Music and Landscape in Iceland

• Main Author: Mitchell, Tony
• Other Authors: Holt, Fabian, Kärjä, Antti-Ville
• Format: Book
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 2017
• Subjects: Kárahnjúkar; Iceland
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190603908.013.8

This chapter brings much nuance to the constant representation of Icelandic music through landscape, seascape, and icescape, drawing from longitudinal field research and interdisciplinary cultural research on landscape. The narratives of landscape in Iceland have multiple dimensions, including national identity, ecology, and cultural imagination, and they are culturally and politically complex. The main examples are two Icelandic films: The 2009 documentary Draumlandið (Dreamland) about the Kárahnjúkar Hydropower Project and its environmental impact, the 2003 feature film Nói Albínói (Nói the Albino), and the films of Friðrik Þór Friðriksson. These are discussed in reference to the edited volume of essays on Icelandic landscape Conversations with Landscape (2010) and Kristin Shranmm’s concept of Borealism (2011) as it applies to Icelandic music and cinema.