The Reykjavík Grapevine’s Iceland Roundup brings you the top news with an (un?)healthy dash of local views. In this episode, Grapevine publisher Jón Trausti Sigurðarson is joined by Grapevine editor-in-chief Bart Cameron, and Grapevine frien...

In the haze of electoral information, here are the things that stand out Icelandic municipal politics are primarily based on the national party landscape, with most of the major parties campaigning in every municipality. Reykjavík is no exception, a...

Halldór Áskell Stefánsson walked 57 kilometres home from work on May 8, travelling from Reykjavík to Selfoss, reports Vísir. He walked for more than 13 hours. This is the third time Halldór has either walked, cycled, or run between his home an...

Romanian hacker exploited a flaw in the Arion Bank’s system to transfer approximately 160 million ISK to himself, reports Vísir. Arion Bank has since recovered most of the funds. Police in Bucharest arrested a 33-year-old Romanian man on May 6 on ...

The upcoming May 16th elections bring a new Reykjavík council So, you’ve been out of the loop and don’t know who to vote for in the upcoming municipal elections. Can you even vote? What’s this Borgarlína? Is it really a tram? Who is Ari Edwal...

Daði Freyr closed Salurinn’s 2026 Söngvaskáld season One of the capital area’s best-kept secrets in terms of music venues, Salurinn is a part of the Hamraborg cultural complex. Located within a stone’s throw of one another, these facilities ...

“It’s completely clear that everything would be put on the line to keep Iceland from going into the EU. If we did, then everything would be put on the line to get it back out again. I’m not a violent man and I will speak against violenc...

Former first lady of Iceland, Dorrit Moussaieff, shared a picture of herself embracing UK Reform leader Nigel Farage on May 8. The British political party won a en electoral victory in the recent UK council elections, held May 7. In an Instagram post...

Yrsa Roca Fannberg’s The Ground Beneath Our Feet brings an unflinching portrayal of life in its last chapter Outside an old house in Vesturbær, two silver-haired women sit on a bench, bathing in what may be the last of September sun. Inside, dozen...

    “When you enter, like in front of the entrance door, there’s this big phallic sculpture of bodies all placed on top of each other,” Yuki Mik tells me. The musician, artist, Grapevine contributor and now model is describing Wor...

What a week! The new Grapevine is fresh off the press, Sir David Attenborough turns 100, half the town seems to be in Venice for the Biennale opening of the incomparable Ásta Fanney at the Icelandic Pavilion, and DesignMarch has landed with enough e...

Debut LP Samferða weaves lost connections, diary entries, and theatre Anna Róshildur Benediktsdóttir Bøving — Róshildur for short — pulls up to 12 Tónar on a vintage turquoise Bianchi road bike. “I got this off Facebook Marketplace in a...

Studio Brynjar & Veronika takes on Icelandic poplar in a new furniture collection “Nature is somehow gradually ​​moving further away from us. We tend to experience it as something we step into and out of,” says Brynjar Sigurðarson, speak...

Reykjavík stalwart combs life experience with his 10th album, conditioned by experience Without Ægir Sindri Bjarnason, the Reykjavík music scene would be worse for wear. An enduring musician and organiser, Ægir’s efforts have made indelible mar...

For the April issue of the Grapevine, we held a photo shoot with Mayor Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir. The shoot itself was a scramble, as we wanted a chance to show the mayor in the elements of Reykjavik, and we had limited time and budget. We scrapped...

From hemp houses to sustainable fashion, DesignMarch 2026 connects disciplines, materials, and people Despite it being May on the calendar, DesignMarch is back, once again ignoring its own name and sprawling across Reykjavík and even beyond May 6 to...

Six years after a sale to South Korean company Pearl Abyss, CCP has reached an agreement to bring control of the company back to Iceland. Originally sold to Pearl Abyss for 26 billion ISK, management has reported that they were able to buy control ba...

Sigur Rós are among the musical acts performing at Sir David Attenborough’s 100th birthday celebration, slated May 8. In honour of the natural historian’s centenary, Royal Albert Hall will play host to the festivities.  Sigur Rós is claimed to...

Iceland Innovation Week runs from 27 to 30 April, and, if opening day is any indication, the organisers are not messing around. The event has been going for a few years now. Its premise is simple enough: bring Iceland’s startup and investment c...

New information has been made public regarding the murders at The Edition hotel in Reykjavík in June 2025. Yesterday, the woman arrested at the scene was charged with the manslaughter of her daughter, allegedly acting together with her husband, repo...

On Sunday, April 26, search and rescue teams found a dead man near Háifoss waterfall in Skeiða- og Gnjúpverjahreppur, South Iceland. The South Iceland police announced the news in a statement.  Around 19:00, the police received a report about an ...

Grindavík and Hveragerði, two towns in southwest Iceland, are located in areas classified at the highest hazard level in a new risk assessment by the Icelandic Met Office, reports Vísir. The data comes from reports published by the Met Office last...

Happy Friday, everyone! Though our weather isn’t exactly exhibiting it, it is now officially summer. If you’re finding it difficult to focus at work after having yesterday off, well, you’re not alone. Thanks for checking out the Gra...

Eleven years ago today, the Westfjords district commissioner repealed the local decree permitting the killing of Basques in the Westfjords. The decree dated to 1615. Three Basque whaling ships were wrecked in a storm off the coast in September of tha...

According to a new survey by the Housing and Construction Authority (HMS), 60 percent of people oppose densification in their local environment, with 20 percent in favour. Out of all age groups, people aged 25-34 are most likely to be in favour of de...

