#Brynhildur Guðjónsdóttir

[gregor-samsung]

Okkar eigin Osló [Our Own Oslo] (Reynir Lyngdal - 2011)

[hatari-translations]

Hákon interview on ‘Vloggað um ekki neitt’ - translation/summary

This video is a 25-minute interview of Matthías by Hákon from Iceland Music News, about a play that Matthías was commissioned to write for the National Theater (Þjóðleikhúsið). In the process, they talk about how they met, the beginning of Matthías’s interest in theater, and the experience of being a teenager being constantly lectured at.

As it's quite long, I'm not going to translate word for word; this will be mostly summarizing, with choice quotes.

The play in question is called Vloggað um ekki neitt (Vlogging about nothing), and it's written with a specific age group in mind - the theater commissioned him to write a play for two actors aimed at ~13-15-year-olds. The theater's educational department does this, selecting demographics and commissioning educational shows meant to appeal to those groups.

Matthías thinks it's a challenge to write for this particular group; it's not obvious that a play for teenagers should be such and such. "I think teenagers just want to be treated like sapient beings, people with taste, and then it's pretty hard to be deciding, 'Yeah, this is like this, because you're teenagers.'" What's annoying about being a teenager, he posits, is that society as a whole is always trying to patronize you.

Hákon says that he remembers, from being a teenager, that there's also a pretty huge maturity gap between thirteen- and fifteen-year-olds. Matthías agrees, and adds that when you're a teenager you're developing your tastes and your self-image, feeling yourself reflected in the things that you like that somebody else might not, and that makes it difficult to categorize you as an age group. The last thing you want is being told, "This is for you, because you're fifteen" - either you like the thing or you don't.

"I also think that teenagers are generally... you aren't going to be telling them anything they don't know. I can imagine that if I were fifteen and I were invited to see a play that some random Matthías Tryggvi dude has written with your age group in mind, I'd just be like 'Okay, this is going to be some drug prevention bullshit, I've heard it all before, I know exactly what it's going to be like, I've been to the theater, I know what this is.'"

Hákon says teenagers as an audience vary a lot. He brings up Skrekkur, a popular youth talent competition for the 13-15-year-old stage of Reykjavík schools, where groups of teens will put together a short theatrical performance, each school will pick one to represent them, and then the schools compete. Matthías notes Hákon has hosted Skrekkur and participated in it, but Hákon corrects him, saying he never participated; at the time, as a young teen, he didn't think theater was very cool at all. Matthías says, "Those upbeat, positive types were just a bit intolerable. That's where I was at, too, at that age." They agree that they were basically the 'difficult' teenagers that might be in the audience.

Matthías says that he saw Leg (Uterus), a black comedy musical about teenage pregnancy by Hugleikur Dagsson, at this theater, and thought it was awesome. (This was in 2007! I saw it too, and it was pretty great. I was 17 at the time; Matthías would've been thirteen.) He loved Hugleikur's books and their grotesque humour, which he still jives with. Leg really opened up the world of theater to him, surprised him with what theater could be. And he hopes Vloggað um ekki neitt could be that for at least one teenager.

They move on to talking about the play itself. Matthías notes it's still in progress, and he's been working on writing it on and off for more than a year (I'm going to guess he was contacted by the theater about doing this during or after Hatari's participation in Söngvakeppnin; Hatari's huge popularity with youth probably made the directors of the theater immediately pin him as likely to write something teens could get excited about). He expects it to go into rehearsals this fall.

The play is about two people trying to become successful vloggers on YouTube. Matthías says really it's kind of like what they're doing right now, "just projecting yourself, and what you have to say, no matter how ill-advised it may be, out into the world." Hákon will be playing one of the two characters, Konráð.

