Put More Adventure in Your Life This Winter

Sure, you can take a cruise or go sit on a beach this winter, but what’s the fun of that? Iceland is the place to be. Hankering for a bit more adventure in your life? So are millions of other North Americans. According to Molly Feltner, of SmarterTravel.com, “If you think family travel means road trips, beach resorts, and photo-ops with people dressed in oversized mouse costumes, think again.

“More and more families are turning away from traditional leisure vacations, opting instead for adventure tours that challenge their bodies and minds and strengthen relationships in a way that would be hard to come by on other types of vacations,” Feltner says.

According to the Adventure Travel Trade Association (ATTA), adventure travel is the fastest-growing segment of the travel industry, and the number of families booking adventure trips is increasing. Chris Doyle, director of the ATTA, estimates that families (including multigenerational groups with grandparents and extended relatives) now make up about 25 to 30 percent of the adventure travel market.

So, grab your gear and come visit. Come for the skiing – both downhill and cross country – horseback riding in warm, insulated overalls, aurora borealis tours, and Jeep tours past frozen waterfalls, and snowmobile tours on glaciers. It may sound “icy,” but in reality Reykjavik, for example, never reaches the low temperatures experienced by New York and Ottawa. Oh, and don’t forget your bathing suit for the Blue Lagoon.

Incubus Comes To Reykjavik

Critically acclaimed alternative rock band Incubus will rock the Laugardalsholl Arena in Reykjavik, March 3, 2007, and Icelandair has a package just for fans. The two night, two breakfast package includes airfare, rooming, and two tickets to the show.
Incubus’ most recent album, "Light Grenades," reached number one on the Billboard Charts and their U.S. tour sold out within hours of releasing tickets.
From $695*, for more info click here.

Icelandic Duo Launch New Yacht-based Adventure Travel Company

Icelandic entrepreneurs R·nar ”li Karlsson and Sigurdur JÛnsson have launched Borea Adventures, a new, yacht-based adventure tourism company, offering a variety of exciting trips for true adventure seekers.

Based in Isafjordur, the capital of the remote West Fjords in North West Iceland, Borea Adventure’s expeditions take place aboard 12-berth, 60-ft sailing vessel, Aurora. The yacht, the largest in Iceland, offers the perfect platform to explore the beautiful unspoiled locale where many areas are only accessible on foot or by sea.

A variety of imaginative themed itineraries incorporate local produce, events and the amazing landscape between the beginning of April and the end of September 2007. Guests can enjoy skiing in glacial fjords, hiking, sailing, sea kayaking, snorkelling, mountain biking, rock climbing, fishing, gourmet food or even bog soccer! Wildlife, photography and gourmet trips are accompanied by local experts, and natural phenomenon such as the midnight sun or the northern lights may also be visible at certain times of the year. Prices start from $1100 per person and tours accommodate up to 10 guests. For more information: www.boreaadventures.com).

Visit Eastwood and Spielberg's Iceland

Iceland has been attracting the attention of more than just holidaymakers recently, with film directors Clint Eastwood and Steven Spielberg using the country's beaches as a backdrop in their new film, "Flags of our Fathers".

As well as the directors, pop group "Take That" also used the same backdrop for the video for their comeback single, "Patience".

The place grabbing all the location scouts' attention is the Reykjanes Peninsula, an hour's drive south-west from Reykjavik, a great place to take in the dramatic and rugged lava-covered landscape of Iceland.

Offbeat Iceland
Sometimes we like to bring you stories of unusual places and events in Iceland, things you just won’t see in your hometown. This is one of those stories.

Icelandic fishing company Brim hf. purchased a fish factory in ReykjavÌk that they plan to turn into a working fish processing museum. Guests to the factory and museum will receive a tour of the process, as well as a dinner.

“To have fish processing like this in the center of a capital is unique, but we are a fish nation. We live on an island and we live off the sea. Tourists and others want to see that and we intend to show them,” said Gudmundur Kristj·nsson, Director of Brim.
For more info, click here.

THEY SAID IT

Iceland Airwaves – You Shoulda Been There

Remember we told you about IcelandAirwaves last fall? Well, you shoulda been there (of course, there’s always the next one in fall 2007). Here’s what the Rolling Stone magazine’s David Fricke said in part:

“… Of the 3,000 fans with wristbands this year (approximately $95, good for the entire festival), a third came from abroad. And of the more than 160 acts that performed, thirty-eight flew in to play, including the Kaiser Chiefs from England, Canada's Wolf Parade and, all the way from Omaha, Nebraska, Tilly and the Wall. (Total attendance, including press and industry folks, was 4,200 -- down from 4,800 in 2005 but intentionally reduced by the promoters to avoid the long lines that plagued some Airwaves venues last year.)

“… Iceland Airwaves is also a profoundly regional party. Icelandic bands mostly sang in English, but their stage banter and inside jokes are all in the home tongue, a complex language that is the closest, in all of Scandinavia, to ancient Viking speech.

“…Iceland Airwaves is also the only rock festival I have ever attended that comes with its own light show. On Friday, as I commuted between clubs with a friend, I walked into a downtown square, was told to look up -- and saw the aurora borealis, which moved through the clear black sky in broad, slow iridescent swirls.”
(Read his entire story at: here)

The Beautiful Truck

And speaking of Iceland Airwaves, here’s what Tricia Romano reports in her Village Voice column called “Fly Life”: “Some people's favorite events were out of town: Miss Modernage remembers the Iceland Airwaves music festival in October, held in Reykjavik. "It's still a music festival unspoiled by 'the industry,' " she says. "Oh, and need I mention the fact that everyone there looks like they fell off the Beautiful Truck? Dear lordy!"
Editor’s note: if you don’t know who Miss Modernage is, don’t feel bad. Neither did we until we Googled her. See her complete Iceland Airwaves report here.

