lost his family, and takes revenge on Norwegian vikings banished to Iceland by the king. Everyone in the film has brutal faces, murders follow one after another, everyone is in panic and terror. A solid retro action movie, though in places it looks like amateur theatricals; especially amusing is the music featuring a Latin pan flute. It's that multi-barreled flute that Latinos often play on the streets of European cities to make a buck.
The main character, wasted all the bad guys
We also had some delicious Italian machine ice cream. (Soft ice-cream). As you can see, you can also sprinkle all sorts of chocolate or candies on top of it, or like, Nutella. Unbelievably tasty, though the price matches, meaning around 3 lats per serving.
Rumor has it that Reykjavik residents have an unhealthy passion for ice cream in general, which isn't easy to understand given the ambient temperature. Grapevine recommends Ísbuð Vesturbæjar, but we weren't that smart back then, and ate ice cream wherever we found it — at an establishment run by a real Italian, pictured in the photo above. You can even spot me there in my new hipster pants, if you look closely.
We didn't ignore the recently built Harpa concert hall either, famous for its modernist appearance.
It's made of asymmetrical metal honeycombs with colored glass, volcanic style
As a result, no matter what angle you look from — part of it shimmers, and part doesn't
At the concert hall we listened to traditional (aka classical) songs performed by what seemed to be a male and female opera singer, accompanied by a piano. This whole revelry of art was called Pearls Of Icelandic Song, performed by Nathalía Druzin Halldórsdóttir and Bragi Bergþórsson, played by Birna Hallgrímsdóttir.
It was nice that they translated the content of the songs for us with English subtitles. Later I tried to find a translation of one of them, "Like A Flower In The Field" on the web, and suffered a complete fiasco. However, judging by the content it's not hard to guess, summoning to our aid the original inspiration, the Psalm of David.
103:15 (102-15) As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth.
103:16 (102-16) For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.
It's not hard to guess that the song is popular at funerals, and hard to guess that it is with kids, apparently due to the simplicity of the concept. Nevertheless.
She rushed on the wings of poetry to those lands from where a distant echo once reached her on a spring night,— when she read about a little girl who crossed seven mountains; this echo suddenly sounded in her ears as a song, and in it the young girl saw herself. Happiness, fate, grief — everything became clear to her. When you look at a flower, fragile and helpless, growing in the desert among hundreds of thousands of stones, you ask yourself: why does life push through all obstacles so stubbornly? Should I pluck this stalk and clean my pipe with it? No, do not pluck it: this little plant also thinks a vague thought about the limitation and limitlessness of life and lives, animated by a love for good, among hundreds of thousands of stones, like you and I. Beware, do not tear it out: maybe it is little Ásta Sóllilja.
The rest of the songs were no less gloomy — about witches hindering a rider, and other harsh peasant realities. It didn't go without songs about love, of course. All this was very intimate and inspired, you literally feel like a highly spiritual intellectual, until the thought of the 15 lats ticket price crosses your mind, and drags you back down to earth like a hundred-kilo anvil.
All sorts of funny stuff, and on the horizon — Hallgrímskirkja
The kirk is not just a simple one, it's polemical
If anyone doesn't happen to know (although you should), Parisians were against the Eiffel Tower, they believed it would disfigure the view of their beloved city for centuries. How that turned out, everyone knows. With Hallgrímskirkja — it's a similar story.
The architecture, as you can see, is basalt-volcano-style everywhere, and New Age ideals of merging with nature have permeated here too. (More details). As for the name, it was given to this comparatively new building (1986) in honor of the poet Hallgrímur Pétursson, to whose pen the song a few paragraphs above belongs. See how everything in the world is connected!
The statue is in honor of Leif Erikson the Lucky, who got interested in Bjarni's story from the previous part about a new green land, and 10 years after that equipped an expedition, sailed across the ocean, and founded the colony of Vinland there.
And you're all like: Columbus, Columbus! As usual, effective marketing is what matters, while no one cares who actually discovered America.
So, the day wasn't spent in vain, and we still had another one in reserve. I did eat more Nutella ice cream than would be reasonable, but that's just my karma. Reykjavik left a very positive impression — everything is as promised in the guidebooks: a flourishing of culture, art, and nightlife, the atmosphere is very welcoming, and unlike Copenhagen, you don't feel like too much of a stranger at this celebration of life. However, my impressions are as fleeting as the wind in a field, so never trust what I'm scribbling here — you're better off flying over and checking it out yourselves.