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Music and the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant: Style, Aesthetics, and

Environmental Politics in Iceland

Article in Popular Music & Society · July 2018

DOI: 10.1080/03007766.2018.1469390

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Music and the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Plant: Style, Aesthetics,

and Environmental Politics in Iceland

This article bridges ecocriticism and popular music analysis in a close reading of
three examples that respond musically to environmental debates in Iceland during
the period 2006-2009. Political-environmental tensions in Iceland reached a
heated level in the mid-2000s with the construction of the Kárahnjúkar
hydropower project, which elicited a string of artistic and musical responses.
While considering Valgeir Sigurðsson’s “Grýlukvæði,” Björk’s “Náttúra,” and
Sigur Rós’s “Vaka,” this article argues that incorporating textual analysis and
interpretation is key in forging an ecocritical study of popular music.

Keywords: Iceland; Ecocriticism; Environment; Valgeir Sigurðsson; Björk; Sigur

Rós

Introduction
In September 2006, water began to amass and slowly flood a 57 km2 area in the eastern
highlands of Iceland. The artificial reservoir Hálslón was created by three massive
concrete dams, drowning an area of previously uninhabited highland wilderness. The
reservoir was created in order to feed the Kárahnjúkar hydropower plant, which in turn
supplies electricity to Europe’s largest aluminium smelter owned by the American
corporation Alcoa. The construction of the entire hydropower complex involved
massive industrial infrastructure responsible for considerable geomorphological change
and ecological damage to the area.
The Kárahnjúkar project was the biggest industrial and infrastructural
development in Icelandic history, and consequently became a much-publicized issue
that attracted diverse utterances among the public. Kárahnjúkar sparked tensions and
outright conflict, provoking protests from different groups of people opposing the
hydropower scheme on a number of grounds; economic, cultural, and environmental.
These debates bear witness to tensions in Icelandic society on environmental matters
that are amplified by a history of investing the landscape with political and ideological
values. By way of close reading, this article will show how music registers and reacts to
such tensions at the level of style and aesthetics.

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The article contextualizes the controversial Kárahnjúkar project as the

culmination of a problematic history of natural resource use in Iceland, as well as the
country’s economic dependency on foreign corporations in a post-colonial perspective.
The article will then discuss three examples of musical response to the conflicts
surrounding the hydropower developments. The musical examples discussed are
Valgeir Sigurðsson’s “Grýlukvæði,” Björk’s “Náttúra,” and Sigur Rós’s outdoor
performance of “Vaka” at a protest camp.
The article draws on literature dealing with music, place and identity (Whiteley,
Bennett and Hawkins; Biddle and Knights), extending this line of inquiry to the
questions posed in the environmental humanities (Rose et. al.; Allen and Dawe).1
Building on hermeneutic and narrative approaches to analytic methods found in popular
musicology (Walser; Middleton; Hawkins, Settling; Moore; Kramer), I approach
cultural analysis from the vantage point of musical texts. Cultural analysis, in this case,
encompasses perspectives from ecocriticism, which expands the view of culture as
mediating not only our relationships with other humans, but also with the natural
environment. As such, I provide insights gained by incorporating textual analysis and
close reading into ecocritical music studies (Richardson, “Closer”; Edwards, “Critical”).
2

In the context of Nordic music, Daniel Grimley has illuminated notions of nature
as ideological complexities that are negotiated in performances of national and regional
identities. The importance of this perspective for understanding Icelandic popular music
was first demonstrated by Nicola Dibben (“Nature”), and has subsequently been
explored by others (Cannady, Richardson, An Eye; Hall). This article furthers their
research by addressing the Kárahnjúkar hydropower plant and its artistic responses as a
detailed case study.3
The musical examples in this article are drawn from 2006 to 2009, a period in
Icelandic society characterized by the contours of economic boom and crisis.
Encountering this material from the perspective of a non-native researcher, this period is
noteworthy for the resurgence of national-romantic landscape imagery on several fronts.
Political rhetoric of the time connected the economic expansion to the “special
characteristics” of Icelanders shaped by the unforgiving landscape (Loftsdóttir). The
same period witnessed the growth of nature-based tourism and government initiatives
for branding the Icelandic nation as “pure” and “unspoiled” (Huijbens).

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Waterfalls of Trouble
During the first decade of the twentieth century – at the height of the Icelandic
independence movement – the renowned composer Sigfús Einarsson (1877-1939)
published a song titled “Draumalandið” (“Dreamland”), based on a national romanticist
poem of the same title. Einarsson’s setting of the poem has become an Icelandic classic,
widely performed as a cornerstone of the art song repertoire in the Icelandic language.
The song, originally for female voice and piano accompaniment, is in romantic, Austro-
German lied style. In “Draumalandið,” the beauty of the landscape is praised, a
landscape to which the Icelander is forever attached: “þar batt mig tryggðaband” / “That
is where I am bound” (the literal meaning of tryggðaband is entering into a commitment
with a lover, an engagement). In Einarsson’s setting, this line is sung twice at the
melodic climax, as the piano accompaniment shifts from its wide, rubato arpeggio to a
more insistent hammering of chords, underscoring the political charge of this sentiment
in the early twentieth century.
Ideas of nature, as treated in Iceland’s strong traditions of poetry and song, has
been one of the main ways of articulating the nation state since the independence
movement (Hálfdanarson “Hver”). The nationalism of the early twentieth century
sought to distinguish Icelandic culture from the Danish by highlighting the unique
landscapes as a direct link to the independent commonwealth of the romanticized “saga
age.”4 Although a fully independent Republic of Iceland was not declared until 1944, a
cultural trajectory that emphasized national unity was growing at the turn of the century
(S. Magnason; Cannady). The landscape was seen to contain a link to the archaic and
“original” Norse culture, which became a point of reference in the negotiations for
becoming an independent nation. As captured in the song “Dreamland,” the nationalism
of the period led to a confluence of aesthetics and politics on the subject of landscape.
The elision of nature and nation has proven tenacious, being re-activated in
contemporary political discourse, especially on environmental issues such as the
Kárahnjúkar development.
The title Dreamland appeared again a century later in a best-selling work of
cultural criticism by the novelist and playwright Andri Snær Magnason (2006).
Magnason’s use of the title is intentionally ironic, in that it highlights the disjuncture
between the sentiments conveyed in the classical song, and what he perceives as a
wholesale shift to a capitalist conception of nature as economic resource. In his widely