The No Music for Genocide campaign has published an open letter calling for a boycott of the Eurovision Song Contest over the decision to allow Israel to participate. 123 Icelandic musicians have signed the letter. The letter was prepared in collabor...

A mandarin duck was spotted at the Hamarkotslækur pond in Hafnarfjörður yesterday, according to Vísir. “This is such a beautiful bird that it’s always a pleasure to see it again and again,” birdwatcher Sveinn Jónsson, who photographed the ...

This Saturday, Denmark’s oldest newspaper, Berlingske Tidende, ran a story it had been working on for months. The topic: the Icelandic fisheries industry. The conclusion: Iceland is an oligarchy. Berlingske’s story sites numerous Icelandic source...

A man in Reykjanesbær was ruled to pay a 100.000 ISK fine after expressing hate speech online, RÚV reports.  In a comment to a Vísir news story, the offender said that the “German showers” needed to be revived because of asylum seekers, and t...

Beauty Through Abrasion Múm member, Nordic Council Music Prize Winner, and tour-de-force composer Gyða Valtýsdóttir released her latest album Mother Pearl on March 20. Drawing on philosophical inspiration, Mother Pearl is possibly Gyða’s most ...

Reykjavík City Council has approved a proposal to revive the Music Venue Improvement Fund, with 10 million ISK to be distributed this year, RÚV reports. The aim is to strengthen live music venues downtown. A task force on live music in Reykjavík p...

If you’re looking for something fun to do in Reykjavík this weekend, you’re in the right place! Today (April 17), at 18:00, Edda Karólína Ævarsdóttir opens her solo exhibition Allt fram streymir at Herma. Through large-scale wooden ...

As reported by RÚV, the likelihood of jet fuel diminishing increases as each day of the Hormuz Strait closure. AFP News claimed that fuel reserves in Iceland, Britain and the Netherlands were limited.  In conversation with RÚV, CEO of Skeljungur �...

Early music in Iceland is new: this week was only the third edition ever of the annual Early Music Festival in Reykjavik. From 31 March to 2 April, just before the Easter weekend, Baroque ensembles, lutenists and surprisingly even a cornettist-turned...

The nominations for the Edda Awards 2026 were publicly announced on April 10. The Edda Awards are Icelandic film and television awards that have been presented annually by the Icelandic Film and Television Academy since 1999. Hlynur Pálmason’s Ás...

Six police cars and four police motorcycles were involved in a pursuit on the afternoon of April 13, which ended when a police vehicle rammed the car’s left side. The driver is currently in police custody, reports mbl.is. The vehicle was initially ...

Friday afternoon at The Reykjavík Grapevine offices. Waiters circulate with trays of Kir Royales and vol-au-vents. “We’ve done a lot for the masses lately, haven’t we?” someone says to general agreement. “We published B...

The first time I moved to Iceland, I arrived at night. Hitchhiking from the airport, I couldn’t see the land itself, only its outlines. Street lights, windows, and construction cranes described the topography in glowing fragments, but the colou...

Prog-folk trio Falinn Gjóður wins the cumbersome Músíktilraunir As spring rolls around, nothing encapsulates the turn of the Icelandic music season as well as Músíktilraunir. Since the 1980s, the perennial battle-of-the-bands style competition ...

“It’s a very playful film that nobody wanted,” says director Hlynur Pálmason, speaking to a live audience at Bíó Paradís after the premiere of Joan of Arc (Jóhanna af Örk in Icelandic), the closing film of the Stockfish Film & Industr...

A new social media has entered the arena  Social media is awful. From data peddling to misinformation, platforms have been shown to increase polarisation in the world of today. By prioritising, even rewarding, extreme content and creating disparate ...

The Grapevine’s guide to sounding Icelandic, one word at a time For a thousand years Icelandic has had its own Icelandic names for various places and geographic locations visited by Icelanders or discussed in the numerous sagas and other literatu...

Makona and Kaffi Vest are worth the detour The humble brunch is perhaps one of the greatest inventions of the modern age, whether it leans into pancakes, bacon and eggs, or something altogether lighter. The city of Reykjavík is particularly wel...

Folktales did true crime long before podcasts Despite the current global obsession with gritty crime dramas and true crime documentaries, I find myself generally disinterested. Don’t get me wrong: I love crime. I personally live my life by the 2...

Are new lagoons muddying the waters for our traditional swimming pools? If you’re tempted to get into hot water in the northern town of Akureyri, you have two quite different facilities to choose from.  The first is Sundlaug Akureyrar: a clas...

In Between Cultures, Under Construction In a country where every fifth person has arrived from somewhere else, the topic of immigration and adaptation is embedded in the collective psyche. Iceland-based Mexican artist Hugo Llanes addresses this throu...

Puffins have returned to Iceland, reports RÚV, with sightings recorded on April 10 off Grímsey and in Borgarfjörður Eystri. One of Iceland’s traditional harbingers of spring, the birds were spotted by sisters Halla and Unnur Ingólfsdóttir in ...

On April 10, Morgunblaðið published an obituary of a man not yet deceased. Sölvi Guðmundarson, the man in question, reported the case on his social media accounts.  “Dear relatives and friends, those who have been messaging me to check if I am...

On Saturday, April 11, an Icelandair flight heading from Frankfurt to Keflavík took an unexpected turn when the pilot performed an unauthorised flyover across Heimaey in Vestmannaeyjar. Seen on videos, the plane flies dangerously close to the town&#...

Media research in the past decade has established that feedback online, first from clicks, then from social media interaction, has formed the agenda-setting of editorial boards across the globe. This has been going on for so long now that it now look...