Phot-o' the Day: Walking on Skólavörðustígur toward Hallgrimskirkja; Reykjavik, Iceland

This is the view walking up Skólavörðustígur in downtown Reykjavik, Iceland. (Yes, I did cut-and-paste that street name from Google maps. There is no way my English language keyboard could do even half the letters in that word. And that's one single street name.) At the end of Skólavörðustígur, and in the center of the picture, is the ultra-modern Hallgrimskirkja, the "kirkja" at the end being the Icelandic word for "church," and the "Hallgrims" at the front referring to an Icelandic poet of that name. It is nominally a "cathedral," but I'm not sure how religious it really is.

Reykjavik is a small town, as European capitals go. The population of the city is a little more than 120,000, which means than it is home to about one-third of the total population of Iceland. So, by Icelandic standards, it is a megalopolis.

Visited June 2016.

From High Atop Hallgrimskirkja

Hallgrimskirkja

Hallgrimskirkja is a Reykjavik landmark.  It is visible from all over central Reykjavik due to the fact that it is (a) rather tall, and (b) emplaced on a rather high point in an otherwise flat (ish) Reykjavik.  So it's like a tall kid standing on a chair for the class photo.  The combined effect is to overwhelm the surrounding environment.

The most dramatic view is the one you see walking up Skólavörðustígur.  I don't know how to pronounce that.  I don't have a clue how to render using only the alphabet we use in the English-speaking world.  I cut and pasted that from Google maps.

When you get close, the shape of the exterior (frontal view) resembles that of a large church pipe organ.

I'm guessing that observation is not original and, with this being a church, the effect was intentional.

And it does have large pipe organ.

It is a Lutheran parish church, still.  So we have saints in statue form.

It also had this interesting art piece hanging on the back wall.  I know fish are fraught with Christian symbolism.

But this does not look particularly religious to me.  Cool, yes.  Way cool, in fact.  Religious?  Christian religious?  Not so much.

The main attracting of Hallgrimskata is the tower.  An elevator ride to the top costs a mere 900 krona, about eight U.S. dollars.  We stood in line for the elevator and did not see that there was a charge for the elevator until we got to the front of the line.  There was a very small sign telling us to go to the nearby gift shop to buy tickets.  Other people also would not have seen the sign until they got close to the elevator, as we saw other people doing what we were doing:  standing in line, getting out of line and walking to the gift shop, and coming back with tickets in hand.

I thought about pretending I did not see the sign and seeing what happened when I got to the tower summit, but after the notorious Salvador Brasil Flash Photography Incident(TM) in 1997,* I don't play games with the rules inside a church I'm visiting.

Tickets bought and a ride to the top of the tower and these were the views from the summit:

This was the northwesterly view, down Skólavörðustígur.

This was the northeasterly view.  The Hotel Skuggi would be somewhere in this.

And this was the view to the southwest.

This view looks out to the old Reykjavik airport, which is sort of like Reykjavik's Houston-Hobby or Dallas Love Field.  It's the little domestic-only airport that Southwest would use if it flew around Iceland.

* Footnote:  The notorious Salvador Brasil Flash Photography Incident(TM) of 1997, if I've not mentioned in blog posts past, happened back in the good ol' days of film photography.  I was in a brief ornate old church, São Francisco church in the historic Pelourinho district of Salvador.  Pardon me if you've heard this one before. But, essentially, I was in a beautiful old church, by myself, no one around, snapping pictures. I saw a sign that even with my limited Portuguese I understood to mean "no flash photography." Well, no one was around. I could feign ignorance if asked. So I continued to snap pictures with a flash. No one ever did ask me to stop. Fast forward to end of the trip. I get home. Take the five rolls of film I shot in Brazil to get developed (remember that!).  One of the rolls got ruined. The one I shot in Salvador.  And that roll was not ruined UNTIL THE EXACT POINT I tool pictures in São Francisco church. And that is why I always follow the rules in churches.

Icelandic Music Walking Tour

Arnar at the Hitt Húsið.
What does that mean?  Read on.

I think that a great way to get to know a new city is to take one of those organized "walking tours."  Sometimes, some places, they are free.  Sometimes they cost money.  But they're usually a bargain regardless of the price.  And the walking tours are even more fun when they are organized around a theme.  See, e.g., Spanish Civil War Tour, Barcelona, Spain (Sept. 24, 2015).

So which Reykjavik walking tour would be right for me?  I chose the Reyjavik Music Walk, a 90-minute walk that's all about the Icelandic music scene.  We did not meet Björk, but we did get to meet a member of the Icelandic Parliament who once upon a time was a member of an Icelandic power pop band Ske.

The host of the tour was Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen, who is a music scholar rather than a working musician.

The tour started in front of the Harpa, the premier concert hall in Iceland.  It's architecturally weird, with these glass hexagonal shapes that look like a wasp's nest.  Except there are no wasps in Iceland.

Off we went past the harbor.

We got to see the longest-running rail line in Iceland.  It appears to be about 30 feet in length.  It's the longest running rail line because there are no trains in Iceland.  This is the remnant left over from when they learned the lesson that rail doesn't work on a sparsely populated island nation.

We then turned to the Björk part of the tour.

A lobster restaurant is the Björk part of the tour?  It is in that building that the Sugarcubes first starting gigging in Reykjavik.  Arnar, our tour guide, was outraged absolutely outraged that the sign said "Lobster & Stuff," when there is a famous Sugarcubes's lyric that references "Lobsters & Fame."  Björk's old apartment across the street was pointed out.

I snapped a picture of this house while walking.  Does it have a connection to Icelandic music, other than maybe a resident once playing a Sugarcubes' CD?  I don't remember.  I can't recall.

Next we reached Hitt Húsið, mentioned in the teaser up top.  This is the place where they hold Musiktilraunir, an annual contest for the best young musician(s) in Iceland.

And who won in 2010?  Those crazy young kids in the Icelandic pop band Of Monsters and Men.  Nice kids from the Reykjavik suburbs.  In describing this band's place in the otherwise quirky Icelandic scene, a member of the band once said, "We're not normal because we're normal."  Yeah.  Learned that on the tour.

This square in downtown Reykjavik was the center of the Icelandic punk scene, when punk hit Iceland about 10 years after it did the rest of the world.  The punks called their home square "Not So Cool Square."  I'm guessing "not so cool" because of the astro-turf, and worn-out astro-turf at that.

We then reached the stone building ahead, which is the old Icelandic Parliament building.  It was in this neighborhood we had a chance meeting with an actual Icelandic musician.  And Icelandic Member of Parliament, one and the same:  Guðmundur Steingrímsson.  Formerly of the Icelandic power pop band Ske (pronounced "skyur"), a band that Arnar's description made sound like Red Hot Chili Peppers, only without the nudity.

I know what you're now thinking:  When are we going to get to the Sigur Rós part of the tour?  Well, for that we have to go to church.

Specifically, to Fríkirkjan.  It was at this church, in the early Aughts, where the band played a concert packed with record label executives.  And thus the legend of Sigur Rós soon went global.

I snapped this picture of an onion-domed house because I thought it was cool (unlike, say, a park covered in worn astro-turf).  Maybe an homage to Boris Spassky?  Doubt it.  Nobody homages the losers.

The tour ended at a record store on this street.  Where they did not have any copies of either Ske CD.  I totally would have bought me a souvenir copy of "Life, Death, Happiness and Stuff" if they had one.

Up at the end of that road, at the top of the hill, is the famous Reykjavik landmark Hallgrimskirkja.  But that's another post.