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read book, Magnason explores the historical and ideological grounds that have prepared
the Icelandic nation for fully endorsing the necessity of foreign corporations and their
construction of aluminium smelters on Icelandic soil, despite Iceland’s low
unemployment rates and high standards of living. Magnason’s polemical book, with the
subtitle “A Self-help Manual for a Frightened Nation,” provides an interpretation of
recent Icelandic history as centered on the anxieties of a small nation eager to prove
itself on the world stage. Following the financial crisis of 2008, several researchers
would describe the intensified transformations of economic boom and subsequent
collapse as the result of a postcolonial desire to be recognized as equals to other actors
in the global financial world (see Loftsdóttir; Bergmann).
Magnason observes similar dynamics in Iceland’s extensive development of
hydropower industry. Ever since the onset of industrialization at the beginning of the
twentieth century, the abundant water-power inherent in the country’s big rivers and
waterfalls was seen by the nationalist intellectuals as a key to prosperity, a way of
putting Iceland on the map as a fully modernized nation among its European neighbors.
The uniqueness of Iceland’s topography was re-imagined as an economic resource to be
harvested for the good of the nation, a symbolic stepping stone on the way to attaining a
modernity that disentangled Iceland from its heritage of Danish colonial rule.
Hálfdanarson describes the dominant discourse: “it was not only the prerogative of the
human inhabitants of Iceland to harness the energy of the Icelandic rivers, but it was
their duty, or even their national mission” (“Sustaining” 191).
The tiny domestic energy market would never require industrialized power
production of much scale, and as such, the visions of hydropowered modernity was
from the beginning dependent on global energy demand. Influential ideologues, such as
Jakob Björnsson, who headed the National Energy Authority (Landsvirkjun) from 1973
to 1996, laid down the framework for attracting foreign corporations involved in the
aluminium industry to the island. Aluminium smelting is by far the most power-
intensive industry in the world, and aluminium corporations were therefore seen as an
ideal target for promotional efforts that promised “the cheapest energy in Europe” and
“a minimum of environmental red tape” (Krater and Rose 312). Metal manufacturing
corporations were thus brought in, while nature conservation rules were relaxed.
The development of hydropower production for the benefit of the global
aluminium industry was presented by Björnsson as Iceland’s only route to economic
prosperity, framed as a national mission. Such a monolithic view inevitably attracted

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dispute. Yet, as Hálfdanarson points out, critics of hydropower development have also
relied on nationalistic arguments (“Sustaining”). The Nobel prize-winning author
Halldór Laxness expressed his highly critical views in an article titled “The War
Against the Land” (“Hernaðurinn gegn landinu”, 1970), where the proponents of
hydropower development are characterized as enemies of the nation, a view made
possible by locating the nation in nature. The subject of hydropower thus reveal how
different views of nature are tied to ideological positions on Icelandicness and visions of
the nation’s future. This politicized rhetoric was rekindled in the 2000s during the
Kárahnjúkar development and formed the target for many of the artistic utterances of
the time (see Ólafsdóttir; Gremaud).5
The Kárahnjúkar project was fast-tracked by a political elite that disregarded
ecological concerns. The original environmental impact assessment, conducted by
Iceland’s National Planning Agency, ruled against the project on grounds of permanent
ecological damage. However, Iceland’s then Minister for the Environment, Siv
Friðleifsdóttir, famously overturned her own agency’s ruling, allowing the construction
to begin (Umhverfisráðuneytis). Similarly, a negative scientific report by government
geophycisist Grímur Björnsson was silenced by his superior, and not disclosed to
parliament before the vote on the project, as legally required (“Former”).
Protests against Kárahnjúkar were not only concerned with the conservation of
wilderness areas, but were rooted in the anxieties around the economic, cultural and
political developments happening in Iceland at the time, which the hydropower plant
came to symbolize. The project was an example of the risky, fast-paced capitalist
ventures that characterized the years preceding the financial meltdown. When the
construction of the project’s biggest dam came to its completion in 2007, there would
only be a year until the morning of October 6, 2008, when the three biggest Icelandic
banks suddenly collapsed, hurling the country into crisis. The pre-crisis discourses of
economic boom are thoroughly inscribed in the concrete fabric of this “humongous
monster,” which is how the dam was described by one of Iceland’s foremost musicians,
Jón þor Birgisson, also known as Jónsi, of the band Sigur Rós (Heima, 56:45 - 56:50).

Here Comes Grýla: Valgeir Sigurðsson, Spatiality and Vocal staging

In 2008, the Icelandic composer and producer Valgeir Sigurðsson (b. 1971) composed
the music for the documentary film, Dreamland, based on Magnason’s book mentioned
above. This film takes a critical perspective on the hydropower developments in

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Iceland, focusing especially on the environmental and cultural impact of the

Kárahnjúkar mega-project. Dreamland takes the viewer on a cinematic journey through
the landscapes of the interior highlands that are now severely impacted by industrial
development. The cinematography effectively captures how, in the late 2000s, the
sudden shift in going from economic boom to total collapse was mirrored in profound
physical changes to the land itself. The film culminates in a series of long and torturous
shots of birds and animals struggling to cope with the flooding of the Hálslon reservoir.
After this climax, the end credits appear accompanied by a piece of music, later released
as a single, namely Sigurðsson’s radical re-composition of an old Icelandic folk song
called “Grýlukvæði” (“song of Grýla”).
In Sigurðsson’s version of “Grýlukvæði,” the original tune (a stepwise,
pentatonic melody) is disrupted, cut-up and turned into a surreal collage of opposing
musical elements. The result is an avant garde mix of styles and genres, including
musique concrète, noise, and acoustic chamber music. Sigurðsson’s transformation of
the folk tune becomes a dialectic struggle (and ultimate synthesis) of the traditional
song and the twenty-first century digital mediation, in a way that musically mirrors the
troubling dialectic of nature-culture.6
“Grýlukvæði” references a folk song and the seventeenth century epic poem
upon which it is based. The poem is just one of many Icelandic poems, songs, rhymes
and jingles based on the folkloric character of Grýla. Grýla is a hideous, man-eating
troll woman, who descends from the mountains around Christmas to capture, cook, and
eat naughty children. The character is still a big part of the Icelandic Christmas
celebrations (Gunnell).
The Grýlukvæði poem contains many stanzas, some widely known and others
less so, describing different aspects of Grýla and her adventures. Significantly,
Sigurðsson chose the first five stanzas of the poem. These describe the beauty and
richness of the Fljótsdalur region in the eastern highlands, which is precisely the site of
the Kárahnjúkar hydropower project, making the text resonate with an eerie
geographical precision. In the poem, this land is threatened by the greed and hunger of
troll-woman Grýla. In the contemporary context, Grýla comes to represent the
aluminium corporation Alcoa moving in to the region. In Sigurðsson’s radical setting of
the poem, the formal structure and meter is obscured by the frequent cuts, jumps, and
skips of the glitch-informed aesthetic.