Matthías notes that one thing about writing teenagers, and characters on social media or YouTube or the like, is that you're entering their domain. His main source on YouTubers is his fifteen-year-old sister. "It's their home field, they know how this works, they know what's cool. So very early in the process, I just admitted defeat. I'm not about to write cool social media content for these characters, or write it to be cool. They're always going to fail. It'll be some kind of attempt the characters are making to make good content on YouTube, but it's doomed to fail, because it's the audience that knows what good content is."

Hákon does think the characters are making honest attempts, having read the script so far, and they're honest characters, critical of themselves, perhaps too critical at times. "Yeah, they're scared to take the leap, scared to publish the material they're recording." Hákon says that's probably a common issue for vloggers, whether to publish something or ditch it or start over. Matthías says he's pretty sure PewDiePie, who his sister introduced him to, records a deluge of material and has somebody else editing it for him. It's become a bit of a production, even though it's just him at his computer playing video games (or other things). The characters in the play have that dilemma, as they're making content but are unsure how to present it and edit it.

Hákon talks about how as an artist you have to have a degree of self-reflection and be able to recognize when an idea isn't going anywhere. Matthías says when you're recording or writing or creating something, you enter a bit of a manic state, start to have delusions about how awesome it is, which the characters do, only to hit a wall and realize actually that sucked. Hákon: "And then they might also get delusions about how terrible it is, because it might be neither amazing nor completely awful." Matthías: "Maybe just a little tacky."

Hákon goes over how this isn't the first time the two of them work together, having attended the Academy of the Arts together. He notes Matthías wrote Þvottur when they were in their first year, as a side project, and that was how they met. He says Matthías has a recognizable style; Matthías says "That's fun." Hákon asks if Þvottur was Matthías's first play; he says no, but it was a kind of first effort anyway, as it was the first one he directed. He also notes that Hákon helped him with that, having more experience, and others - at which Hákon brings up that Klemens helped as well, as he built the set. "Which was 'simple but clever' according to a critic," Matthías adds.

Matthías's actual first foray into playwriting was when he and a friend took part in translating-slash-adapting Gertrude Stein's "Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights". "It's a really interesting piece, very experimental, in some sense not very conventional in its textual structure. And it was really - again, a whole new world opened. Whoa, is this a play? Okay, wow." Working on this adaptation/translation with director Brynhildur Guðjónsdóttir was hugely inspiring for him. "After that process, I've really gotten into it, seeing students at the school acting out lines that Ingólfur and I had been polishing."

From there, he moved on to Ungleikur, where young people work together to write, direct and act in their own plays. He wrote three pieces for it all in all, and then Þvottur independently. He says it was really good to be able to make that connection and try this out at the Academy of the Arts.

Returning to Vloggað um ekki neitt, Hákon asks what besides his sister sparked the idea for this piece. Matthías talks about how he attended his sister's civil confirmation ceremony (the non-religious version of a Christian confirmation; confirmations are so commonplace and important in Iceland that any thirteen-year-old that simply doesn't have one would be considered weird, so there's a non-religious version done by the Icelandic Ethical Humanist Association). At the ceremony, there were a bunch of speeches by various speakers, and he thought it was really clear there how much everyone was trying to lecture them. One of the speeches was a parable about frogs. The frogs were all hopping, but then some people came and yelled insults at them. All of them immediately floundered somehow and fell out of line, except one of the frogs, and the punchline of the story was that that frog was deaf. He could just see in the faces of the thirteen-year-olds that nobody could make heads or tails of this story; it was completely irrelevant to them. He thinks this desperation to push you to succeed and not do this and that and think about your health and your mental health all just becomes noise at a certain point. He can relate to that, remembering when he was a teenager himself.

Hákon agrees that that tends to be how you experience this stuff as a teenager, and that this is also visible in the play, which includes that parable about the frogs. The play also shows a sort of exaggerated version of preventative education. Konráð and the other character, Sirrý, are trying to educate teenagers watching their vlogs ("a hopeless project when everyone's just watching PewDiePie," Matthías quips). So the characters are including a lot of hard facts about drugs, cigarettes, sleep, exercise, screen time, bullying, etc., which they're kind of aggressively trying to convey to the audience. The idea, for Matthías, was to create a character who's just spewing all that stuff and all that noise at a camera, not knowing who's even watching.

