Two throughlines connected the disparate wonders of this year’s Iceland Airwaves, the country’s largest, and therefore most visible, music festival.
The first was the breadth of native musicianship on display, frequently matching – and sometimes outshining – the invited international acts. Sandwiched in-between time slots held by R&B darling Ravyn Lenae and electropop heatseekers Magdalena Bay, you could spot indie band superserious across the way at Iðno, pounding their guitars into submission. Actress and musician Elin Hall graced the Reykjavik Art Museum with a full band; between her stage presence and songwriting, deciding which was more captivating was difficult. At the top of Sunday’s schedule, lúpína filled the reverberant church hall of Fríkirkjan with her hypnotic take on Scandipop, receiving a standing ovation from the packed pews.
The second, by extension, is that enthusiasm, which wasn’t just palpable during the festival. Iceland may be a small country, and its ceiling might be rather low, but its support for its artists runs deep. It’s not just vocal; it’s via robust governmental policies and initiatives. Travel grants, educational programs, artist stipends, myriad smaller festivals, and a host of other opportunities help the country’s artists turn their creativity into a career – and benefit the country in the process.
Record in Iceland is one such program. The concept is simple: Employ the services of a recording studio in the country, submit the cost, and the government will subsidize 25% of it. Plenty of Iceland-based artists, from global superstars like Björk and Ben Frost to smaller acts like the aforementioned Hall, have received partial reimbursement for their projects, but it’s not just for them; anybody, local or international, can take advantage of the program.
Leifur Björnsson, Project Manager of Iceland Music, explains its impetus. “It’s built on a very similar initiative for the film industry,” he says. “Iceland is a very attractive place to shoot films.” It’s an understatement; the island’s striking landscapes – icy vistas, jagged basalt moguls, and ochre mounds of moss – have been featured in countless movies and television shows of all production budgets. According to Björnsson, the 35% subsidization offered for those productions has dramatically benefited the Icelandic government, boosting tourism and heightening the country’s profile on the world stage. “Now we have companies here that can facilitate productions of that caliber at the highest level of Hollywood productions,” he says. “It makes Iceland a very attractive place to visit as a destination.”
Based on the success of the film initiative, a small team of people with heavy experience in the music industry drafted a memo to the Icelandic Congress urging a similar program for audio recording. “What is actually needed for a program like that to get up on speed is that you have to run it through the highest level of government. Congress has to pass a law, so if your project fits the criteria of the program, the law says that they have to pay you back.”
Such a project might buckle under typical bureaucratic obstacles in a larger country, but the law passed relatively quickly. It helped that the film program worked so well, and audio productions—even orchestral recordings, which are among the most expensive and thus the best positioned to receive the percentage-based subsidization—are often far cheaper than those for film, making it a minimally risky proposition.
Of particular note, Björnsson points out, is Iceland’s geographical adjacency to North America and Europe. Having to fly out of the country is usually a hindrance for its native artists (“It’s more expensive for us to tour than, for example, bands in Europe,” he says, “because they’re on the mainland, they can just take a train to the gig”). However, for those already looking to record overseas, that adjacency is convenient. “It makes a massive difference if you’re working in Los Angeles, for instance, to work with us as opposed to somewhere like Eastern Europe, which is three hours plus in travel. You’re able to turn it around more quickly, which is what you need.”
However, while Record in Iceland is at least partly devoted to attracting overseas recording artists, it primarily aims to benefit those who already live in the country. Among those pushing for the program, Bjornsson mentions, was Iceland Music’s director María Rut Reynisdottír, who had spent years prior to the role as the head of Reykjavik’s Cultural Office. She desired to see local artists benefit from the program, and that personally spurred her motivation.
“That was the heart of the project, and that’s sort of the starting point,” she says. She refers to a common custom from the pre-streaming days when Icelandic labels would typically help fund artists for their projects. When streaming and the Internet fundamentally changed the industry, diminishing those labels’ importance (and thus the resources), Reynisdottír felt that the government should step in and assist.
“It, of course, works to strengthen the studios and the musicians and producers and all of that,” she says. “But it’s not only for people coming from abroad to record in Iceland. It’s for you guys!” She’s using the royal “you”, referring to the swathes of musicians on Iceland Airwaves’ lineup and those just starting out. “We’ve got this pot of money. Let’s use it! Let’s not leave it empty.”
It’s a sentiment that’s entirely unfamiliar to American ears. In 2023, the same year of the Icelandic Music Center’s founding (with a proposed total of 600,000,000 ISK, or roughly $4,360,000, for its 2023-2025 projects), the USA’s National Endowment of the Arts received $226,000,000. This is a comparative king’s sum, except it makes up roughly 0.03% of the government’s budget, and about 5% of it was allocated to a few thousand music-based grants across its 50 states.
That money is constantly in danger of evaporating, with the country’s conservative sect more than willing to slash the fund for its potential to “waste” tax dollars on anti-American propaganda and sacrilegious projects. There are additional, if meager, programs that exist on a state-by-state basis (Björnsson, for example, points out a similar audio recording initiative in Louisiana). However, it’s no wonder the only successful American acts of the recent past are those whose personal coffers or inherited connections allow them to take the chance.
It is, of course, the global influence of America’s music industry that disincentivizes its government from feeling the need to provide aid. Like many diminutive countries on the world stage, Iceland doesn’t have that infrastructure. Björnsson recalls, as a musician in acts like Low Roar, having to relocate to the US to work with managers, booking agents, and PR firms. To him, a program like Record in Iceland is a step towards establishing that kind of framework locally.
Yet, it’s worth being careful about what you wish for. As inchoate as Iceland’s local music industry is, it also allows its members to resist tamping down their creativity in service of it. “The kids here, they’re not so concerned about business. They’re not really going after terrestrial radio play or signing with majors. There’s just this community here: creating their art and maybe not worrying so much about making it a career.”
In fact, its small size makes Iceland’s music scene unique and keeps its members so tightly connected. “The community here is a beautiful thing. Everyone is just one degree of separation away. You can make phone calls to pretty much anybody, and things happen super fast. You can have an idea, and it can happen on the same day.”
That was evident across the weekend of Iceland Airwaves; you’d see one musician, like drummer Sólrún Mjöll Kjartansdóttir or DJ Sveinbjörn Thorarensen (aka Hermigervill), pop up across several sets. Across the fest’s four days, you could spot those same performers attending the sets of others, cheering them on and congratulating them afterward, the scent of competition or of striving nonexistent. As if to prove his point, Björnsson would helm the keyboards behind Klemens Engelsson later that night, as much a participator as a facilitator.
“It’s a double-edged sword, the lack of music industry infrastructure here,” he acknowledges. “But the Record in Iceland program, I think it’s a step in the right direction. We’d be able to grow talent longer, and keep more of the knowledge and experience here within the island.”