Isafjordur – the smallest city in the world!

What is Isafjordur about? Well the first few things that come to my mind is fish, rich music life, skiing and mountainous landscape. You could ask almost any Icelander this question and certainly one of these things would come up, and maybe all of them. Unless ignorance and stupidity prevents them for knowing where Isafjordur is in the Universe.
These four previously mentioned elements, have shaped Isafjordur and its habitants for centuries and many interesting characters come to mind to support my theory, for instance Maggut talks about fishing, day in and day out, cycling up the main street with his fist in the air cursing about how bad catch on of the trawlers had, the old ski group with pensioners that train more than the professionals and the brothers that made an hang glider with a “blue print” from a whisky ad in Playboy. And it worked fine. Even their mother flew it!
And I have to mention my nephew Gunnar that booked a concert with Metallica in Reykjavik last year but told them he had to cancel the gig because he was up to his neck taking his high school exams. He is fifteen.
It´s fair to say that these and more characters alike make the spectrum wider and spice up our life.
The fish has kept us sub arctic hillbillies alive for ages and will hopefully keep doing so in the future and the music tradition has been with us since the establishment of the first music school in the country in 1911. Skiing is another link in the chain. We have won more Iceland championships than any other town and our skiers have raced in all winter Olympics that Iceland has competed in. Well except the last one in Salt Lake. The young cross country skier Oli Arnason was qualified but didn´t wanna go. Didn´t think he was good enough! What´s cooler than not bother to compete in the Olympics? Locals that don´t ski are considered riff raffs. The mountains are the dominant natural factor that frame in Isafjordur on three sides where the only escape is the cold Atlantic Ocean in the north.
When Mugison came up with the idea to do something fun for Isafjordur, it was obvious to take the four elements and mix a strong cocktail with nice aftertaste. The result is music festival for the tradition, during the Ski Week because of the nice atmosphere, in an old fish factory because of our history and finally the mountains around make the icing on the cake.

Welcome to Isafjordur

Heljarskinn