They talk about how Matthías has been appointed as one of the City Theater's two playwrights for next winter, after Vloggað um ekki neitt is done, though he expects to still attend the rehearsals ("You're not chained to the City Theater" - the National Theater and the City Theater are the two big competing theaters in Reykjavík). He also might become one of three people working on "Þjóðleikur", a project where playwrights write short plays with many characters, to be produced and performed by groups of teens around the country.

"And then Hatari gets mixed up with all this." "Yes. Hatari will be - maybe there's a performance of Vloggað um ekki neitt, and I'm there in costume, and Klemens and Einar are there, and we do a song or two and then introduce the play." (He's joking.)

As they sign off they sanitize their hands and remind everyone to keep two meters apart (Matthías is unsure if they've quite been placed two meters apart here; Hákon thinks it is two meters, but I'm with Matthías in thinking it seems like a bit less).

[superman-returns-playlist]

Return of Superman EP304b

Title: Finding Happiness by Chance Part 2

| YouTube | Spotify | Twitter |

0:05 Something To Believe by David Choi 0:40 Life Is Rosy by Jess Penner 1:25 기차와 소나무 by Lee Kyu-seok 7:29 Flying Duck Flying Duck by Cherry Filter 8:10 아무리 생각해도 난 너를 by Sweet Sorrow (Alone in Love ost) 8:40 간지럽게 by Marmalade Kitchen 8:47 Crazy In Love by Beyoncé 17:03 Autumn Leaves by Andy Williams 17:34 Back Again by Taxiride 18:15 Si Tu Vois Ma Mère by Sidney Bechet 18:43 Daydream by The Lovin' Spoonful 19:24 Show Time by Ra Mi Ran & Lee Sungkyoung (From Miss & Mrs. Cops OST) 20:20 Tasty Tasty Tasty by 혜이니 22:45 Strawberry Macaron by Princess Disease 24:00 Amada MIA, Amore Mio by Tito Puccio 26:00 Blackbird by Sarah McLachlan 28:40 Sh-Boom by The Trevor Horn Orchestra 32:18 Never Too Late by Elton John 34:58 9 To 5 by Dolly Parton 39:56 Game On by Hans Zimmer (Madagascar 3 OST) 41:45 Kitty The Kangaroo by Connie Francis 44:55 Milord by Brynhildur Guðjónsdóttir 45:41 Honex by Rupert Gregson-Williams (Bee Movie OST) 48:03 Love by Robin Stjernberg 49:52 Hip by MAMAMOO

[hatari-translations]

Berglind Festival mockumentary - translation

A while back, I translated this talk show interview from Vikan með Gísla Marteini. As it turns out, this was not all there was to it: in this video, we can see the full Hatari segment, which includes a short, hilarious mockumentary on Hatari by comedian Berglind Festival (who would do these humourous segments on Gísli Marteinn’s show), starting at about 7:48 in the linked video (it should link to that timestamp). I’ve translated it (and the brief dialogue that comes after it) below, but please watch the video alongside the translation; it’s funnier with everyone’s expressions.

The band Hatari will go on stage to represent Iceland in Eurovision in Tel Aviv on May 14th, and the nation is holding its collective breath. "We'll finally win Eurovision," say some. "I demand Hatari assume full responsibility for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict," say others. But let's start at the beginning. What is this Hatari thing?

Iceland. The year is nineteen ninety-something. Hatari is born at the National Hospital and goes through traditional schooling. Suddenly everyone's talking about Hatari and they're heading to Tel Aviv to lead their nation to victory in Eurovision. But what are these leather-clad beings up to? When did they first take an interest in toppling capitalism? And how are they going to buy all these straps when capitalism has fallen? What is their true goal?

[Berglind interviews Guðlaugur Þór Þórðarson, Minister of Foreign Affairs.]