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The poem has been recited or sung to different melodies over the centuries, and
is widely recognized in Iceland as a folk song. The ÍSMUS database7 contains
recordings of many different performances of the poem from 1964 to 1985. Some of the
performances conform to the melody printed in the collection Islenzk þjóðlög
(“Icelandic Folksongs,” þorsteinsson 1906-1909), yet many do not. In the last couple of
decades, different versions of “Grýlukvæði” has made frequent appearances on
children’s albums and Christmas compilation albums, as well as albums of folk music
collections.8 The melodic setting used by Sigurðsson appears at an earlier point in the
Dreamland documentary film, when a recording of an old woman singing an a cappella
version of the tune appears on the soundtrack. The basic melody is as follows:

Figure 1. Pentatonic melodic setting of “Grýlukvæði,” first stanza. Prose English translation: “The
journeys to Fljótsdalur are not as yet diminished. One sees that people there are well-to-do.”

This melody forms the basis of Sigurðsson’s setting, during which it becomes
completely distorted and fragmented. It is joine by noisy textural and timbral events that
move in and around the vocal line, more or less assaulting the folk song with the
contemporary hiss and crackle of electronic noise. Technological treatments are pushed
to extremes, making the listener aware of this track as an “impossible” performance,
constructed by the cut-and-paste possibilities of digital audio workstations.9
Sigurðsson’s composition transforms the tune into a statement of cultural
criticism, localized in a discourse on hydropower developments in Iceland. This
transformation happens mainly through three compositional strategies: (1) A surreal
spatial design, (2) the synthesis of the acoustic and electronic domains, and (3) an
uncanny staging of the voice. These are dealt with in turn.

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Spatial design
Sigurðsson’s “Grýlukvæði” emerges as if from the ground, with the fade-in of a low
drone on the double bass. The bass bows a double stopped major seventh dissonance,
with a drawn-out, half-step glissando creating micro-tonal activity. The unresolved maj7
interval and tonal uncertainty of the glissando establishes an anxious mood, which is
promptly contrasted by a cheerful finger-picking banjo. Already in the first few seconds
of the track there is the abrupt juxtaposition of musical elements that seem completely
foreign to each other. This sets the stage for the whole track, which is a collage of
discrete chunks of musical material forced to coexist in the same mix.
In this collage, we hear the voice of frequent Sigurðsson collaborator Sam
Amidon (discussed in more detail below) together with a solo double bass, a string
section, a banjo, a piano, an acoustic guitar, a harmonium, and several types of
electronic noise. The instrumental performances are treated as material for sampling:
they are cut into short chunks, treated with effects and meticulously “put in their place”
in the collage of the mix by way of different levels of reverberation and panning.
Each instrument is given its unique acoustic space (its own quality of
reverberation) which heightens the effect of a montage assembled by bits of music from
different sources smashed together on the same Pro Tools timeline. The cut-and-paste
impression of the music is further enhanced by the way Sigurðsson always cuts short
the decay of the reverb, avoiding the natural tail of each reverberant sound, filling the
track with abrupt starts and stops. In this way, “Grýlukvæði” appears as a patchwork of
unique acoustic spaces, confusing the listener’s sense of a continuous spatial
environment.
There is a large body of literature on sonic spatiality in recorded music,
emanating from research on electroacoustic music (Smalley; Emmerson) and popular
music studies (Moylan; Doyle; Moore and Dockwray; Lacasse; Moore). These theorists
draw on ecological perception (Gibson; Clarke) to argue that listeners tend to perceive
musical spatiality as representations of actual space, as well as constituting its own
metaphoric space. On “Grýlukvæði,” the spatial properties are dynamic on two levels:
the individual spaces of each instrument change, as well as those spaces’s position
within the overall stereo field. These dynamics are continuous, accomplished using
filtering automation, where levels of panning, reverberation and EQ gradually increase
or decrease. The resultant sound is an impossible, or surreal, space, consisting of many
dynamic rooms nested within the overall stereo field.10

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The spatial design forms part of the composition’s ecocritical aesthetics. The
traditional “Song of Grýla” embodies a certain way of locating history and folklore in
the landscape, representing a continuum of past and place. Sigurðsson’s surreal musical
space metaphorically disturbs such a stable notion of place. The spatial design thus
mirrors the on-the-ground developments where industrial forces are physically altering
the landscape. The degree of spatial experimentation increases towards the end of the
track, as the line “There comes Grýla” (“þar sé komin Grýla”) is sung repeatedly. This
coincides with the introduction of metallic, machine-like timbres, underscoring the
analogy between the greedy troll-woman and the industrial forces.

Collapse of the acoustic and electronic binary

One of the defining characteristics of Sigurðsson’s music is the blending of acoustic and
electroacoustic material, often in ways that result in timbres which cannot easily be
placed into either category. For the production of the Dreamland soundtrack, he
mechanically prepared the grand piano in his studio with all kinds of items, only to
sample it and turn it into a virtual instrument, with the samples triggered using a digital
interface (V. Sigurðsson). On “Grýlukvæði,” the sounds perceived as being
electronically produced are actually sampled performances on acoustic instruments,
treated with so much filtering that they are no longer recognized by the listener as their
original sound source. Similarly, acoustic instruments are played with unusual, extended
techniques in order to close in the distance between what is perceived as “natural” and
“post-produced.” One example is the abrupt appearance of a sustained note on the
double bass at 1:05, played in an unusually high register for the instrument and bowed
in a scraping fashion to bring out complex and grating overtones (see figure 2).

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Figure 2. Spectrographic visualization of 1:04 – 1:09 of “Grýlukvæði.” Obtained using Sonic Visualiser
v.2.5.

The spectrographic signature of the double bass note is in fact very similar to the white
noise “shwoop” which appears directy afterwards, each sound having approximately
one second duration and each containing similar amounts of acoustic energy in the same
frequency ranges.
During the course of the track, what is at first experienced as acoustic
instrumentation being interrupted and manipulated by electronic noise, eventually is
experienced as the collapse of any clear distinction between the two. This synthesis of
the acoustic and the electronic domains upsets habitual modes of relating notions of
“acoustic” to “natural” (and similarly, “electronic/synthesized” to “cultural” or
“unnatural”). Such problematizing of dichotomous thinking is further developed in the
vocal staging on the track.

