by Tore Storvold (Music 780.949 Sto)
For such a small country — the most recent population estimates have the entire island at around 375,000 residents — Iceland has had many successful musical artists over time, such as the Sugarcubes, Bjork, mum, and Sigur Ros. And these artists have collectively served as a kind of cultural ambassador for Iceland, shaping perceptions about the country for the rest of the world through their music. The music press has long argued that there is a bit of an “Icelandic sound” that can be detected in many of the artists’ work who come from the country, a palpable kind of mystery and wonder that’s present in so much of their music regardless of genre considerations. A new book called Dissonant Landscapes: Music, Nature and the Performance of Iceland by Tore Storvold explores this phenomenon, and looks for reasons why it might (or might not) be so.
As you might have guessed by the
book’s title, Storvold’s inquiry explores the relationship between the music of
Iceland and its unusual and spectacular natural environment. He digs right into
this point in his introduction: while talking about a recent music video by the
band Kaleo, which was filmed in front of a glacier, he reflects that “Iceland,
in the contemporary cultural imagination, is defined by two entities: nature
and music.” He goes on to point out that most international reviews of
Icelandic musicians have related their music to the stunning landscapes around
them. But Storvold thinks this relationship is more complex: “Dissonant Landscapes insists that this link is
neither straightforward nor natural; it is rather the result of a long history
of images and imaginings of the Icelandic nation that have been activated and
repurposed in specific instances of contemporary music.” The book, then, will
explore the relationship from the musical perspective, looking at Icelandic
musical instances that both support this perceived link as well as some that
challenge it.
Storvold points to the Sugarcubes
1988 song “Birthday” and its accompanying music video as the start of the music
press pushing the Iceland music and nature connection. While their video was
intended to poke fun at the idea of their native country as being an exotic
place, the international music press persisted in presenting the band and their
country as an exotic kind of wonderland nonetheless. This kind of profiling of
Icelandic artists continued into the 90s and beyond, and arguably became even
more emphasized after Iceland’s economic crisis of 2008, after which the
country itself played to these kinds of tropes in hopes of increasing revenue
through tourism.
After his detailed introduction,
Storvold starts looking into broader strokes of social and political change
over the last century or so. As one might expect, Icelandic cultural identity
has always been a complex tussle between wanting to appear “cultured” in a
European sense while retaining a unique national identity and independent
spirit. Iceland’s moment on the international economic stage in the early 2000s
was ended by the collapse of its major banks in the financial crisis of 2008,
and the many forms of insecurity in the lives of Icelanders after this led many
to cling to their national identity during the slow recovery. You could say
this kind of event is the perfect setup for melancholy music regardless of time
or place, but with melancholy often comes nostalgia. Artists such as Mugison, for
example, went from writing quirky pop rock somewhat reminiscent of artists like
Beck to music that referenced rural dances of his youth, with lyrics evoking
pastoral landscapes. Storvold also points out that Iceland’s musicians have
sometimes responded to projects that have potential to cause ecological damage
with protests in the form of songs or performances, using the Karahnjukar Power
Plant as an example. In this situation, artist Bjork responded with a song, and
the band Sigur Ros responded with a performance in an area that was to be
flooded to turn into a dam area for the new hydroelectric plant. These are
musical responses to the terrain of Iceland in their way, but artists have
taken similar artistic measures against similar projects around the world, of
course.
Next, Storvold explores the
historical notion of borealism as a kind of cultural underpinning to thoughts
about Iceland among Europeans. For those who aren’t familiar, this idea comes
from the latin “boreas,” or “North,” and it’s an analogous concept to
“orientalism,” or the way that those in the Western parts of the world have
long thought of the East as a kind of mythological or exotic place. As
mentioned earlier, music journalists have long applied this kind of thinking to
their coverage of musicians from Iceland, but Storvold raises the issue to
point out that it’s part of a long-standing practice among European culture to
think of Iceland and Scandinavia as “other” places, surely filled with
mysterious landscapes and people. More broadly, a kind of exotica is often
applied to thinking of islands: Storvold refers to them as a category of
liminal spaces. From these perspectives, it’s somewhat easier to separate music
from landscape — the landscape of Iceland has long been thought of as exotic in
various capacities, and by extension those who feel that way about it find it
easy to apply similar feelings to music that is a product of its inhabitants.
The next part of
the book goes into more depth about the tourism industry in Iceland, which in
recent years has chosen to capitalize on the exotic or mythological sentiments
from outsiders regarding the country in hopes of turning them into a profitable
brand. He compares this process to the development of a kind of “Nordic noir”
television style, exemplified by television programming like “Trapped.” The
mysterious, sparse landscapes featured on the show, combined with the striking
original music written for it, have created another avenue for the music of
Iceland to become associated with the mysterious and unexplored.
But sometimes the association
between the music and environment of Iceland is fairly applied. The next
section discusses the work of composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir and the band Sigur
Ros, both of whom actually do engage consciously with the landscapes and
resources of Iceland in their music. As two of the most famous musical exports
from the country, both of whom create music that truly does exist in a unique,
almost magical kind of sonic space, here we find some support for the music/landscape
relationship, at least on the individual level of these artists.
On the whole, this is a fascinating
look at the music of a country many of us know primarily through the nature
tropes discussed in this book. You’re likely to bump into some great musicians
in Dissonant Landscapes that you may not have heard
before, too, which is always one of my favorite things about good music books.
(If you enjoy this, you may also
wish to try The Art and Music of Iceland by Jennifer Verdolin
(available on Hoopla) or A Seat at the Table: Interviews With Women on the Front Line of
Music by Amy Raphael.)
( publisher’s official Dissonant Landscapes web site ) | ( official Tore
Storvold staff page at the Norwegian University of Science and
Technology )
Recommended
by Scott S.
Polley Music Library
Have you read or listened to
this one? What did you think? Did you find this review helpful?
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