BERGLIND: Why did the Ministry of Foreign Affairs decide to found Hatari?

GUÐLAUGUR: This is our contribution to Eurovision. I think it's very important that the Ministry of Foreign Affairs safeguards the interests of the country and its people, and Eurovision is definitely a place where we want to make a difference. Really, it's a wonder this is the first time the Ministry has directly interfered in the way that we're doing now.

BERGLIND: Have you made any plans at the Ministry for Hatari's victory in the contest?

GUÐLAUGUR: Sure. Of course, we have a precedent, which was the Independence Festival [massive 1994 celebration of fifty years of Icelandic independence, remembered for huge traffic jams], but we expect this to be bigger, involving more people. And we've decided to celebrate not just in the Icelandic embassies in Europe, but also our embassies in North America and Asia.

BERGLIND: Is it true that Iceland will be one of the biggest BDSM destinations in the world after this?

GUÐLAUGUR: I think that's very likely. We're going to have to see how it plays out, of course, but it's something we're strongly expecting.

And what about the children? It turns out Eurovision is not only for the gays: it's also for kids. Recent studies show that our children have become both more open and less prejudiced after Hatari won Söngvakeppnin. At the same time, kids' orgies have grown in popularity, and community centers' BDSM clubs are fully booked.

But despite the huge popularity of Hatari, not everyone is thrilled with the band.

[Berglind sits down with a robed figure whose face can't be seen, but I suspect it's Andrean.]

BERGLIND: Do you think Hatari is a total sellout?

FIGURE [titled "a member of Hatari's youth movement from the early years"]: Yeah... Mm.

But the inevitable question on everyone's minds is probably: what effects will leather straps have on our culture and society as a whole?

[She interviews Sólhrafn Elí Gunnarsson, board member of the Icelandic BDSM society.]

BERGLIND: Your people have got to be pretty pumped for Eurovision this year.

SÓLHRAFN: Yeah, we are.

BERGLIND: But well, Hatari is very popular with kids. Have you had any kids trying to register for your organization?

SÓLHRAFN: No, that hasn't happened.

BERGLIND: But what does Hatari mean for our culture?

SÓLHRAFN: More leashes. More leather. More spikes.

BERGLIND: Only fun.

According to the dictionary, culture is the furthering of human qualities and what separates us from the animals. But... animals are often also on a leash.

[She sits down to interview Bergsteinn Sigurðsson, "culture guy", and Guðrún Sóley Gestsdóttir, "culture lady"]

BERGLIND: What does Hatari mean for our culture?

BERGSTEINN: That's a good question, Berglind. I think instead of viewing Hatari as a band, or as performance art, it's more accurate to regard it as a state of being.

GUÐRÚN SÓLEY: Exactly. A state of being that describes the familiar symbols of consumerism, rearranges them, and thus examines the overlap between cultural and societal phenomena.

BERGSTEINN: Exactly! Hatari is stepping into the territory of visual meaning by evoking stereotypes about capitalistic prosperity and wrapping them in a certain uncanniness, thus reconstructing cultural and ideological systems, in an attempt to redefine the human experience.

GUÐRÚN SÓLEY: All that's left is the contemplation of whether we're dealing with a sincere staging or a staged sincerity.

BERGSTEINN: Also the guy who plays the gimp is seriously hot.

[She interviews Goddur (Guðmundur Oddur Magnússon), professor at the Academy of the Arts.]

BERGLIND: What does Hatari mean for our culture?

GODDUR: Well, it means that we're putting real artists out there. It's a really strong group of artists, both musically and visually, who know how to reach the souls of people using what we call sarcasm or opposites. Everyone knows that love has won, but it's tacky to say it. That's why you use the opposite, and you get this strong reaction, at a time, in a place, where - you can't imagine how much hate there is in that area.

BERGLIND: But what will happen if Hatari wins the contest?