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Vocal staging
To sing the old Icelandic “song of Grýla,” Sigurðsson brought in his frequent
collaborator Sam Amidon, an American folk singer. Amidon’s voice appears on the
record as something strangely in-between the natural and the synthesized. This is an
example of Sigurðsson extending his collapse of the acoustic and the electronic to the
voice itself. This effect can be illuminated by looking at the technological staging of the
voice on the track. Following Serge Lacasse and Freya Jarman-Ivens, I view the vocal
staging as having two levels: the “internal” (or biotechnological) and the “external” (or
phonographic). The internal staging of the voice is crucial here, considering the fact that
Amidon is not proficient in Icelandic. As most styles of popular music rely on the
singer’s seemingly authentic delivery of the text, this is quite a significant point. On
“Grýlukvæði,” the tension resulting from the approximate pronunciation of this well-
known traditional song is exploited for an aesthetic as well as political effect.
Because of the language barrier, the recording process occurred in a start-and-
stop fashion, with the vocal part recorded almost word for word while Sigurðsson
dictated the Icelandic text to Amidon (V. Sigurðsson). Even though the finished track
adheres quite well to the normal prosody of sung Icelandic, something is clearly “off,”
and the vocal production makes no effort to hide it. The fragmentary appearance of the
voice is rather enhanced by way of radical phonographic staging, with abrupt changes in
EQ, compression and reverb emphasizing the technological dimension of the recorded
voice.
This is well exemplified at 1:08, when Amidon sings the repeated refrain of the
second stanza, “Förumanna flokkarnir flykkjast þangað mest” / “the throngs of beggars
flock to that place.” The voice is at first characterized by a thin and distant “telephone
effect” EQ setting, panned to the left and treated with a flanging effect. Yet when the
line repeats at 1:12, the voice “skips” to the middle of the stereo field, suddenly at a
higher volume level and a less extreme EQ setting. Such an abrupt spatial manipulation
of the voice, added to the distortion of its natural timbre, destabilizes the listener’s
identification with the singing voice and runs counter to the ideals of authentic textual
delivery in folk music genres.
Folk music derives much of its authenticity from a perceived closeness to nature
(Ingram 48). The folk genre relies on unamplified, acoustic performances that
communicate a sense of a romanticized, agrarian past (Richardson, An Eye 241). As
such, the audible technological treatment of the voice is especially forbidden in the folk

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genre. “Grýlukvæði” seems then to be suggesting a severed connection with the

authenticity of folk by exposing the agency of modern music technology. The degree of
technological mediation twists and turns the “natural” folk song inside out, emerging as
a critical commentary on human-environment relations in Iceland. This process is one
of defamiliarization, where the well-known traditional tune is made strange, and thus
provides the necessary distance for critical reflection on the issues at hand.11
The aesthetics of the uncanny are employed to great effect in this track. The
eerily fragmented voice signals the familiarly human, yet in an altogether unfamiliar
manner. For listeners proficient in Icelandic, Freud’s original formulation of das
unheimliche rings true, with Amidon’s foreign pronunciation of the text being literally
an “unhomely” voice. This points toward the voice as a site of cultural politics – where
notions of home, belonging and the “natural” can be recast and challenged.12
The use of an American singer becomes politically charged in this context. The
author of Dreamland, Andri Snær Magnason, commented on Sigurðsson’s
“Grýlukvæði” as being “almost too gloomy,” describing an Iceland that is “losing itself”
(Magnason). Having the American singer perform the traditional folk song embodies a
crisis in Icelandic subjectivity: the composition is robbing Iceland of its own voice.
Magnason sees Iceland as once again a colonial subject, not of the Danish crown but of
the American aluminium corporations. A review in Iceland’s biggest daily newspaper,
Morgunblaðið, also notes the effect of Amidon’s foreign voice, describing it as “this
foreign invasion into Icelandic poetry reflects the message of the film” (H.
Sigurðsson).13 This interpretation points towards the more ominous meanings of the title
Dreamland, suggesting an absurd, surreal or nightmarish situation.
By transforming the traditional, folkloric song, Sigurðsson’s composition
introduces voices from the past to critique the present, drawing on post-colonial
anxieties related to Iceland’s independence. Anthropologist Kristín Loftsdóttir has
showed how the present-day economic boom and collapse was dependent on social
memories and articulations of the past. She states: “In Iceland, the transformation into a
more globalised and neoliberal system depended on desires and dreams, which were
enacted with uncritical views of modernity and Iceland’s past status under foreign rule”
(341).
I now turn to another example of musical response to the hydropower issue, this
time by Iceland’s international pop icon Björk. Björk was involved in organizing
several grassroots events to protest the construction of the Kárahnjúkar plant. Her

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artistic activism involved releasing a song that is significant both as a powerful

statement in the local environmental debate, and as an example of ecologically informed
musical aesthetics.

Sonic Cascades and Metrical Ambiguity in Björk’s “Náttúra”

The cover photo for Björk’s 2008 single “Náttúra” (“Nature”) features the artist
appearing small and insignificant next to a gigantic hurl of water crashing into the rocks
at a waterfall on one of the biggest glacial rivers in Iceland. Considering Björk’s
previous album covers – all of them highly stylized, glossy expressions of her
transgressive individualism – this photo is rather unique. Here Björk as artist is absent;
all we see is an anonymous woman in everyday clothes standing off to the side. It is the
river itself, or rather Björk’s conception of Nature, that is the real subject of the photo
(and, to an extent, the music). The location for the photo shoot was the river Jökulsá á
Fljótsdal, one of two glacial rivers in the area that were dammed for the construction of
the Kárahnjúkar hydropower plant, making the previously unique ensemble of
waterfalls and rapids go silent.

Figure 3. Cover photo of Björk’s single “Náttúra” (One Little Indian, 2008).

