Mazen Maarouf never thought that he would leave Lebanon forever. That changed in November 2011, when it became clear that his future there was on limited time. He left Beirut for Reykjavík as an International Cities of Refuge Network (ICORN) ‘writer in refuge,’ under which he was offered a home and a two-year lease on a future.

[Read more...]

Australian artist Guido Van Helten rides up a construction lift at Seljavegur 2 to meet his canvas. The wall he paints is old and slightly corroded, two stories high and the west facing part of a building that once used to be a theatre but is now an industrial workspace. With his can of Spanish Montana brand spray paint, he creates the outline of a grey eye, and the image of a woman’s face, her vintage dress and the man she dances with begin to blossom in proportion to it. If a static image can be said to look fluid, Guido’s murals appear to swoop and fall with each soft layer of spray paint he adds, bringing the wall and his photo-inspired works to life.

[Read more...]

You’re more likely to spot the 2D version of 29-year old Emil Guðmundsson in Reykjavík than the man himself. The co-owner of Kría Cycles and reluctant model spends most of his free time mapping new bike trails in the Icelandic countryside, even in the winter.
“I don’t see myself as a model,” he says, “I see myself as a cyclist and bike shop owner.”

[Read more...]

It takes a keen eye and a bold character to see a sweater as “sassy.” It takes scissors, a tapestry needle, some safety pins, waste yarn and eight simple steps to see a sassy sweater as sassy sweater pants. “Swants,” as they’ve been affectionately dubbed by their creator, 25-year-old knitting guru Stephen West, are both an essential article of clothing and a verb. Swants are a sweater, flipped upside down with your legs in the sleeves and a bit of cutting and stitching to tailor them into fitted pants. The act of making swants is “swantsing” and when you’ve got them on your gams it’s time to do Stephen’s “swants dance.”

[Read More...]

In order to curb the disgusting amount of holiday cheer you all have, we wanted to get some perspective from the grumpiest person in Reykjavík. We put out the call for Grumps on Facebook and you delivered us a familiar friend: 30-year-old Malcolm Kenneth Fraser, from Lille, France, who has lived in Iceland for the past seven years. Below are his thoughts on Christmas, New Years and what `grumpy’ really means.

[Read more...]

The temperature outside hovered around 5°C, but inside the greenhouses that dot the South Iceland town of Hveragerði, you can taste the humidity. A hotbed of geothermal activity located on a 5,000-year-old lava field, the town has espoused the title ‘hot springs capital of the world.’ I had come to Hveragerði to visit one greenhouse in particular, a 1,100-square-metre tropical greenhouse and the largest banana farm in Europe outside of the Canary Islands. I had come to Hveragerði in pursuit of the elusive Icelandic banana.

[Read more...]