In a sense, there is something quite remarkable about the publication of a scholarly anthology devoted to the music of a small island nation with the miniscule population of 350,000 people. In another sense, the appearance of such an anthology in 2019 is not at all surprising. Ever since the international breakthrough of the Sugarcubes and Björk in the late 1980s, musical ears have been pointed northwards. During the 2000s, the post-rock band Sigur Rós and electronica groups múm and Gus Gus spearheaded a growing export of Icelandic indie music that reached its peak in the 2010s, with artists such as Ólafur Arnalds and Of Monsters and Men receiving a wealth of attention from international music press. In journalistic features, books, and documentaries, we have witnessed an explosion of interest in cultural expressions emanating from the island. Appearing on the back of this development, one of the prime achievements of the considered and critical writings in Sounds Icelandic is to cut through the noise and ‘set the record straight’. While the previous literature was frequently characterized by romanticist nature-imagery and a colonialist sense of ‘discovery’, such exoticist language is refreshingly absent here.
Sounds Icelandic presents 13 chapters by Icelandic and non-Icelandic authors, covering a wide variety of musical practices in the 20th and 21st centuries: from the rímur chant tradition to Iceland's popular music mainstream and its unique relationship to the Eurovision Song Contest. The editors have brought together quality scholarship on aspects of music-making in Icelandic society that have previously existed below the radar. The island's most famous stars, Björk and the band Sigur Rós, each get one chapter, but these are the two final chapters tucked away in the back of the book: clearly, there are more pressing issues to illuminate.
The first section of the book is the strongest one, and consists of three chapters that together explore the role of tradition, heritage and senses of history in musical struggles to define the nation state on the margins of Europe. The opening chapter, by Kimberly Cannady and Kristín Loftsdóttir, is a historical case study of the role of symphonic music during the 1930 Alþingishátið (‘Parliament Festival’) organised to celebrate the 1000th anniversary of the founding of Iceland's ancient parliament. At the time, the festival was seen by many as the symbolic entry of Iceland into the fold of modern European nations, and it was accompanied by lively debates on the nation's musical heritage. Drawing on the two authors’ combined expertise in anthropology and historical ethnomusicology, the chapter makes important contributions to the emerging conversation on music in the postcolonial North Atlantic. Cannady and Loftsdóttir see the musical activities of the period as structured by the desire to be recognised as part of the ‘civilized’ nations of Europe, which prompted the embrace of specific musical styles and the establishment of institutions such as a symphony orchestra. Local, vernacular musical elements were viewed as ‘primitive’ and consequently ill-suited to the aspiration of mounting a modern nation.
The following chapter, by Ragnheiður Ólafsdóttir and Nicola Dibben, tackles the concept of ‘folk music’ head on in an engaging discussion of rímur and their changing role in Icelandic society. Rímur (singular ríma) are a form of intoned, epic poetry that have existed in Iceland for six centuries. Documented in written manuscripts dating back to 1380, rímur were long considered part of the island's literary heritage, and not music. The orally transmitted melodies, and the accompanying performance aspects of chanting (kveða) received less attention. Ólafsdóttir and Dibben demonstrate an important shift as the tradition moved from rural areas and into urban Reykjavík, where the Iðunn Society of Intoners and Versifiers (Kveðamannafélagið Iðunn) was established in 1929 with the intention of ‘saving’ the tradition (but in effect changed it).
Árni Heimir Ingólfsson continues the discussion of the ideologies that govern the discourse on folk music in Iceland, by focusing on the emergence of a national style in the music of Jón Leifs (1899–1968). In recent decades, Leifs has been recognised for his unique stylistic contributions to mid-century European classical music. His works, many of them unperformed in the composer's own lifetime, are now being heard in concert halls around the world, partly as a result of the scholarly activities of Ingólfsson. In his chapter for this anthology, the foremost expert on Leifs draws on his decades-long research into the composer's music to present a rich musicological view of Leifs’ struggle to craft his musical idiom in the 1920s and 1930s by incorporating elements from rímur as well as the tradition of tvísöngur (‘twin-song’, a form of two-part harmony in parallel fifths).
Íngolfsson's is the only chapter to deal with classical music: the lion's share of the anthology focuses on the popular music practices on the island in notable chapters by Nick Prior, Sarah Baker, Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen and Þorbjörg Daphne Hall. Prior's chapter, ‘Sociality, Spatiality and Circulation: Popular Music Scenes in Reykjavík’, extends the work of Will Straw with exemplary conceptual rigour, providing new ways to think about music-making in and through the urban geography of downtown Reykjavík, and simultaneously de-mystifying musical life in this mythic city.
For many listeners and music fans around the world, notions of ‘Icelandic music’ are largely equated with a particular grouping of indie pop/rock artists living and working in Reykjavík in the mid-2000s. Facilitated by the patterns of sociality, spatiality and circulation described by Prior, this particular generation of independent musicians in the Icelandic capital came to define a musical style and aesthetic sensibility known as krútt. The term krútt (meaning ‘cute’ or ‘sweet’ in a childlike way) is scrutinised by Hall, who traces the origins of the term and its subsequent solidification into a genre label. Hall's chapter is excellently paired with John Richardson's chapter, in which the author delves into the aesthetics that underpin the diverse musical expressions of krútt artists including Sigur Rós and múm. Richardson's discussion of surrealist aesthetics is particularly noteworthy, covering a topic that holds unique prominence in Icelandic literary, musical, and art history over the past 50 years. Richardson's close readings lead to broader observations on history and geopolitics, displaying a willingness to interpret musical expression in light of social and political tensions in Iceland. Such a willingness is hard to come by in the book: for instance, the devastating economic crash of 2008 and its societal after-effects are hardly mentioned throughout the volume.
During the past three decades, the relationship between Iceland and the rest of the world has been mediated by music in significant ways. In 1986, before the Sugarcubes and Björk put Icelandic popular music – and Iceland itself – on the map, 120,000 tourists visited Iceland annually. At the time of this writing, the nation is struggling to handle 2 million visitors a year, or more than five times the native population (Statistics Iceland). Over the course of such tumultuous developments, music has remained the primary cultural activity announcing Iceland's presence to the world and packaging images of the nation for export. Sounds Icelandic performs a tight circumscription of the island itself, avoiding these important questions regarding Iceland in the world and the world in Iceland. As a result, the anthology misses out on a great opportunity to participate in conversations on music, globalisation and tourism, for which Iceland would be an ideal case study.
Sounds Icelandic appears in the midst of burgeoning scholarly interest in music of the Nordic region (Holt and Kärjä Reference Holt and Kärjä2017; Howell Reference Howell2019). In the face of such regionalism, the anthology makes a strong case for the study of Icelandic music on its own terms, mapping a range of musical activities on the island that have previously garnered little attention. At no point in the volume do any of the authors speak to the discourse on the Nordic (or variations of nordicness, nordic sound, etc.), which is both refreshing and perhaps unfortunate, as it avoids the opportunity to address, nuance or critique Nordic musical regionalism from the perspective of its North Atlantic outpost.
As the first scholarly anthology on music in Iceland, Sounds Icelandic is sure to become an invaluable teaching resource, as well as a reference work for future research.
