Based in Iceland, he is a singer, songwriter, guitar player who last year released three singles and a 15-song album. In recent years he has extensively toured Australia, the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Europe, playing over one hundred live concerts per year. He has been written about by the German edition of Rolling Stone as well as a notable magazine in Australia. He has been releasing original music since 2009 and has almost 36 thousand monthly listeners on Spotify and more than three-quarters of a million combined video views on his official YouTube channel. Along the way, at one point his band participated in the final 5 competition on BBC World Service’s Next Big Thing, playing for millions of viewers and listeners all over the world.
“It’s a very Icelandic thing. We don’t like to take credit for anything because if you take credit then you have to take responsibility, and people will blame you if it goes wrong.”
“I get inspired a lot by just my travels and the people I meet, and kind of my philosophy just develops around my adventures.”
“I thought, like, ‘Are these the three founding blocks, like the three basic building blocks of any singer-songwriter: ya’ know, the hurt of the world, and then the being alone in the forest – solitude, ya’ know, to create – and then the wanderlust, to spread the story, the song that you wrote’.”
“In folk (music) basically the older you get it’s like cheese – you’re old and smelly and everyone loves you even more.”
“Artists like us that have kind of reached a certain degree of success, it’s a huge responsibility for us to sing these songs that our grandmothers and grandfathers got really drunk and were wailing around. So, it’s kind of a responsibility to keep this well clean and full of water so the people of Iceland can still enjoy this thread into our past.”
“My philosophy is, the better you have rehearsed, the more space there is for spontaneity.”
“Sometimes I really like to take an Icelandic idea, translate it to English in a palatable way, in a way that an English-speaking audience can understand, and they will catch the idea, but it’s a novel way for them to hear.”
“The reason that Kris Kristofferson is such a huge influence on me, and of course Joni Mitchell as well, but I saw Kris Kristofferson in concert in Iceland and then, I mean, for you in America, it’s a very pedestrian thing to have seen those stars in concert because they pass through your city every now and then. But for us this is something that happens once every 20 years, to get Kris Kristofferson – or maybe not!”
“It was such a life altering experience for me to witness that, and I said, ‘I wanna be able to do this. I don’t care if I only do it for 50 to 100 people at a time. But I want to be able to make people feel like (Kris Kristofferson) made me feel, this utter kindness, this inclusion, this raw honesty’.”
“It is still (singer-songwriters’) responsibility to be the guardians of certain truths and kindness and to try to be servants of society – to serve communities.”
“I never call the people that listen to my music ‘fans’ because that implies a power dynamic that I’m not willing to participate in… Letting go of any kind of ego is one of the most important things when you approach music from this perspective.”
“I feel I make a positive impact on the world, and I don’t need more than that, really.”
“Wanderlust”
“November”