In 2008, Björk turned the sound back on. “Náttúra” opens with the rumbling noise of
water flowing down a rocky river. This sound introduces a composition primarily

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structured around the interplay between Björk’s voice and a complex, circular drum
pattern. For the production of “Náttúra,” Björk collaborated with the American
drummer Brian Chippendale, whose performance style is characterized by maximum
volume and physical intensity. The attack-heavy drums are mixed louder than Björk’s
voice and surrounding her on all sides of the stereo field. The musical relationship
between the drums and the voice comes to signify Björk’s idiosyncratic conception of
the Icelandic landscape as wild, powerful and gripping. The sharp distortion of the
sawtooth synth bass and the dissonant harmonic textures hark back to Björk’s early
career in the anarchist punk band Kukl. The track maintains a high-energy, manic feel
throughout, with the insistent tone of Björk’s powerful, belting voice communicating a
sense of urgency.
In the opening section of “Náttúra,” processed vocal samples form a haze of
sound in the background of the mix. This is in fact the voice of Thom Yorke of
Radiohead. Although his voice is unrecognizable on the finished track, the “feat. Thom
Yorke” tag on iTunes has likely contributed to making “Náttúra” one of Björk’s most
downloaded songs, despite its avant garde style and Icelandic language.14
As one of the most discussed global pop artists, Björk has been studied from a
variety of perspectives.15 Even though Björk has removed herself from the cover photo,
it is difficult to separate the musical text of “Náttúra” from her personal narrative as
world-famous pop icon. And, as Stan Hawkins warns, any “fixing” of the musical
meaning in Björk’s output is problematized by the layers of parody, pastiche, and
playful banality that characterizes her handling and re-working of genres and stylistic
codes (“Musicological”). Acknowledging this, my reading of “Náttúra” considers the
track as a critical utterance situated within a local environmental debate, justified by the
circumstances and features of the song’s production.
“Náttúra” is just one of a handful of Icelandic songs in Björk’s entire output, and
the only Icelandic-language song to be released as a single. Björk intended the single to
ignite awareness in Iceland of the threat posed to the interior highlands from further
industrial developments by foreign corporations, with all proceeds from the single going
towards a sustainability campaign co-founded by Björk (“Bjork”).
“Náttúra” offers an ecological view of a human subject in the grip of forces that
exceed our understanding and control. In the lyrics of the song, the narrator is “taken,”
she “receives” nature (“ég tek við því”). The lyrical drama is heightened by the
corporeality of the intense drum performance. In the final verse, Björk screams out

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random vowels, singing without words, as if the narrator of the song has finally been
“taken” or possessed by the natural forces. Björk comments on how the song came
about in a very spontaneous, improvised fashion, singing over Chippendale’s drum
performance: “I just sang it in one take. It's just a celebration of nature and how
unpredictable it is and you cannot control it and you just have to kind of like let it fall
all over you and go with it” (Philips). Towards the end of the track, the sound of the
river returns, while Björk’s voice fades out. The river both precedes and exceeds the
human subject. The formal structure of the track thus underscores the ecological
utterance of the song.
The drum pattern on “Náttúra” is composed of a repeated loop of rapid strokes
that alternates between the low- and high-pitched tom-toms in a wave-like motion (see
figure 4). The synth bass further emphasizes the impression of a wave, by looping a
gliding figure that slides up a seventh before returning to the tonic for each looped
segment. This circular pattern of drums and bass exhibits a high degree of metrical
ambiguity. Upon first listening, it might suggest a 7/8 meter grouped as 4+3, yet as
Björk’s voice enters, the rhythm leans more towards a duple 6/8 meter with the first half
of each bar stretched by almost an eighth note. In fact, the meter of the track is
somewhere in-between: Björk edited together bits of the improvisational drum
performance to form a rhythm which does not conform to standard metrical units. Björk
states how the editing process was more about “harnessing his energy and taking it in
more organic units than grid units” (Philips). The result is a swirling composition that
tugs at the listener’s sense of beat and meter, contributing to the overall disorienting
effect of the song.

Figure 4. Repeating drum pattern on “Náttúra.” Rhythmic subdivisions are only indicative.

It is interesting that Björk turns to state of the art music technology to digitally edit the
live drum performance in orderto make it sound, in her words, more “organic.” This is a
procedure found throughout Björk’s musical output, referred to by Nicola Dibben as
“the naturalization of technology” and the “technologizing of nature” (“Nature” 142,

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see also Marsh and West). Björk thus challenges the convention of placing nature and
technology in an oppositional dichotomy.
The textural and dynamic qualities of “Náttúra” are based on Björk’s experience
of the powerful sonic presence of the river. By recording the river, and incorporating its
continuous rumble and circular metrics into the structure of the track, Björk is affording
an artistic agency to the environment. The composition thus expresses a particular way
of relating to the “liveliness” of the river by attending to its cascading motions and
complex aural qualities. There is a deliberate ecological principle at work here. Rather
than trying to control and harness the Icelandic landscape for human electrical needs,
Björk is listening out for what it has to say – and joining in.16
By the time the “Náttúra” single was released, the Jökulsá á Fljótsdal river was
already dammed and re-routed to the hydropower plant. In her correspondence with the
American ecological philosopher Timothy Morton, Björk describes it as “the river that
isn’t” (Guðmundsdóttir and Morton, 13). However, Björk’s environmental campaign
lives on, and she is regularly involved in environmental politics and activism in
Iceland.17
A third example of musical response to the Kárahnjúkar hydropower plant is the
performance by Sigur Rós at a protest camp in 2006. As one of Iceland’s most
successful and well-known bands, Sigur Rós lent their voice to the cause by staging an
acoustic performance in the middle of the wilderness area that would be flooded only
weeks later.

Sigur Rós’s Wake for Kárahnjúkar

During the summer of 2006, as the construction of the Kárahnjúkar project was nearing
completion, environmental activists started to gather at a camp near the industrial site in
the eastern highlands. By this stage, the growing protest movement against Kárahnjúkar
had already become a highly musical affair, with the “Stop the dams!” (“Hætta!”)
protest concert staged in Reyjavík in January of that year. The concert included
performances by more than 10 Icelandic and international artists (including Björk and
Sigur Rós), in front of a crowd of 5.500 people (“Hátiðarstemning”). Despite the active
involvement of some of Iceland’s biggest artists and the international attention brought
to the issue, the political elite in Reykjavík still pushed ahead with the plans. At the
protest camp in the highlands some 200 people were gathered (however, it must be kept
in mind that this site is terribly inaccessible). Sigur Rós decided to join the protesters,

