At the protests in down town Reykjavík last saturday a person climbed up onto the parliaments roof to raise the Bonus flag. A symbol for Iceland’s international business hybris. In the introduction to Bonus Poetry on this web I wrote this last year: “Bonus is Iceland’s largest supermarketchain. It has an appealing logo, a pink grinning pig on yellow background. Many people think the logo should become our national flag. Starting with Bonus an empire emerged: Baugur group, now owning half of UKs retail stores and the crown jewel of the Danish merchant empire: Magazine du Nord.” So now you see how it would look like as a national flag.
En bok står i centrum i den ekonomiska kraschens Island: Andri Snær Magnasons “Draumalandið”. Den handlar om en liten nations självbild och myter. Mikael Löfgren träffar en poet med milda ögon som blev en politisk succéförfattare. Read the rest of this entry »
Dreamland – a feature length documentary will soon be released. The choices of a nation, corporations, democracy and perhaps the secret to our economic failure. Thorfinnur Gudnason and Andri Snær Magnason have been working on this project since 2006 – Produced by Ground Control Productions.
På en blå planet langt ute i verdensrommet lever det kun barn. De kan selv bestemme når de vil leke og når de vil legge seg. En dag lander det en mystisk mann. Han kommer med en rekke uimotståelige tilbud til barna, som skal gjøre livene deres mye enklere og lykkeligere. Blant annet spikrer han fast solen så det alltid er lyst og lærer dem å fly ved å børste støvet av sommerfuglenes vinger. Og alt han krever til gjengjeld er en bitteliten del av ungdomsfølelsen i barnas hjerter. Read the rest of this entry »
It is still possible to buy minke whale sashimi or lobster tails with wasabi in Reykjavik’s better restaurants. But conspicuous consumption in crisis-hit Iceland is being replaced by a newfound parsimony in the form of blodmör black pudding.
“We are starting to eat blood sausages again – things our grandmothers made,” says Andri Snaer Magnason, one of the country’s leading novelists. “It reminds us of a generation that came through a crisis with a strong set of values and helps us realise that these were the real values.” Read the rest of this entry »
