Ice­land, con­sid­er­ing its small pop­u­la­tion (329,100 at last count), has pro­duced a phe­nom­e­nal amount of rock music that has reached a glob­al audi­ence. It’s as if Oshawa, Ontario or Eugene, Ore­gon each had a half-dozen world-lev­el bands. Absurd­ly improb­a­ble, when you think of it. Reyk­javík is a live­ly lit­tle city, but its frisky music scene, what Ice­landers call jam­mið, is con­fined to a hand­ful of clubs in the “101” dis­trict: Café Rosen­berg, Kaf­fibarinn, Bar 11, Dil­lon, Den Danske Kro, The Celtic Cross, The Eng­lish Pub. After mak­ing the rounds, peo­ple stag­ger out­side to find a hot dog or a crushed sheep’s head as a post-gig snack. The hard-drink­ing Ice­landers take their jam­mið seri­ous­ly. Bands and audi­ences mix freely in this pro­found­ly infor­mal and egal­i­tar­i­an coun­try. This small, but intense scene has pro­duced phe­nom­e­na like the Sug­ar­cubes and Björk, Mínus, Sig­ur Rós, Quarashi, Sálin, Botnleð­ja, Maus, Agent Fres­co, Samaris, Mam­mút, and Jakobínarína.

Ingól­fr Arnar­son founds the first set­tle­ment at Reyk­javík in 874 A.D., lay­ing the ground­work for jam­mið and the Ice­landic music scene. He appears to be stand­ing pre­cise­ly at the spot where Kaf­fibarinn stands today. An 1850 paint­ing of dubi­ous his­tor­i­cal accu­ra­cy by Johan Peter Raadsig.

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