Although Iceland produces the most electricity per capita of any nation, wind turbines are not common in Iceland. They have either burned or overturned or something else. They are also not eye-catching, so fortunately there are no more than two that come to mind. But that could change. Many energy oligarchs, domestic and foreign, have worked hard to be allowed to do what they want when it comes to building power plants of all kinds in Icelandic nature. They are mainly interested in it because the price of energy to the Icelandic public is not yet as extreme as in most other parts of the weste ..read more

More than 5 months have passed and the genocide is still going on in Gaza in occupied Palestine. Since the Western-backed Zionists started destroying Gaza and the West Bank and the genocide of the people of Gaza, the Iceland-Palestine Association and other peace activists have been holding actions in various places in Reykjavik almost every week all this winter. I myself have not been able to attend all these solidarity marches, but I did so here when they marched through the center of Reykjavik to the British and German embassies on March 2, 2024. I encourage people to attend such solidarity ..read more

Last summer 2023 I went to a place I haven’t recorded much. Was it at Strandir in northwest Iceland. A friend invited me to stay in an apartment for a few days in Drangsnes, so I tried to use the time as well as I could for field recordings in the area. It actually didn’t go very well. I had come down with a bad flu the same week as summer vacation started so I had little to no energy for many weeks. I was also facing another problem. The whole time I was in the area there was a strong wind except for maybe 1-2 hours during some nights. It was also rather cold, so nature was rather silent. Mu ..read more

Recording fireworks is probably like photographing a sunset for a photographer. Nothing special but there is always some duty that calls for it to be done. It is not the loud sound that fascinates, but the interaction of the sound with the environment. Reflection of a sound wave. e.g. the echoes from houses, mountains or trees that make it interesting to record fireworks. The problem, however, is that I am often confined to staying at home with my family on this day. I am therefore not in different places from year to year, and therefore I have to say that I have not made a good or interestin ..read more

I do quite a bit of recording music, so it would be nice to be able to publish some of it here, especially music that I think is extremely well played and where the recording has been successful. For example, I have often wanted to put classical music on the web in December and January. But professionals have little interest in giving permission for this, possibly because I only ask these people once. So I’m going to share different music instead, which is even more beautiful than all music, but it’s birdsong in the spring. Here is a recording from last spring that I had forgotten I had recor ..read more

On October 15, 2023, a solidarity meeting with Palestine was held at Austurvelli in downtown Reykjavík. I think I could estimate that about 5-6 hundred people came to the meeting, which can be considered quite good by Icelandic standards The week before, on October 7th, western propaganda media had reported some vague attack by „Hamas“ forces that was considered terrorism against civilians of the so-called „state of Israel“. Much is still unclear about what will happen on this October day. Even the occupiers themselves were not all on the same page about what really happened that day, as it b ..read more

One of the things I’m quite interested in is recording space weather or „auroral chorus“ with a ELF/VLF receiver. This space weather is electrically charged particles coming from the sun into the upper atmosphere, the same ones that form the northern lights, or Aurora. The receiver therefore only detects radio frequency on a very long wavelength or at 20hz up to 20Khz The problem, however, is that I have never been able to devote enough time to this hobby. So I don’t have many recordings of this material. It is not enough to have a lot of equipment. I really need to have knowledge of the subj ..read more

It doesn’t happen often that my recordings are „interrupted“ by animals. But it happened last weekend when I was recording at my traditional place in Stafholtstungur in western Iceland. This time it was mice that seemed to gnaw the rubber on the tripod or the cables that ran up to the microphones. When the recording had been going on for three hours and it was 3 o’clock in the morning, the commotion in the mice started to keep me awake. It was as if they had gnawed a hole all the way into the windshield. So I went out and gave them a piece of cake next to the microphone stand. That made them ..read more

I far too rarely go out to sea or lakes to record underwater soundscapes. The problem is probably that I need to get to a depth of 30 meters or more, be calm and smooth seas and be free of ship and boat traffic. In places where currents can be expected, I prefer to be able to attach to a buoy, because I want to be able to record for an hour or more. Such situations are not directly accessible around me, but sometimes places are discovered in the most unlikely places. I found one not far from my workplace, which is the largest shipping port in Iceland. There were no cargo ships in port, so I w ..read more

Early in July 2023 I spent one night at Sultártangalón lagoon recording in three locations. In the morning when I was leaving, it was sunny, calm and very hot, in the Icelandic way. The sight over the mirror smooth lagoon made me stop the car and enjoy the view. The recorders were ready and connected in the car, so I quickly set them up by the reservoir and took a short walk while they were recording. The result was this. Typical Icelandic highland silence. Nothing interesting as an audio recording, but what caught my attention was the background noise of waterfalls and streams across the lag ..read more