Saturday night in Reykjavik, the final night of the Island Airwaves and Mexican singer-songwriter festival. Silvana Estrada plays to a stunned audience at the Reykjavik Art Museum. Accompanied by a string quartet, her energetic guitar playing combined with her high-pitched voice—even more powerful than on the recording—make the vast hall's domed, tiered main room feel tiny and its occupants visible and vulnerable.
I sobbing.
Many of Estrada's songs are taken primarily from her 2025 album. Gentle rains will comeabout grief, but I can't even understand the lyrics (entirely Spanish); something else, something that was already changing in me even before her speech, turned my solid exterior into ruins. My plates shifted; hot tears, my molten insides, oozing from the cracks. And I'm not the only one: when I turn around, four of my group of six friends, all of whom have been here since Wednesday, are red-eyed and in tears.
Four days in Iceland revealed us.
Photo: Silvana Estrada, author: Aron Gestsson
Since 1999, when founding sponsor Icelandair allowed the festival to be held in one of its hangars, Iceland Airwaves has been bringing musicians from all over the world to Iceland and Icelandic music to the world. The list of international names who have taken part in the festival is huge – Björk, Sufjan Stevens, Robyn and TV on the Radio, to name just a few – but over the years the focus of the festival has shifted towards identifying local talent.
That's not to say international artists aren't still shining: Kenya Grace's cover of La Roux's “In for the Kill” and her own song “Strangers” were some of Friday's most memorable moments; Toronto's own I'm Gray (pictured above) is an absolute virtuoso on Saturday night, wielding dual guitar and bass, breathing expressive, electric life into hit after hit this year. TO ME; and I can't say enough about Silvana Estrada, who is a must-see the next time she comes to your city.
However, it is Icelandic artists who provide the central musical component of this year's festival. Singer and guitarist with a smoky voice that leans toward electronica. RACHEL appears several times throughout my festival experience, delivering stunning renditions of “always” and “11:11” that helped her win Island Airwaves' annual Plus Award (for artists deemed ready to make the international leap).
On Thursday night, electronic duo CYBER perform an energized synthpop set at the Art Museum, while Olof Arnalds performs a slew of Joanna Newsom-style meditative ballads for a captivated crowd at Frikirkján Church. DJ from Iceland exhausted delivers a heavy, restless set of Richard D. James-style drum and bass to a packed Gaukurinn in one of the best sets of the festival on Friday. Synth rapper Alaska1867, Iceland's answer to PinkPantheress, fills the room with noise again the next night with “ChatGPT.”
Iceland excels when it comes to cultural exports (the entire country's population only recently surpassed 400,000), and it's tempting to cite some otherworldly Icelandic magic as the reason – but that would be lazy and untrue. Spend at least a few days there, listening to the right people, and you'll discover that the source of Iceland's incredible creativity isn't really a secret at all: it's just communityand you were immersed in it the whole time.
We've been welcomed into Reykjavík's music venues – eight of which are hosting this year's festival – but felt at home in dozens of other places: local venue MENGI, which hosts a mid-afternoon rehearsal for stalwarts of the Icelandic múm music scene; in the recording studio of multi-instrumentalist Ólafur Arnalds to watch an incredibly intimate performance by RAKEL; to the home of Arnie Hjorvar, bassist for the band Vaccines, who hosts daytime performances from his warmly lit apartment overlooking the city's famous Rainbow Road. We were welcomed into Reykjavik Art Museum Hafnar.Haus, a public workspace providing workspace for musicians, painters, sculptors, podcasters and more. (The owner prepared soup for us!)
Everywhere we go, we hear music coming from open doors, before and after official festivals; Everywhere we go, Icelandic musicians open their doors – to each other, of course, but also to strangers, to share their creative journey, their songs, their performances. (Their soup!)
Photo: exhausted Florian Trickowski
On the first day of the festival, I sit and watch a panel called “The Storm-Soaked Joy of Making Things.” My body vibrates; I had come straight from one of Reykjavík's sunbaths, the open-air baths whose ritual use – moving between pools of varying temperatures, from “cold plunge” (10°C) to “hot pots” (43°C) – is woven into Icelandic culture.
On stage, Isadora Bjarkardótir Barney—the daughter of American artist Matthew Barney and Björk, the latter of whom sits next to her in the audience—notes the connections between Icelandic artists and their country's geology and climate: “In London or New York, I forget I'm on an island,” she says. Not like in Iceland: “The land here is not calm.” When she watched a volcano erupt on the island many years ago, she could “imagine how small she was.”
But while the majestic landscape is often cited as an inspiration for Icelandic artists, as the conversation continues, it becomes clear that this is a community again. The bitter cold and gray of the Icelandic winter, the band agree, draws them indoors, close together, in camaraderie, to create. Local artist Lilja Birgisdottir says the weather is “like a member of the family.”
That's why in just three days in Iceland I was in the same room as Björk; with Sigura Rosa's siblings; with the mayor of Reykjavik and the President of Iceland. There is no hierarchy here, no deep-rooted class stratification: Google “house of the President of Iceland” and you’ll see what I mean.
Photo: Gundry Beck the Cat
So, is Iceland imbued with some kind of “magic”? Well, yes, but there is nothing supernatural about it; it's just a cold, isolated place that regularly reminds us that we are small and the Earth is big, and that this community is all we have. This is the message we receive every day on the Icelandic airwaves, and this is the feeling that Silvana Estrada conveys on that final night with her heartbreaking songs about home, loss, family – reminding everyone that community is everything, no matter if you are from Mexico, Iceland or Canada.
You don't have to need go to Iceland to find it – but we did it, and you should too.