GODDUR: They'll definitely get worldwide attention, because it's so loaded with meaning. And it's only going to do good.

BERGLIND: What's your favorite part of the song?

GODDUR: Well, the chorus, of course. That's where you get the goosebumps.

Is the Icelandic nation ready to end up as the victor? I felt as if with every question I asked, hundreds of others arose. I felt as if Eurovision were eating me up from the inside, and only one man could save me.

[She interviews Friðrik Dór Jónsson, singer.]

BERGLIND: Friðrik, what's going to happen to us?

[Friðrik looks worried and uncertain and then shakes his head slightly, in silence.]

  After this mockumentary segment, we cut back to the main show, with Hatari sitting on the couch with finance minister Bjarni Benediktsson and actresses Brynhildur Guðjónsdóttir and Salka Sól Eyfeld. Gísli Marteinn says that we've now learned a lot about Hatari (he has a grammatical fumble and asks if they can cut that, which is amusing), and says that he thinks he's speaking for the whole Icelandic nation in saying we'll all be crossing our fingers hoping for Hatari to make us proud and do great.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: I know Einar's pumped for this, or so I've heard.

Einar stares, emotionless.

MATTHÍAS: Yeah, you may be right.

GÍSLI MARTEINN: If you need a backup, Bjarni here isn't too dissimilar...

MATTHÍAS: As a backup drum gimp?

GÍSLI MARTEINN: I don't know if he's as good at the drums, or the bass line, as Einar.

KLEMENS: We do need a bass gimp, too.

SALKA: Isn't it all fake anyway?

MATTHÍAS: In Eurovision everything is fake, but he really does play the drums at our gigs, admirably.

Then Gísli Marteinn thanks the guests and bids them farewell.

[hatari-translations]

Reflections of a Boy - transcript/translation

This is a short film featuring Matthías. It’s only five and a half minutes, and there’s no actual dialogue, only a slow voiceover with a lot of silences (sadly not Matthías’s voice), so it’s only a few actual sentences of text. Transcript and translation below! With a lengthy digression on the translation of Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights seen briefly onscreen.

Icelandic transcript

Á hverri nóttu dreymir mig sama drauminn. Það er sami draumurinn sem mig dreymdi í dag, og í gær.

Þú myndir örugglega ekki skilja það.

Allt er að hverfa í kringum mig, gufar upp í ekkert. Allt í einu tek ég eftir því að... ég er að hverfa líka.

Á sjö ára fresti endurnýja allar frumurnar sig í líkamanum, nýjar í stað þeirra gömlu. Vissirðu það?

Ég finn fyrir því.

Hvítt landslag leysist upp. Steinar verða að sameindum, sameindir að atómum, atóm að engu.

English translation

Every night, I have the same dream. The same dream that I dreamt today, and the day before that.

You probably wouldn’t understand.

Everything around me is disappearing, evaporating into nothing. All of a sudden I notice that... I’m disappearing, too.

Every seven years, all the cells in your body are renewed. New ones replace the old ones. Did you know that?

I can feel it.

A white landscape dissolves. Rocks become molecules, molecules become atoms, atoms become nothing.

Notes

This is all pretty straightforward to translate - but man, this’d be very hard to parse for a non-native Icelandic speaker; it’s really mumbled for what you’d usually hear in film. Good thing you’ve got me.

At about 0:54 in the video, we see a sheet of paper, where Matthías has written some poetic text. It’s a bit hard to read thanks to the angle of the paper, the handwriting and the video quality, but as best I can tell (with second opinions from Elís and firring from the Discord and an incredibly helpful pointer from russetmantle), it says:

   Fástus

En hvað er það sem drepa skal?

   Mefisto

Þá höfum um það ekkert val.

   Fástus

En hvað þá?/En hvað mun ske?

Translated:

   Faustus

But what is it that is to be killed?

   Mephisto

Then let’s not leave it up to choice.

   Faustus

But what then?/But what will happen?

