Laughing under the midnight sun
JUST before 9pm on a Monday this past summer, rays of dust-speckled light from the midnight sun poured through gaps between black curtains inside Gaukurinn, a rock bar in downtown Reykjavik where an English-language open mike was about to begin.
Sitting in a booth by the wellstocked bar was an Australian comedian, Jonathan Duffy, 31, holding court with an Icelandic comic, Bylgja Babylons, 29, and a few other aspiring comics. Notebooks were out as people went over their sets for the night. Gisli Johann, 26, the show’s organiser and usual host, stopped by to make sure that Duffy, his stand-in for the night, was there and that the show was ready to go on.
In the back of the room, Icelanders and tourists took seats at tables with folding chairs in front of a roomy stage with a red-curtain backdrop for the weekly open mike called “Come Talk Funny”. A wooden sign above the mike stand read “Goldengang Comedy” for this night’s comics. Since there are no designated comedy rooms in Iceland, and bars frequently change owners and concepts, comics band together in groups, making a fluid scene.
Pros and amateurs
And it works. Duffy warmed up the crowd with jokes about quirky Icelandic culture – the breathiness of the language, the near-cashless society, tourists asking “where the Northern Lights are” – before turning over the stage to about a dozen wide-ranging comics for a two-hour-plus show.
What started as a more traditional open mike has evolved into a showcase for seasoned comedians and beginners alike. In a country of fewer than 350,000 citizens that now sees more than 1 million tour- ists per year, stand-up comedy, or uppistand, is emerging as a subculture of live entertainment in Reykjavik, its capital. Last summer was the first time there had been regular weekly stand-up shows in English, like the open mike at Gaukurinn, live improv shows at the next-door bar Hurra, and other shows at Lebowski Bar – a four-year-old venue on Reykjavik’s busy main street, inspired by the 1998 film by the Coen brothers.
“We’re sort of playing pretend,” Johann said. “We want to have an American comedy scene, but it doesn’t exist here, so we have to create it.”
Before 2016, the only regular English-speaking live comedy show was the overtly touristtargeted “How to Become Icelandic in 60 Minutes”. The main source of stand-up comedy came from Mid-Island, Iceland’s seminal stand-up comedy collective, made up of four men who almost accidentally kicked off the scene by performing as a lark at a local favourite dive bar, Prikid, in 2009.
A perfect storm for comedy
“We all just decided to become comedians simultaneously,” said Ari Eldjarn, one of Iceland’s best-known comedians and a member of Mid-Island.
The group’s founder, Halldor Halldorsson, a local rapper and comic known as Dori DNA, had put on the first show at Prikid because he owed money to the bar. Now they, along with Johann Alfred, Bjorn Bragi and Bergur Ebbi, have a winter run at the National Theater of Iceland, where they do 60 to 70 shows a season.
At the time of Mid-Island’s formation seven years ago, winter had come both literally and financially for the country. The economic collapse of 2008 and political turmoil created a perfect storm for comedy. A year later, one of Iceland’s most noted TV sitcom actors, Jon Gnarr, would form a satirical political party, the Best Party, and become mayor of Reykjavik from 2010 to 2014.
Whether his term inspired more people to try stand-up or not, by 2013, regular open mikes could be found at back-room sites like Bar 11, organised by the local comic Rokkvi Vesteinsson.
Sell-out comedians?
Once it was obvious that there was enough interest from comics, the next logical step was to start performing in English.
“You have a bigger audience with English,” Johann said. “With Icelandic, you’re limited to about 300,000 people – most of which you don’t even like.”
The night after the open mike, another free show at Lebowski Bar started with a full house, mostly tourists eating cheeseburgers and drinking Viking beer on tap. Lebowski serves its purpose well. Familiar faces from the Gaukurinn show filled the bowling-alleythemed bar and performed on the American-style porch fashioned as a stage.
“More established comedians might think it’s kind of a sellout move to perform in English, but it gets our names out there and also gets us some money,” Babylons said after the show.
During Iceland’s darker months, when tourists are scarcer, she and comedians like Saga Gardarsdottir perform more in Icelandic, at corporate gigs like holiday parties, and more recently at regular sold-out showcases at Rosenberg bar and the arts centre Tjarnarbio.
“Iceland is so small that word of mouth means everything,” Gardarsdottir said, summing up the comedian’s path to success in Reykjavik.