Tore Størvold's engaging study of Iceland's musical culture interrogates the interwoven identities of a nation, its geography, its ecology and its music. It's a book that successfully navigates scholarly close-readings of musical material in a variety of idioms while incorporating important issues relating to environmentalism and the climate crisis.
Dissonant Landscapes uncovers the origins of the peculiar ‘Icelandicness’ in Icelandic music. Sigur Rós, Jóhann Jóhannsson, Ólafur Arnalds, Anna Þorvaldsdóttir, and yes, Björk: all are examined closely, often with an audio-visual sensibility that acknowledges the diverse media through which the music, its branding and possible meanings, are communicated. Other, less globally impactful figures, like the late-Romantic composer Sigfús Einarsson and the singer-songwriter Mugison are given equally close attention.
The core of the arguments presented here is that most listeners can find an intangible ‘something’ in common with the artists listed above, but it's not always an obviously musical thread, since they are clearly rather divergent in the music they produce. What ‘it’ is exactly that connects them is difficult to define without coming back to Iceland itself – its landscape, its climate, and its mythology.
What is this elusive quality, where does it come from, and what are its effects? Størvold's analysis unpacks the complexity of the issue, unmasking the efforts of promoters and labels to associate Icelandic music-making of various kinds with a mythical ‘borealist’ branding – ‘the exotic imaginary of the North’ (p. 12) – but also interrogating the justifications and positive uses of such a process.
Størvold shows how much of this music is linked to the geology and geography of Iceland (and the problematic concept of ‘wilderness’) either directly – in the cases of artists performing in rural locations as part of environmental protests against industrial projects, or songs and lyrics that evoke places and natural phenomena – or through associations that are made post factum by promoters in marketing materials, or indeed by journalists and academics. The author finds a surprising number of examples, either recent or going back several decades, of pieces in the music press that clumsily utilise ‘convoluted ideas’ (p. 6) about Icelandic landscape or ecology. Journalists sometimes make the physical appearance of the artists themselves more relevant than it needs to be, like the ‘elfin’ facial features that have been inexorably part of Björk's media persona since her early work with The Sugarcubes. We've all read these articles, which naturally grasp at clearly identifying elements of the artist or their heritage that initially work well as soundbites and hooks for journalistic impact but can be reductive and claustrophobic for the musicians themselves. Størvold's critical stance on this is refreshing, but his work nuances it with the understanding that sometimes the musicians partake willingly in the process and perpetuate it.
An example given is Björk's ‘Aurora’ from the astonishing Vespertine (2001), which uses the sound of footsteps in the snow as part of its sparkling, wintery soundscape. The song, which has, as Storvold notes, attracted the attention of others for its overtly ‘borealist’ approach, testifies to the fact that ‘Icelandicness’ is often a conscious decision for Icelandic musicians. In contrast, the chapter on Þorvaldsdóttir assesses the ecological aspects of her music which demonstrate a less direct branding with distinct cultural tropes of the kind that might be possible in more pop-oriented material, but nonetheless works with the relationship of human beings to our natural surroundings.
Dissonant Landscapes has a novelist's sense of how to engage the reader, frequently opening chapters with vivid descriptions of places or moments experienced during the course of the research. The material often incorporates valuable historical information such as a description of the impact of the Laki eruption in 1783, which had a profound effect on the people of Iceland and its artists. Additionally, passages about the economic trajectory of Iceland during the last few decades, including exploration of some highly controversial decisions by governments keen to monetise Iceland's natural resources at the expense of cherished landscapes, adds contextual rigour and always reads as directly relevant to the works under discussion.
An exciting contribution to ecomusicological research, Dissonant Landscapes finds in Iceland ‘a site that holds the potential for productive reflection on issues raised by the Anthropocene debate and its relationship the study of musical aesthetics’ (p. 114). The image of Iceland, as projected in either the works themselves or in the process of their promotion and consumption, is of a ‘mythical land of fire and ice’ (p. 66), a montage of imagery that fits neatly into climate change discourse.
The book made me think of certain other distinctive cultural narratives, particularly that of Ireland, whose music likewise seems to suffer and benefit in equal measure from such a stubborn association with its history, politics and geography: locked into a relationship with a traumatised past and a partly imagined national brand. So, while on the surface this book on Icelandic music is a specialised examination of one country's musical output, its findings can open up a range of thoughts and questions that pertain to music-making in other cultures. Perhaps, indeed, a drawback of the book is that more could have been done to connect this study of Iceland to a greater body of research that might have explored comparable examples of nations or cultures and their global musical myth-making. Edward Said is referenced in passing in order to show that ‘borealism’ and its process are akin to those outlined in his Orientalism (Reference Said1978). This interesting avenue of thought deserved more attention and unpacking here. Nonetheless, Dissonant Landscapes contributes valuable insights into eco- and ethnomusicological discourses, music industry scholarship and the act of listening to Icelandic music from a distance, and delivers these with clarity and style.