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who had frequent run-ins with the local landowners and the police, in the end being
forcibly cleared from the premises (“Sigur”).
At the time, Sigur Rós was doing a series of free concerts in small towns and
villages around Iceland, which they described as a sort of “home-coming tour” after
having performed in big cities all over the world (Heima, 11:20-11:25). This 2006 tour
of Iceland was filmed and made into a critically acclaimed music documentary film
called Heima (“At Home,” 2007). Heima contextualizes the music of Sigur Rós as a
way of interpreting and reflecting critically on the Icelandic landscape and the social
histories that lie embedded in it.18 Here, I will not consider Heima as a whole, but rather
the band’s engagement with the debates on hydropower development in relation to their
performance at the protest camp.
While filming Heima, the band took a detour from the scheduled route to visit
the protest camp at Kárahnjúkar. In the middle of the wide, sloping wilderness of the
remote highlands, Sigur Rós played an un-plugged set together with the string quartet
Amiina. According to the violinist of Amiina, María Huld Markan Sigfúsdóttir, this was
something that “felt very natural to do,” even though they “kind of knew it was too late.
We didn’t expect it to stop, because the forces behind it were money and big
companies” (Sigfúsdóttir). Initially the band did not want to take a stand politically, as
the music was supposed to “speak for itself”. However, in the words of Sigfúsdóttir:
“this isn’t politics, it’s nature” (ibid.).
Sigur Rós catapulted into the global music consciousness at the turn of the
century with their immediately recognizable musical style, often described by reference
to post-rock, a sub-genre of indie rock characterized by spacious compositions that
unfold in slow tempos, gradually building textural density towards a single dynamic
climax.19 Sigur Rós incorporate acoustic strings in compositions that are reminiscent of
minimalist orchestral music, especially the style of Arvo Pärt and Henryk Górecki, in
addition to certain film music composers.20 The arguably unique aspects of the band’s
sound include the reverberant noise of the bowed electric guitar and the falsetto vocal
idiom of singer Jónsi.21
For the un-plugged performance at Kárahnjúkar, however, the band had to adapt
and come up with new arrangements for acoustic instruments (Sigfúsdóttir). This
entailed a significant departure from their established musical style. The result is a soft
and low-volume performance that blends into the surrounding landscape. The band
intended acoustic textures as a symbolic expression of sustainability and a rejection of

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the electricity produced by the hydropower scheme. The band played along with the
rustling of the wind and the distinct lack of reverb in such an open space, producing a
remarkably understated and fragile vigil for the landscape that would soon disappear. 22
The excerpt from this concert that appears in the Heima documentary film is the
performance of “Vaka” (56:10 – 59:50). This song was originally released as the
opening track of the band’s 2002 album; an album that has no lyrics, no song titles, and
even no album title (except for two empty brackets). The sung “text” of the song could
be characterized as non-sensical vocalization. Vocalist Jónsi uses a limited set of
Icelandic phonemes combined to form syllables and “words.” Listening to different
recordings of the same song reveals some slight variations, suggesting that there is an
element of improvisation in his vocal performance. The choice of song is interesting: in
such a heavily politicized context, the band decided to play a song with no semantic
meanings contained in lyrics, leaving all the more room for the musical meanings to
play out.23
The song is based on a repetetive five-bar chord progression that slowly unfolds
in the harmonium, vibraphone, acoustic guitar, acoustic bass guitar, and strings. The
hymn-like chord progression is based upon the Db Lydian mode, starting off on Db yet
modulating twice in the space of five bars, ending up on the dominant Ab, which has
been tonicized by the preceding Eb. This use of a secondary dominant chord (dominant
of the dominant) moves away from popular and rock harmony, entering the terrain of
choral and hymnal tonal harmony in the classical Western tradition. Stepwise voice
leading in the harmonium and bass, coupled with slow pacing and sustained whole
notes in the strings, afford a quasi-religious mood, with the physical presence of the
harmonium giving the performance a ceremonial air.

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Figure 5. Stepwise voice-leading and hymnal harmony in “Vaka,” exemplified by the first five bars of the
first verse. Song lyrics transcribed using English phonemes.

The music is in a very slow tempo (quarter note = 40 bpm), with a lack of rhythmic
events creating a sensation of suspension in-between each musical gesture. The slow
churning of the cyclical chord progression comes almost to a stand-still as the
construction of the hydropower plant was happening close by at an incredible speed.
Several band members have described their impression of the boom period in the mid-
2000s as happening at an explosive tempo. Sigfúsdóttir describes the height of the boom
as “everything was happening so quickly … and all of this ‘old Iceland’ was getting lost
by the minute.” Durrenberger and Pálsson (Gambling) describes the rapid pace of
industrial development in Iceland after the country’s neoliberal transformations in the
1990s and 2000s. In this context, the slow tempo of the song becomes significant in
itself.
The title “Vaka,” considered a working title for years, only appears in print as
the song was recorded in its acoustic version following the Heima tour and released on
the album Hvarf-Heim (“Disappeared-Home,” 2007). “Vaka” shares the same Old

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Norse root as the English “wake,” and is a fitting title considering the group of
protesters gathered to keep watch over a landscape soon to be sacrificed at the altar of
economic growth. The song’s title, in addition to the hymn-like harmonic progression
and slow tempo, offers an interpretation of this performance as a lamentation for what is
about to be lost. The absence of literal meaning in lyrics opens up the song, encouraging
the audience to invest in it their own reflections on the political and environmental
issues at hand. The slow-moving chord changes (Db – Ebsus2 – Fm – Eb – Ab) in 2/4
meter is stylistically as far from the traditional rock protest song as one can get, yet it
clearly manages to capture the moment of lamentation and resignation. As John
Richardson emphasizes, the major/minor ambiguities in this and other Sigur Rós songs
performed on Heima are achieved as much by suspensions and inversions as by the
chord progressions themselves, which contributes towards the contemplative mood of
the music (“Closer” 175). Against the backdrop of unsustainable economic boom, the
performance of “Vaka” sends a clear message of restraint.

Figure 6. Sigur Rós and Amiina performing “Vaka” at the protest camp (still image from Heima).

Lawson Fletcher interprets this performance in light of a “narrative of spatial memory,”

which he considers as characteristicof the post-rock genre, writing how “Sigur Rós
perform for a place that has a present but no future, in reference to a past that is slipping
away, an ‘anticipatory melancholy’ that further adds to the critical form of remembering
that lies at the heart of post-rock” (7). Significantly, the musical style of this

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performance, as described above, has little to do with post-rock, leaning more towards
minimalist classical music in its use of repetition and chamber ensemble textures.
However, the compositional and stylistic choices in “Vaka” are key to realizing
Fletcher’s “critical form of remembering.” By employing un-plugged, acoustic
instruments, the band draws on a wealth of meanings associated with “the acoustic” as a
discursive construct in a digital age (Richardson, An Eye). Richardson describes this
“idea of the acoustic” as standing for “the apparent sanctuary of unmediated experience
in a world where technological mediation is ubiquitous” (240). The term “sanctuary” is
especially productive here, as the stylistic and sonic similarities to church music are
salient. The musical performance invests the highland wilderness with a certain weight
and significance as ritualized space. This space allows for critical reflection on the
present, by drawing musically on the past, including the somewhat anachronistic
harmonic strategies employed in the song, as well as the timbre of the harmonium,
which effectively evokes Iceland’s rural past (Hall).24
The musical materials of the performance thus underscore a form of
environmental critique that becomes effective in an Icelandic context by connecting the
natural landscape to cultural heritage. There is a danger, however, that such
performances perpetuate the romantic wilderness ideology that has been so effectively
critiqued by William Cronon. Later ecocritics such as Timothy Morton contend that
imagining Nature as romantic sanctuary upholds a distinction between humans and the
environment that remains an ideological hindrance to ecological action. This
performance, however, is productive as local environmental activism by directing itself
to the specific issue of hydropower developments in Iceland, as opposed to an
unspecified and mythologized “nature.” It addresses the issue by mobilizing the
affective and symbolic qualities of its musical materials that relate to senses of history,
nostalgia and loss.

