I’ve been fascinated by Nordic culture and history as long as I can remember.
Viking fantasy written by Poul Anderson, old German myths like the Nibelung-saga, the whole pantheon of the old Norse gods like Odin an Thor always added fuel to the fire of my imagination. And thankfully I’m now living in a country that has a long history of Viking influences and visitors (Dublin itself was founded by Viking settlers in 814), so there has always been something new to discover.
But I’ve also been fascinated by the countries the berserkers came from: Norway, Sweden and especially Iceland have been on my to-visit-list for ages. This is why a good friend and I have decided to visit Iceland this year.
As the soundtrack to my dreams of North is constantly played by Icelandic bands like Sigur Ros and Bjork (and we both are musicians and bloggers), we will combine our fascination for Iceland, our love for its music and our background as bloggers and writers not only to spend time on the island – but to share everything we experience with the world by means of the worldwide web. This is how Sonic Iceland was born.
Our aim is to create a portrait of Iceland and its music –and this not as the stereotype music journalists visiting Reykjavík for a long weekend. We are going to meet the Icelandic people to see how they live, work, play and of course how they create their music – and how the country, its current situation (cue: Icesave) and the incredible volcanic landscape is connected to all of this.
The whole project is based on a DIY-approach. We are no journalists, and everything we do for this project is done with passion and commitment. Our plan is to document this journey in written form and visual: Kai is a gifted photographer, and this visual aspect will be accompanied by bilingual texts (German /English) and videos.
All our material will be incorporated in the Sonic Iceland website, and we hope to have some more spin-offs (maybe even in printed form) from our visit in the future. So, what you basically get are two nerds with open eyes visiting a small island in the North Atlantic. Who try to learn something about people, music and travel writing along the way.
We have just started blogging over at www.sonic-iceland.com about our travel plans and all the preparations, and will start with the interviews soon. First we will meet people that have done something similar to our project already, and expats who have lived in Iceland – to listen to their experiences and learn more, for example if Hakarl is really digestible or not. But we are always open for new ideas and suggestion, so by all means contact us, or befriend us on Twitter and Facebook. The whole idea behind our project is about sharing and learning. And doing something we always wanted to do.
Takk fyrir, danke and kind regards, both from Dublin and Cologne. Especially to the whole PocketCultures team, who let me portrait my project here.
Read more:
Cheap electricity, cold climate.. perfect for server farming
Iceland blogs from Blogs of the World
Morlam DJ: Thai folk music remixed
Your project sounds fascinating! I like Nordic countries too. I even started learning Swedish some years ago, now I can understand Ikea’s instructions… just joking 🙂
Enjoy the project!
Wish you all the best with this project Marcel, and we look forward to your updates on how it’s going.
Thanks for the history lesson too – I always wondered about the expression ‘go beserk’. Now I know where it comes from.
@Marta – I’m impressed! Swedish seems such a difficult language… Hope you managed to find something else to read as well as the Ikea instructions 🙂
It sounds great. Check the venues on Thursday. There are a lot of small concerts that day in Reykjavik. Most of them free.