This is part of a translation of Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights by Gertrude Stein, which Matthías, Ingólfur Eiríksson and Brynhildur Guðjónsdóttir translated for MR’s production of it in 2013. Presumably, he hasn’t yet decided which translation he wants for the last line. The lines that he’s translating, from Act III, Scene II, originally go:

   Faustus

But if I kill what then will.

   Mephisto

It is I who have an iron will.

   Faustus

But if I kill what will happen then.

His translation is not completely literal, of course, because Matthías is going for rhyme and meter.

[hatari-translations]

I’ve been asked to translate this pre-ESC interview, which is pretty interesting! Since it’s eight minutes long and a lot of text, I’m not going to transcribe the whole thing, just translate/summarize what is said in the same vein as my translation of the People Behind the Costumes documentary.

Dramatis personae

The other people with Hatari in the interview there are:

- The host is Gísli Marteinn Baldursson, long-time talk show host. He’s also been RÚV’s Eurovision commentator for a good few years now.

- Bjarni Benediktsson (usually nicknamed Bjarni Ben), finance minister. Yes, the same one whose baking ad they were parodying that one time. Yes, he’s still finance minister. No, actually, after the 2016 election he was prime minister for a bit, until that government imploded because of more scandals, and after that election we just didn’t have a government for a while as none of the possible complicated multi-party coalitions worked out, until the Left-Green movement sold their souls to get together with the Independence Party and he got to be finance minister again. Independence Party voters are distressingly loyal and also like 20-25% of the country for some reason.

- Brynhildur Guðjónsdóttir, actress.

- Salka Sól Eyfeld, actress.

(I don’t watch this show, so I have no idea why on earth this is the combination of people he had on that night.)

English translation

The video starts with Gísli Marteinn interrupting something to introduce new guests, and explaining that this is being taped in advance because by the time it’s aired Hatari are going to be on their way to Tel Aviv. He introduces them as “the joy and pop band Hatari, or the dystopian electronica band Hatari”. Matthías, Klemens and Einar walk in with bottles of SodaDream that they offer to everyone, and Einar very deliberately squeezes in next to Bjarni Ben instead of with the rest of the band.

Everyone expresses their delight at getting to try SodaDream, and Klemens suggests a toast. Gísli Marteinn expresses his wishes for them to do well abroad, Bjarni Ben agrees.

Gísli Marteinn: “Welcome home, Einar, from the tour with Vök! Did that all go well?”

Einar stares silently into the camera.

Gísli Marteinn: “Right, Einar... he’ll just go over that later.”

Matthías: “He’s being punished.”

Gísli Marteinn is amused, then goes over how now it’s all about Hatari, a wonderful band, who won Söngvakeppnin and is currently working on bringing down capitalism. “How’s that going?”

Matthías: “It’s going well. Of course we have the loyal support of voters and our sponsors, and listeners, so we believe that as the momentum builds, we will succeed.”

Klemens agrees that they’ve built a lot of support and they’re planning to build up more; Matthías says they’re very flattered and touched by what they’ve achieved.

Gísli Marteinn: “Well, when you’ve gotten the finance minister himself on board with your anticapitalism, victory is clearly in sight.”

Matthías: “Yes. It’s basically in the bag.”

Gísli Marteinn goes over how they’re heading off soon and there’s a lot of interest in Hatari. “Are you feeling any stage fright? You know you’ll be followed everywhere out there, and everyone wants you to do something really brilliant and clever, do something, say something...”

Matthías: “Sure. Well, stage fright we can deal with. It’s more the tension over how this contest is being held where it is. The contest is a beautiful thing, in that it’s about peace and unity, but it’s being held in a country marred with conflict and disunity. And we said we’d use our agenda-setting powers to put those issues on the agenda, and that’s quite a project.”

Gísli Marteinn: “So are you sticking with... do you have a plan for how you’re going to do that?”

Matthías: “Well, plans A, B, C and D. I change my mind on which daily, but yeah. Yeah. It’s all according to plan.”

