We’ve got 13 Santa Clauses ! They start coming to town, one by one, 13 days before Christmas. One slams doors, one is a peek-a-boo — a bit of a pervert, really. One of the Santas steals your food. They basically all do different things, and they’re all naughty. We just laugh at the idea that Santa is this big cuddly, friendly chap. It’s like, uh-uh, don’t trust him. They’re all pretty mean, but they’ve got a sense of humour. They’re not vicious.
And Santa’s mum, she’s called Gryla and she’s basically a witch. She really wants you to misbehave, and she does a lot of things to tempt you. And there’s a big black cat, the same size as human beings, and he eats you if you don’t get anything new for Christmas. You have to have at least one pair of mittens or new shoes...
Isn’t that a bit scary if you’re a poor kid ?
I think it’s kind of good, ’cos in the old days when everyone was really poor, it meant that at least you knew you were going to get one new thing for Christmas, even if it was woollen socks or whatever.
And obviously, it’s 24 hour darkness for Christmas in Iceland and you’ve got northern lights and snow. It’s very Christmassy — you can’t really get any more Christmassy.
The only thing that hints at the weirdness widely attributed to her is this : Bjork believes in elves. Fairies too.
We think nature is a lot stronger than man, she explains, sipping a cappuccino at Vid Fjorubordid, a restaurant on the ocean that is virtually the only commercial enterprise in Stokkseyri, Iceland, a town so small that the road entering it has a sign of geometric symbols with a line through them, meaning "no town here." The road also has a waterfall with a rainbow over it and graffiti mowed into the hills, so you can see where the elf thing came from.
My family hunts half the food we eat. A relationship with things spiritual hasn’t gone away, Bjork says, in defense of elf-faith. In a lot of Western cities, they lost that and had to buy it again with meditation courses.
In fairness, despite the fact that Icelanders have a 99.9% literacy rate, most believe in elves. In fact, the government had to reroute a planned highway because it would have passed over elf territory. It appears that elves, while remaining hidden, somehow manage to hand out their maps.
The hard wheather of Iceland made people learn that nature is a thousand times stronger than men. For icelanders, ghosts are just natural beings. Not that I take gnomes serious, but I believe in them.
It wasn’t as bohemian as it sounds. They all had proper jobs. There was never any unemployment in Iceland until about two years ago. My mother made furniture at one point but she also worked in an office doing Computers. My father was a full time blues musician. Everybody worked. Everybody got up early. In Iceland, even the hippies are workaholics.
I come from Iceland, a society where people hunt all the time. I guess it must seem very primitive, but people don’t kill more than they need. No matter how you look at it, we are on this planet and we kill some things and we bring other things to life - that’s the name of the game. it’s a question of whether or not you do it with respect.
The people who went to Iceland were the Vikings. And they went because they couldn’t deal with authority in Norway. So they flew off into this mad ocean in a wooden boat which is pretty hardcore, North Atlantic in the year 800. And found this island full of snow. Yeaah !
Iceland is my little world, the village with my relatives and friends, people I love and people I hate. It’s a magical place. Our feeling for magic stems from out recent past ; until 50 years ago Icelanders were still living in the Middle Ages. Actually they still do. The average Icelander might now have a portable phone and a satellite antenna, but his soul still lives in the rural Iceland of the 1750’s. Even though I’ve felt quite misunderstood in Iceland, I’ve always found that quite fascinating.
En Islande, on ne dépend de personne, on se fait soi-même. Si ta voiture tombe en panne, tu la répares toute seule. Dans ma famille, on continue à se nourrir de chasse et de pêche. On est restés très proches de la nature.
Il y a peu de différence de température entre les saisons, mais il y a une énorme différence de luminosité. En été, la vie sociale est intense, mais en hiver, les gens se replient sur eux-mêmes et restent chez eux. J’aime cette alternance, je m’y retrouve.
Money just saves time. It means I can do more of the things I love to do and less of the things I hate to do. All my family are very hard working people. They’re electricians, carpenters, bricklayers. My mother always worked. Now, that I have some money, she doesn’t have to work but she does. She’s actually studying homeopathy, making her lifelong dream come true alter all these years. We don’t have the class system in Iceland but we were a working class type of family. Our money came from work. That’s what I’m used to, work.
If I didn’t have a job or any money tomorrow morning, I’d go down to the market and sell junk or whatever. Self-sufficiency. I make fun of because it’s pathetic being such a workaholic but it’s what I was brought up with. You have to learn how to manage. And if you have, you can manage. But it doesn’t mean that you stop working or that you change as a person. Not for Icelandic people.
Well, that’s a bit like Guy Fawkes night — fireworks and bonfires. Actually, people in Iceland have a world record for fireworks — they buy more per person than any other country. Everything just goes mad, and they all shoot it off at midnight. Iceland people are known to drink a lot and so the whole country gets drunk together for 24 hours.
I’ve done gigs in Iceland that have been ridiculous because people know you and when you’re singing, they’re shouting, Hey, you didn’t make your English degree ! Your uncle is fucking my niece !
I’m very religious, yes. But I have my own religion. In Iceland it doesn’t makes sense two people be in the same religion. It’s like have the same fingerprint.
I’ve got my own religion. Iceland sets a world-record. The United Nations asked people from all over the world a series of questions. Iceland stuck out on one thing. When we were asked what do we believe, 90% said, ’ourselves’. I think I’m in that group. If I get into trouble, there’s no God or Allah to sort me out. I have to do it myself.
The United Nations did a survey, some years ago, to a sample of people in all the countries in the world. They asked them 100 very basic questions. One was, ’what do you believe in ?’. Everybody, I mean 90 per cent of the universe, said ’Allah’, or ’God’ or ’The Virgin Mary’, or ’Buddha’, or whatever. In Iceland, they said ’myself’.
Another question was ’are you happy ?’. And people all over the world were like ’no, not yet’, or ’I used to be’, or something. But Iceland went, ’yes... of course... and fuck off’.
For me Icelandic is my instinct and English is me being clever. Icelandic is unconscious and English is conscious. And when I speak English, especially when I do interviews and stuff, I can very easily see myself from the outside and describe myself. But then again I would have to be pretty stupid not to have developed that thing, because I’ve done interviews now for 900 years. But it’s impossible for me to do interviews in Icelandic. I just listen to myself and I sound so fake and so terribly pretentious and so Little Miss Know-it-all, I just want to strangle myself. The Icelandic media is going bonkers because I do one interview there every five years...
I was brought up with nature, so it’s as normal to me and everyday as Times Square is for Manhattaners.
The stereotyped Icelandic person is someone who believes in elves and makes a concrete road that goes in a circle around an elf rock, not to upset the elves. But they still have a mobile telephone and a laptop. I’d like to say that I’m like that. Truthful to nature and truthful to technology.
