The Darkness Speaks in Tones

»Did you see Björk just walk past? She’s here often – she loves new music.« Someone in red has indeed just passed us on the way to the escalator in Harpa, Reykjavík’s iconic concert hall. Because this is Myrkir músíkdagar, also known as Dark Music Days.

»Did you see Björk just walk past? She’s here often – she loves new music«

The festival (January 26-31) opened with a group of teenagers from The Vesturbær School Orchestra, founded in 1954, followed by an opera singer with bare feet who ended her performance in a yoga pose.

Now we descend into the parking basement, where Masaya Ozaki spins cymbals against the concrete floor, strikes a snare drum forcefully, and pulls noise from his guitar. When the young Japanese composer first came to Iceland to record the sounds of a glacier, he found – deep inside an ice cave – the sound of melting ice. It transformed him as a composer. Since then, he has explored the boundaries between dream and reality in sound works created in Icelandic lighthouses. And now he convinces us – with the piece Borderline – that even a parking garage can sound thrillingly magical. Especially because the electric cars passing by hardly make any sound anymore.

From Speaking in Tongues to Soap Bubbles

It’s said that the snow in Reykjavík falls sideways. In the city, there is either silence, or the weather makes noise. Dark Music Days, a festival for new music founded in 1980, contains both. Ásta Fanney Sigurðardóttir’s piece Glossolalia – meaning »speaking in tongues« – feels more like an incantation or poetic revelation than a traditional concert experience. Alone on stage, with her body, voice, and presence, she creates an oratorio of pure sounds without literal meaning, yet laden with a significance no language can capture.

There’s also space at the festival for four teenagers with mini guitars and flutes. During a concert titled Boys and Girls, a noise guitar rips the room apart while six pianists at Casio keyboards play casually, as if in a piano store. In the end, they cut the power and carry out their instruments as if they had never been there. A harp appears – strung with yarn instead of strings. The yarn connects to a clarinet and a musician on a typewriter.

In the end, a musician sends soap bubbles out into the audience – and then screams

Folk music is hinted at, danceable rhythms emerge. The clarinet blazes, and the rhythmic clicks of the typewriter blend into the soundscape. Sampled voices wail and complain. An operatic voice erupts – in English and German – meeting a free jazz saxophone in a wild clash. »Summer Nights« is crooned while Casio and violin join in. We stare at an image of the Mona Lisa. In the end, a musician sends soap bubbles out into the audience – and then screams.

Music and Memories in Reykjavík’s Vibrant Culture

In Reykjavík, daylight doesn’t appear until late morning. The »Dark Mingling« gathering brings together journalists and festival organizers to meet artists who each present their work in ten minutes. Some hand out business cards, others let the music speak for itself. Icelandic cellist Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir, now based in the U.S., expresses joy at following the music scene in her homeland.

Guided tours explore the unique relationship between sound, memory, and Icelandic oils

While some lament the growing commercialization of Downtown Reykjavík, culture is still thriving. Two new bookstores have just opened, and an old Icelandic proverb reminds us of literature’s value: »Blonder er bóklaus maður« – blind is the man without books. But music isn’t far behind. Folk music, and thus interest in roots, is experiencing a revival. And just as literature and music merge in the city’s vibrant cultural fabric, new sensuous hybrids emerge between art forms.

Esoteric minimalism, heard at several concerts, also lives at Fischersund 3 – home to Fischersund, a family-run perfumery and art collective founded in 2017 by Jónsi of Sigur Rós and his siblings. Guided tours explore the unique relationship between sound, memory, and Icelandic oils.

Reykjavík Chamber Orchestra, a key player in Iceland’s music life, celebrates its 50th anniversary with a concert showcasing the ensemble’s dedication to contemporary music. Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson’s Áttskeytla (1985) translates traditional skaldic verse into musical patterns and alliterations. It sounds like a refined fairy tale – sonically simple yet formally complex 1980s modernism. Words become sound, and sound becomes substance. That nuanced subtlety continues – more absurd and film-noir-like – in the premiere of Tumi Árnason’s Myrkraverk, a composed crime story with lively brass. A more porous, shimmering sound world appears in Þuríður Jónsdóttir’s Crus, while Haukur Tómasson’s six-part Catena forms a sparkling rhythmic chain of movements weaving in and out of each other—a play between the transparent and the impenetrable. Each section has its own character – from the cautiously probing (Con delicatezza) to the overwhelming and energetic (Brutalmente).

The music is filled with birdcalls, earthy tones, and a tribute to the father’s favorite artist, Leonard Cohen

Sorrowful Reindeer and Surgical Baroque

Among the many well-attended concerts, Caput Ensemble’s performance stood out. Ingibjörg Ýr Skarphéðinsdóttir’s Rangifonia: Earthsong is a personal lament disguised as a nature piece. Inspired by the composer’s father – a biologist and reindeer counter who died in a plane crash during fieldwork in East Iceland – the piece was born from his suggestion that she write something about the reindeer’s yearly cycle.

Björg Brjánsdóttir’s flute sounds like breath, and the music is filled with birdcalls, earthy tones, and a tribute to the father’s favorite artist, Leonard Cohen. In the middle, the flutist reads a poetic ode to the highlands, where her father’s ashes now rest. The audience remains silent long after the final note – as if the piece were still breathing.

When Belgian pianist Heleen van Haegenborgh and Icelandic harpsichordist Guðrún Óskarsdóttir perform together, they dissect the baroque and stitch it anew. The mechanically precise meets the wildly organic. Bent over their instruments, with clenched fists and tense forearms, they resemble surgeons mid-operation.

They pull threads as if playing with dental floss, creaking like old doors. The sounds are raw and tangible – fingers on wood, whirling harpsichord textures, Geiger counter–like clicks, deep distorted bass tones. The music exists outside time and space – like a root canal without anesthesia.

»Everyone knows everyone,« says Aussi before sitting down on a pew next to Björk

John McCowen opens a window into darker dimensions. With his contrabass clarinet, he dives into the lowest registers, creating a low-frequency, ascetic landscape filled with longing and long pauses – and possibly purification. Long tones linger in the air like dust in the beam of a flashlight.

The Darkness Is Listening

Björk is present at nearly every concert during Dark Music Days. Wearing a white anorak. »She’s changed how Icelandic music is perceived,« says Aussi – Ásmundur Jónsson, Björk’s first manager – who recounts Iceland’s musical history during a walk to the towering Hallgrímskirkja. »And Bára Gísladóttir is now continuing to put Iceland on the map. She just returned to Copenhagen. The music scene here is small – everyone knows everyone,« says Aussi before sitting down on a pew next to Björk to listen to Cantoque Ensemble’s performance of Hjálmar H. Ragnarsson’s monumental Mass from 1989.

The work opens in darkness and meditation, with Gregorian tones and dense harmonies. Along the way, the silence is broken by forceful, dissonant eruptions and lyrical passages where the soprano voice rises like a prayer. Ancient tones and modern expressions are united here. The soundscape is dramatic and emotional – marked by contrasts between faith and doubt, light and darkness.

Even fragility can resonate with strength, and even reindeer can grieve in tones

And so the tones disappear into Reykjavík’s winter sky. An echo of darkness and courage, of old forms dissolving, and new voices taking shape. Perhaps Dark Music Days is merely a state of being – where silence becomes language, and experimentation becomes experience. Here, music reminds us that darkness not only hides, but also reveals. Even fragility can resonate with strength, and even reindeer can grieve in tones.

English translation: Andreo Michaelo Mielczarek