Klemens: “Of course, we get all our answers sent to us from Svikamylla ehf. every day, so we just take it day by day.”

Gísli Marteinn. “Right. But this is a massive affair, I mean, you’re bringing an entire media organization with you, Icelandic [sic] Music News.”

Matthías: “Very true. The most honest news organization in the country.”

Gísli Marteinn: “It’s wonderful. Very honest. They really prioritize honesty.”

Matthías: “Yes.”

Klemens: “...in the history of Iceland.”

Matthías: “Trust and courage.”

Gísli Marteinn talks about the costumes, and Matthías explains about the collaboration with creative studio Döðlur. Gísli Marteinn says Einar is there “all fired up” (it’s a bit hard to translate this phrase, “í miklu stuði”, which is literally more like “in a great mood” but really here means something more like oh, yeah, he’s doing exactly what he does best, awesomely). Klemens thanks SodaDream for sponsoring them.

Brynhildur says it’s very good sparkling water, but still kind of disappointing. Salka asks “Because it’s not champagne?” Brynhildur points out that no, it’s in the ingredients, and Matthías confirms: “Oh, yes, it’s carbonated water and disappointment.”

Gísli Marteinn goes over how we know 90% of the nation will be watching them compete in the semifinals (Icelanders are very passionate about Eurovision), hoping they’ll qualify, and asks if they’re as preoccupied with how they do.

Matthías: “How we do is important, but the other thing [i.e. putting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on the agenda] is more significant. We didn’t necessarily expect to get this far, and we don’t really know to what extent we could hope for victory, and haven’t really known that from the start. We’ve tried to use our agenda-setting powers, as we keep repeating, but we just wanted to ask - well, we hope people at home will ask themselves, and I’d not least like to ask all of you here, not least you, Bjarni, being in the government - about these issues, don’t you think it’s right to go out there and put these issues on the agenda, and recognize Palestine as an independent state? We are, after all, one of the countries who do so, and I’m proud of that.”

Gísli Marteinn: “Right. We’re one of few nations who recognize both, aren’t we? Well, what do you say on the couch?”

Bjarni: “Well, I think there’s no question that we should participate, and I personally always believe in dialogue, and I don’t believe in exclusion and burning bridges...”

Matthías: “Do you think Palestine should be recognized as a state?”

Bjarni: “That, on the other hand, is an entirely different issue, and I passed on that vote when that happened. It’s a process that’s had a very long buildup, but it was handled by parliament, and...”

Gísli Marteinn: “Well, the official policy of the Icelandic government is...”

Bjarni: “...a two-state solution, yes. But it’s very important to have peace on both sides of that border, and in recent years we’ve often discussed Israel and Palestine in parliament, and I think the location of the contest this year should absolutely not prevent Iceland’s participation. I think that’s ridiculous.”

(I think Einar is staring extra-hard into the camera throughout all this.)

Gísli Marteinn asks the actresses if they were on the boycott wagon. Salka says she never really formed an opinion, but she heard out both sides, and she’s very happy with Hatari’s act and was rooting for them from day one; she’s not worried about them out there and thinks they’ll make the Icelandic nation proud, and she hopes they’ll let their voices be heard.

Brynhildur: “We’re sending well-educated, well-informed and beautiful young people who know exactly what they’re doing.”

Salka: “I trust them 100%.”

Gísli Marteinn starts trying to wrap things up, and Klemens interrupts for some closing words: “Shouldn’t we clarify the message of our song a bit? We consider it to be a dystopia, and it’s a contemplation on power and powerlessness, hope and hopelessness, and if we don’t come together and forget to love, then hate will prevail. And that’s a message that should be heard in Israel and Palestine, as well as elsewhere in the world.”

I think this was pretty brilliant, because honestly I had no idea that Bjarni Ben was reluctant to recognize Palestinian statehood but Hatari sure just used their agenda-setting powers in this talk show interview to establish this for everyone watching.