We Still Think Winter is OK - Tom Brokaw recently appeared on Late Night with David Letterman where he told the gap-toothed king of comedy:
Mr. BROKAW: “Iceland is one of my favorite countries. A lot of people find that hard to believe. You don't go in the wintertime, but in the summertime it is stunningly
beautiful. A lot of fjords. The Icelandic culture is fascinating; they've had a parliament for a thousand years. They're the most literate people in the world. It's sparkling clean, the food is excellent, it's very expensive, and the women are drop-dead great looking.”

Now we just have to get him to visit in winter.

Sumptuous feasts and small delicacies

The Reykjavík Arts Festival will open unusually early this season, on May 10th this coming spring. The first festival days overlap the final days of the French Culture Festival "Pourqouis Pas? A French Spring in Iceland 2007," featuring magnificent street theatre spectacles, on a scale such hitherto unseen in this city, courtesy of the French troupe Royal de luxe. School children in Reykjavík are invited for a trip down-town on this occasion, and they will fill the streets of the city centre. The Minister of Culture and Education, Ms. Thorgerdur Katrín Gunnarsdóttir, will open the Festival at the National Gallery, followed by the Hamrahlíð Youth Choir, the African musicians of Konono N° 1 and Icelandic duo Ghostigital.

This season, the Festival offers an unusual variety of grand scale, elite events; among these are performances by the San Francisco Ballet, recitals by Bryn Terfel and Dmitri Hvorostovsky and the Icelandic premiere of Haflidi Hallgrimsson´s recent opera Die Wält der Zwischenfälle. Forty musicians from the Balkans, lead by world famous musician and composer Goran Bregovic, give us examples of just how much fun can be had at weddings and funerals, at a concert in Laugardalshöll, jointly organised with the music festival Vorblót (Rite of Spring). Bregovic has performed this musical program in a number of countries to unanimous critical acclaim, most recently at the Lincoln Center in New York and at the Montreal Jazz Festival, where he played to an audience of 200,000 at an outdoor arena.

Performing arts also play a big role at this festival, with theatre being brought to the streets, to a Coast Guard vessel, to private homes, the National Theatres and other locations. The countryside will enjoy a visit from the vaudeville artists Les Kunz, at locations in East and North Iceland.

One of the most esteemed English-speaking theatre groups of today, Cheek By Jowl, visits the Festival and the National Theatre with a brand new staging of Shakespeare´s Cymbeline. Icelandic theatre will be amply represented, with two premieres of new plays: Partyland and Imminent – the latter a living room drama if there ever was one, as it will be performed in the living room of a private home in Reykjavík. The Goddess in the Machine, a theatre happening aboard the Coast Guard vessel Ódinn, is yet another exciting event, and all three feature leading artists of the current, energetic and vital generation of Icelandic theatre people.

Apart from the premiere of Hallgrimsson´s opera, The Iceland Symphony Orchestra performs at a concert with the acclaimed, young pianist Hélène Grimaud, a recital which marks the finale of the French Culture Festival. Among other music events is the Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra´s programme of the string quartets of Icelandic pioneering composer Jón Leifs, a programme of the flute music of Atli Heimir Sveinsson, performed by flutist Áshildur Haraldsdóttir and the composer himself, and a concert with the Iceland Sound Company with local and “imported” guest artists at Hallgrímskirkja Church. Not to be missed is a concert series with young, Icelandic soloists at Ýmir Concert Hall, with Tinna Thorsteinsdóttir, Ari Vilhjálmsson, Elfa Rún Kristinsdóttir – recently awarded the “Most promising musician” award at the Icelandic Music Awards – and others.

From Congo, in the heart of Africa, comes a unique band of musicians, Konono N°1, which won the BBC World Music Award last summer. The band plays traditional, African instruments and run-down amplifiers from Europe.

Jazz buffs will not be neglected, with a concert with the E.S.T. – Esbjorn Svensen Trio – from Sweden, which boasts of numerous awards and have been on the cover of most of the notable jazz magazines in the world. The members of E.S.T. will play some jazz with a rock´n´roll edge at Club Nasa.

There are also grand and noteworthy visual arts events, such as the Festival´s Opening Day exhibition – the first retrospective of the works of the Cobra artists to be put on in Iceland. On the next day, an extensive Roni Horn show will open at the Reykjavík Museum, and recent works of Spencer Tunick will be on display at the Gallery i8. Kvika (Magma), an extensive exhibition of Icelandic design, will open at Kjarvalsstadir.

As usual, the Festival appears at various countryside locations; this year, we commemorate 17th century horrors of “The Turkish Raid” with a magnificent exhibition and a music programme in the Westman Islands, and Roni Horn´s Water Library will be opened at Stykkishólmur in East Iceland. The Festival also travels to Laugarborg Culture Centre in the North, with three concerts featuring Icelandic music.

Leading companies of Icelandic industry and finance are an important backbone of the 2007 Arts Festival, and innumerable individuals and institutions participate in the various events.

The Festival Box Office opened for three of the big events in early December, but as of February 8th, tickets for all the 2007 events can be purchased. Tickets are available at www.artfest.is, and by tel: (+354) 552 8588, from 10 am to 4 pm on weekdays.

The Reykjavík Arts Festival opens on May 10 and closes on May 26.

For information on other exciting activities in Iceland, be sure to visit:

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