“That was the first thing that people came here for,” said Óli Dóri, who until a few weeks ago was event organiser at the music venue at the hostel Kex, the latest of many in Reykjavík now consigned to history. “The bands in Iceland. That’s what put Iceland on the map.”
Before Iceland’s tourist boom, pulling in budget airlines and visitors from across the world – more than 1.7 million in 2022 alone – it was a thriving music scene that gave the world Björk, Sigur Rós and Ólafur Arnalds, who attracted much of the outside interest in the previously isolated Nordic country.
Despite their role in cultivating and providing a platform for Iceland’s musicians, it is Reykjavík’s music venues that are now paying the price of the capital’s popularity as a tourist destination in a very physical sense.
Many of the city’s smaller music venues – beloved spaces with active communities and vital training grounds for emerging artists – have closed over the years to make way for hotels.
The most recent to shut is Kex, which closed its doors for the last time at the end of August to enable the creation of more guest rooms in the former biscuit factory. Previous high profile casualties have included Sirkus in 2008, Nasa, where Björk and Sigur Rós performed before it shut in 2012 despite huge public outcry, and Faktory which closed the following year. All three were shut to make way for hotels.
“It’s been a theme here since the tourist boom started,” said Óli, who worked at Kex, where artists including The Sonics and Ólafur Arnalds have played, for four years. “Nasa was closed because they had to make a hotel in the same building and then it’s been going on. More and more places just stopping.”
As well as the financial motivation to give up spaces to hotels, the proximity of hotels to live music venues can also be an issue due to noise complaints. Óli said that in the early 2000s, before tourism started accelerating markedly in 2012, there were far more small and medium-sized venues.
The end of live music at Kex, he said, “is the clearest we have seen that tourism is affecting our venue because it is being torn down for more hotel rooms”.
Óli said he doesn’t blame tourists, but believes far more could be done to protect live music in Reykjavík. “We had a lot of newer bands playing. We had a really nice thing going on there for that scene.”
The closure of music venues has led to the souring of some Icelanders’ views of tourism, said journalist Elías Þórsson, as the capital changes around them. “People who love downtown Reykjavík and love the cultural scene, they are very unhappy about this,” he said. “Driving out what has made this city what it is. Music culture, what made it a cool place. What you end up with is Regent Street everywhere.”
If smaller venues disappear, he warned, the pipeline of Icelandic musicians that the nation so prides itself on could “dry out”.
María Rut Reynisdóttir, director of Iceland Music, a recently expanded body which promotes the country’s music output and distributes government grants, said the Icelandic capital’s appeal to both residents and tourists was dependent on a thriving cultural scene.
“When tourism starts to eat the city from the inside you won’t have that appealing city any more. That’s definitely not something that you want. You don’t want the city to become that we only have tourist shops and hotels.”
A new music policy and an expanded music fund had recently been adopted, she said, but believes much more focus on the issue is needed – especially in Reykjavík where its 17 music venues comprise 90% of all of those in Iceland.
Nobody starts their career at Harpa, Reykjavík’s concert hall, she said, adding that the smaller venues are crucial to the overall music ecosystem of the country. “It’s important that we have spaces for people in different stages of their career. It’s a vital part of the music scene. If we don’t have that we won’t have anything else.”