Conclusion
During the ten years following the completion of the Kárahnjúkar project and the
flooding of the highland wilderness in which Sigur Rós performed, more hydropower
schemes have been developed to serve ever more heavy industry plants on the island. In
2016, as much as 77,3% of all electricity produced in Iceland went to the aluminium
smelting industry, mostly owned by foreign corporations (Logadóttir). The profitability
of these schemes is hard to gauge, as the energy prices are deemed trade secrets and

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kept undisclosed. Icelanders are kept in the dark as to whether the industrial ruin of
highland ecosystems is beneficial to their nation at all. The National Energy Authority
is currently not publishing reports on the profitability of the Kárahnjúkar plant
(Reynisson).
These issues are not confined to hydropower, but extend to Iceland’s pioneering
initiatives in geothermal electricity production. Recently, there have been attempts at
“induced seismic events” (man-made earthquakes) in order to produce enough
geothermal energy required to meet the big contracts entered into with the aluminium
industry during the boom years. The results are highly unpredictable, with residents in
small towns near the geothermal plants being affected by seismic instability (Maguire
and Winthereik).
Iceland continues to engineer new natural-cultural infrastructures, discovering
ways to modify the landscape in order to harvest more power to serve heavy industry.
Often, the environmental cost of these projects is not visible right away. For instance,
the damming and re-routing of the glacial river that Björk sang with on “Náttúra” has
drastically disturbed the marine ecosystems in eastern Iceland, including the biological
death of Lake Lagarfljót (“Hrún”). And it is only recently that we have learnt of the
importance of glacial rivers in binding CO2 from the atmosphere and transporting
essential nutrients to ocean ecosystems (Gíslason; Eiriksdóttir [Link].).
From the opening major 7th harmonic dissonance of Sigurðsson’s
“Grýlukvæði,” to the disorienting drum pattern of Björk’s “Náttúra,” the musical
examples discussed bear witness to social experiences of tension and disjuncture in
Icelandic society towards the end of the 2000s. The environmental critique of these
songs is tied to questions regarding Iceland’s global circumstances as nation state, a
central anxiety throughout recent Icelandic history. When Björk states, in the foreword
to the English edition of Dreamland, that politicians are “selling Icelandic nature off
cheap to the industrial giants of this world,” she is in fact echoing Halldór Laxness’s
words from half a century previously. In 1949, as Iceland was debating joining NATO
and allowing the USA to build a military base on Icelandic soil, the author characterized
the entire affair as Icelandic politicians “selling their country” (D’Amico 465).
The national-romantic discourse equating landscape with national heritage and
historical continuity is still the primary argument for nature conservation in Iceland.
Andri Snær Magnason recently likened further industrial development in wilderness
areas to “someone walking around the National Museum with a sledgehammer” (qtd. in

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Logadóttir).25 This sentiment expresses a sense of loss in the face of present-day

developments that are seen to threaten a unique natural-cultural heritage. Both in
Sigurðsson’s avant garde transformation of a traditional song and in Sigur Rós’s
acoustic strategies of nostalgia, there is the use of real or imaginary pasts, mobilized to
critique a present perceived as disjointed.
In Iceland during the late 2000s, some of the most culturally significant voices
of the population chose to address environmental issues through music. Taking this
seriously, this article has employed close readings and textual analyses to highlight the
unique contributions of music as a discursive form. Although the discussion has mainly
focused on the Icelandic context, I have nonetheless grappled with questions of global
relevance.
So far in the twenty-first century, our relationship with the natural environment
remains a mediated one, structured by technology and the forms of cultural expression
that surround us in everyday life. The materials of these mediations should not be
underestimated, as they contribute to constructing what we imagine by “nature” and
what kinds of values we attach to it. As a growing awareness of global ecological crisis
seeps into artistic sensibilities and practices, musicians ask how we should best engage
with our physical surroundings. The resulting aesthetics and compositional
developments require further exploration by musicologists. While the uncanny voice on
Sigurðsson’s “Grýlukvæði” might express gloomy alienation, Björk’s is ultimately
more hopeful and radical, in singing with the landscape and providing space for
attentive listening to the non-human. In the end, musical expressions such as these serve
to unsettle habitual modes of relating to the environment from a position of technical
mastery and dominance.

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End Notes
1. Examples of similar studies include Stimeling on music and coal mining in the
Appalachian Mountains, and Guy on music and environmental imagination in
Taiwan.
2. Ecocriticism, as a framework for cultural analysis, is generally characterized by
the critical historicizing of “nature” and a challenging of the anthropocentricism
in traditional narratives (Garrard 3). For its varied applications in music studies,
see Allen and Dawe.
3. Anthropological studies on Iceland have emphasized the entanglements of “the
natural” and “the social-historical” in processes of identity formation (Hastrup;
Pálsson and Durrenberger). Scholars in history and geography take a similar
perspective on the social and political trajectories of modern Iceland (Árnarson;
Benediktsson and Lund; Karlsdóttir; Pálsson). Dibben (“Music”) has studied the
intersections of music and environmentalism in Iceland with reference to the
hydropower industry, yet does not employ music analysis, which leaves room
for the perspectives offered here.
4. The period from the age of settlement in the mid-ninth century until Icelanders
came under the rule of the Norwegian king in 1264 is known as the “saga age,”
the glorified epoch of heroic deeds described in the famous body of literature
known as the Icelandic Family Sagas (Islendingasögur).
5. Landscape aesthetics played a big part in these debates. Valgerður Sverrisdóttir,
Minister for Industry during the construction of the Kárahnjúkar plant,
proclaimed that the land being submerged by the dams at Kárahnjúkar was “not
particularly beautiful” (“enginn serstök nátturufegurð”). This sparked a debate
on what “beautiful nature” means, and if the value of nature preservation applies
only to “beautiful” areas.
6. The composition relies on the common trope of noise/music as an aesthetic
correlate to nature/culture in Western music aesthetics. This point has been
argued by several scholars, recently by Edwards in the context of ecocritical
music analysis (“Silence”). Edwards reads two of the canonical thinkers in
European music aesthetics – Eduard Hanslick and Theodor Adorno – as
proponents of a music philosophy in which music (belonging to culture) is the
imposition of order and control onto noise (belonging to nature).

