Open the address book and search for the word "Iceland".
You will find that friends who are actually in Baotou, Beijing, Shenzhen, and Dalian are using their own locations to secretly express their yearning for Iceland.
Iceland has a population of 360,000 people, but more than 10 million people have positioned the WeChat region as Iceland.
Probably no one doesn't like this "end of the world and a cold wonderland." But when we like Iceland, what exactly are we liking?
01.
When we loved Iceland
What exactly are we enjoying
Iceland's nihilistic, solitary, abandonment aesthetic
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Iceland was once a very disliked existence by old Europeans. Because it's so desolate that it has nothing.
The land area is about the same as south Korea, but there are more than 100 active volcanoes on the island, and earthquakes are common every five years. In Iceland, there is not a single decent tree, nor a single crop, exposing the most pristine features of the planet, and even the beaches are black.
But all of Iceland's amazing aesthetic comes from having nothing.
Nonentity
Nothing
"Iceland doesn't look like Earth" is not only due to the disordered sunshine and congenital lack of landforms.
The tone of high-grade ash, the transcendent sense of ancient glaciers, the strange volcanic waterfalls, and the coastal wasteland that has not been domesticated by humans have brought Iceland a sense of nothingness beyond the concept of time.
There is also the surreal aurora – only under the flowing aurora, human beings will realize that love, literature, and music are in front of the vast universe, but they are just things to talk about. They seem so small in the face of nature that it is insignificant.
Loneliness
Loneliness
The sparse population gives enough space for everyone who lives here. The few wooden houses on the wasteland and the stooped seaside churches, if not for the arrival of tourists, they will stand there forever as if they have been forgotten by the world.
There is only one ring road in the whole of Iceland, and the inconvenience of public transportation also invisibly reduces the interaction between people. If you want to live in seclusion, Iceland is probably the perfect fit.
Abandonment
"Discarded" aesthetics
People are not so much attracted to Iceland's nothingness and loneliness as its desolation is the "abandonment" aesthetic that our modern society lacks. Living in Iceland, you can lose your dignity, status, money and desires, and show and adapt to yourself unscrupulously.
Passionate adjectives such as "996" and "effort" are unconvincing in Iceland. Icelanders live boring enough and happy enough.
Every summer in Iceland the days are long, with sunset at 12 midnight and sunrise at 3am. A local grandfather who drives a taxi will drive across most of Iceland from the south to the northernmost seaside and wait for sunset. Wait 10 minutes after sunset and watch the sun rise again from another place.
They also hold memorial services for melted ice, color pageants and blind dates for rams, build small houses for elves all over Iceland, and write books at home behind closed doors until the winter three months of polar night...
It is not an exaggeration to say that it is "meaningless". But doesn't the happiness of life often come from doing meaningless things?
02.
Spiritual "Icelandic" people
Music and movies
How to "roam Iceland" in the city? Listen to Icelandic music and see Icelandic movies.
Perhaps because Iceland is too lonely, the spiritual world of Icelanders needs more material to fill. In a country of just 360,000 people, 80 percent of the islanders play an instrument, with more than 200 bands and countless independent musicians. They use music to depict icelandic lakes, Icelandic winds, Icelandic volcanoes, and everything in Iceland.
Sigur Rós
Poetry Gloth
HoppipollaSigur Rós - We Play Endlessly
Sigur Rós was my favorite Icelandic backstabbing band. They have an album called Route One, in which each song is named using Icelandic GPS coordinates, documenting their 2016 journey around the island on Iceland's Route 1.
If you have time, be sure to check out their music documentary Heima Song of the Wind, a piece of music that floats in the silence of Iceland's churches, abandoned factories, empty wilderness, as if you can feel the fusion of ice cubes, the best music documentary I have ever seen.
Of Monsters and Man
Orc Music Team
Of Monsters And Men - Yellow Light from Shadow Travel 00:0004:52
People know Of Monsters and Man, an indie folk band, mostly because of the movie Daydreamers. Unlike other Icelandic atmospheric bands, they carry the temperament of Anglo-American independent pop music, while retaining the sense of Icelandic alienation, which is extremely amazing.
Olaf Arnalds
Olaf Analdez
3055Ólafur Arnalds - Eulogy for Evolution
Born and living in a small town a few kilometres outside the Icelandic capital, Ólafur Arnalds writes classical music that is mostly ethereal and ethereal. In the stoic piano sound, it seems that you can see the empty and lonely ice and snow, and you can smell the clear Icelandic air.
And musicians Björk, BangGang, Múm... In addition to music, Icelandic films can also glimpse the emptiness, dazedness and silence of Iceland.
There are not many Icelandic movies, which can be counted as the ranks of unpopular movies, and among the Icelandic movies I have seen, I must introduce you to the following films.
Rams
The Ram
Douban has a score of 7.4, which is probably the Icelandic movie with the largest number of people on Douban. People who have lived in big cities for a long time have a hard time experiencing the lonely and monolithic life of the herders in sparsely populated Iceland.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right">Children of Nature</h1>
Children of Nature
Douban 8.4 points, is so far the only Icelandic film shortlisted for the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film, although it is a romance film, but it is not sensational, there are only a few words of dialogue, but it is meaningful.
"Icebergs On a Tropical Island", "White Night Wedding", "Heart Stone", and "Valley of the Whales" are also well-received Icelandic films.
If you can't go to the moon, go to Iceland.