Reykjavik, the capital of Iceland, is home to a community of independent and professional artists who adorn the city’s walls with their expressive street art. 

Iceland is detached from the rest of the world. Sitting amid the North Atlantic, the island nation has been bestowed with many of nature’s greatest riches, its skies lit with the aurora borealis and its mountains covered up with volcanic soil. Although the country lacks any significant metropolitan areas, Reykjavik is a bustling center for art, culture and commerce. Hosting a plethora of world-famous galleries and art institutions, the city also explodes with street art covering its tunnels, bistros and houses.

The Dawn of Icelandic Street Art

The boom of graffiti and urban art began in the 1990s. Given Iceland’s remoteness, this wave of counterculture followed years after cities like New York and Berlin had their avant-garde movements. The sudden surge in taggers during the early 1990s was first met with resistance by Johann "Joi'' Jonmundsson, a city official who committed himself to painting over the illegal graffiti that appeared daily in the tunnels of the city. Although he initially opposed tagging, Jonmundsson was soon captivated by the beauty of the graffiti he so routinely erased. After meeting with Reykjavik’s city council, he OK’d graffiti in the Hlíðargöngin tunnel, allowing street artists to express themselves creatively as long as they did not portray violence or pornography. In doing so, Jonmundsson heralded the counterculture revolution which swept Reykjavik's art scene. 

However, after Jonmundsson left the scene, the renaissance of Icelandic 

street art perished. Due to the city’s strict “no-graffiti” policy, half of the city’s graffiti was erased from 2008 through 2012. Over the span of five years, Reykjavik’s council aggressively muted the urban art movement.

A Creative Center for Local Artists

Hjartatorg, or “Heart Park,” was a vacant lot downtown abandoned by urban planners following the 2008 economic collapse. It soon became a hub for artists of all mediums and expertise, serving as a communal venue for Reykjavik’s burgeoning urban art scene. Inspired by American hip-hop music and Nordic tradition, much of the art in this space was a menagerie of subversive, offbeat themes. Although Heart Park was demolished in 2013, it remains ingrained in the minds of Reykjavik’s inhabitants and visitors. 

Reykjavik’s Current Art Scene

The Reykjavik street art community was at risk of extinction until the launching of the Wall Poetry project sponsored in 2015 by the Reykjavik council, Urban Nation and Iceland Airwaves. In hopes of rekindling the pre-digital era of music marketing, Wall Poetry married mural art with new music releases. By connecting independent mural artists with musicians, Reykjavik reinvigorated its landscape with murals on the sides of high-rises and municipal buildings. Although most of the commissioned artists were not locals, this project opened up the city to more council-funded art projects. Today, Reykjavik showcases an impressive array of commissioned murals, tagging and street art, revealing the flourishing culture of independent Icelandic artists. 

In Reykjavik’s city center, one will undoubtedly come across a mural by Sara Riel, whose proposals were rejected by the city many times. Riel’s work makes its mark on homes and businesses of individuals she personally got permission from. Her art practice was fraught with backlash from city officials, but Riel managed to keep her murals up unscathed. Riel’s unique style toes the line between graphic art and mural painting, combining the clean-cut work of a digital piece with the flair of expressionist paintings.

The short-lived nature of graffiti and mural art is inextricably tied to the experience of street art itself. Reykjavik’s ever-changing policies on graffiti have discouraged local artists who found their work covered in sterilizing white paint the next day. Still, muralists and street artists alike continue to contribute to the eclectic mix of themes and styles in the Icelandic capital. With the few legalized street art spaces left in the city and the commissioning of mural art, the citizens of Reykjavik have grown fond of what at first repelled them. Today, when one sees the placid Nordic architecture from a distance, they cannot help but notice the ingenuity that covers the faces of many other buildings across Reykjavik.

Author: Heather Lim