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7. ÍSMUS (íslenskur músík- og menningararfur – “Icelandic music and cultural

heritage”), is a database containing recordings, texts, manuscripts, images and
film pertaining to Icelandic musical heritage. The database is maintained by the
Tónlistarsafn Íslands and the Árni Magnusson Institute of Icelandic Studies.
8. See, for instance, Edda Heiðrún Backmann (1991), Barnajól, PS Musík,
compact disc; Eddukórinn (1991), Íslensk þjóðlög, Sena, compact disc; Þrjú á
Palli (1971), Hátíð Fer að Höndum Ein, SG – hljómplötum 040, compact disc.
9. This is an example of what Brøvig-Hanssen terms “opaque mediation,” which
she contrasts with “transparent mediation” to delineate experiences of listening
to and through sound production technology (“Opaque”).
10. Brøvig-Hanssen and Danielsen argue that what constitutes a surreal spatiality in
recorded music is highly contextual. The effect of surreal spatial designs in
music production is subject to historical processes of naturalization, in which the
“surreal” becomes “naturalized” over time. However, by way of its intertextual
relationship to the traditional song, “Grýlukvæði” enters into a folk music
discourse privileging more natural acoustic environments, which makes the
effect of Sigurðsson’s compositional play of spaces far more effective. See
especially Richardsson (An Eye) for discussions of the audiovisual surreal.
11. The use of “defamiliarization” here is drawing on the critical theory of Adorno,
who wrote how “Perspectives must be fashioned that displace and estrange the
world, reveal it to be with its rifts and crevices” (Minima, 247). Adorno was
influenced by fellow Marxist Bertolt Brecht’s usage of verfremdungseffekt –
estrangement effect – in his political theatre. Brecht, in turn, was likely
influenced by the German translation of Russian literary theorist Viktor
Shklovsky’s highly influential concept of ostranenie.
12. In popular musicology, theorizations of uncanny voices have mainly been
related to queerness, see Jarman-Ivens and Hawkins (Queerness).
13. Original text: “Þessi innrás útlendingsins í íslenskan kveðskap endurspeglar í
raun boðskap myndarinnar.”
14. Björk and Thom Yorke famously collaborated on the Oscar-winning song “I’ve
Seen It All” featured in Lars Von Trier’s film Dancer in the Dark (2001).
Regarding “Náttúra”, Björk decided to ask Yorke for a contribution with the aim
of maximizing exposure and to bring awareness to the issue (see Philips).

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15. This includes matters of subjectivity and identity (Hawkins “Musical”,

“Musicological”; Dibben “Subjectivity”). Other studies of Björk emphasize
aspects of feminism and post-humanism (Marsh and West; Robbie; Goldin-
Perschbaker) as well as compositional practice and musical style (Dibben Björk;
Malaway; Grimley; Burns, LaFrance & Hawley).
16. This brings to mind Steven Feld’s description of musical practice among the
Kaluli of Papua New Guinea: “Singing about water, with water, and imagining
song as water and vocal flow – here the poetry of place meets the sensuality of
soundscape and the singing voice” (5).
17. Björk’s artistic involvement in numerous protest activities in Iceland is
discussed further in Dibben (“Music”).
18. Heima has seen much attention from scholars. Þorbjörg Daphne Hall views the
film as an expression of nostalgia, emphasizing th cultural tensions between the
rural and the urban in Icelandic society, which is similarly foregrounded by
Nicola Dibben (“Nature”). John Richardson provides an in-depth analysis of the
audiovisual aesthetics at work, including the use of silences and disruptions in
medium-aware performances that speaks to his theorization of the audiovisual
surreal (An Eye 275-281).
19. On the post-rock genre, see Hodgkinson; Hibbett; Osborn; Chuter.
20. Sigur Rós’s close relationship with film music composers Jóhann Jóhannsson
and Hilmar Örn Hilmarsson at the turn of the century has likely influenced their
style.
21. Jónsi’s iconic voice has been interpreted in terms of its androgynous qualities by
Miller, who describes it by reference to the uncanny nature of the boy soprano
voice.
22. While the actual performance at the protest camp, witnessed by a rather small
crowd, was executed completely acoustically, the soundtrack that accompanies
the performance in the film shifts halfway through to a different recording of the
song made outside the band’s studio. The immense electric cost of producing the
finished audiovisual performance is masked behind a staged acousticness
indexed by visual means, thus exemplifying Richardson’s point that “acoustic
music is a discourse that requires visual authentication in order to do its cultural
work” (An Eye 275).

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23. The use of non-sensical vocalization in many Sigur Rós songs has been studied
in terms of its lineage to dada and surrealism (Petersen; Hayden) as well as its
nostalgic qualities and childlike playfulness (Richardson; Appel). It is frequently
misconstrued as an invented language, due in part to the band members
themselves who named it Vonlenska (“Hopelandic”). The term glossolalia is
often applied, which in most cases attaches unfortunate religious baggage.
24. The harmonium was found in most churches and homes in pre-war Iceland. In
1930, there were more than 2300 harmoniums in Iceland, according to available
import statistics, which is one harmonium per 40 inhabitants of the sparsely
populated country. This was related in personal communication by musicologist
Bjarki Sveinbjörnsson, see also Gilsson. This sheds some light on why several
contemporary bands in Iceland have relied on the sound of the harmonium
specifically for nostalgic effect.
25. Original text: “eins og einhver væri að ganga um Þjóðminjasafnið með sleggju.”

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Discography
Björk. 2008. “Náttúra”. One Little Indian 970 TP7DL, digital mp3 single.
Sigur Rós. 2001. Ágætis Byrjun. Smekkleysa SM79, compact disc.
Sigur Rós. 2002. ( ). FatCat Records FATCD22, compact disc.
Sigur Rós. 2007. Hvarf-Heim. EMI 5099950256624, 5025662, compact disc.
Valgeir Sigurðsson. 2009. “Grýlukvæði”. Bedroom Community, digital mp3 single.
Valgeir Sigurðsson. 2010. Draumalandið. Bedroom Community HVALUR08, compact
disc.

Videography
Heima. 2007. Directed by Dean De-Blois. Klikk Film and Truenorth Productions, dvd.
Draumalandið. 2010. Directed by þorfinnur Guðnason and Andri Snær Magnason.
Ground Control Productions, dvd.

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