Iceland’s Only Joke
October 19, 2009
A noble nation fueled by clean geothermal energy and a strong dose of quirkiness (they actually believe in elves, diddle around with Matthew Barney, etc.), the Icelanders are fun-loving, open, and pure at heart. I can make these broad generalizations after spending just five days in Iceland checking out the Airwaves Music Festival because there's only 300,000 Icelanders total, which is basically the population of Manhattan below 14th Street. So when stumbling around from venue to venue checking out the bands, you encounter a representative chunk of Icelanders in toto. The dudes are friendly and a tad aggro and like to throw them 'bows a bit too much as they jostle around the club -- they are Vikings after all -- but not in a headbutt-you-for-kicks sort of Glasgow Kiss way. The girls are pretty forward, pretty blonde (though not exclusively), and pretty fun. All in all a charming bunch, which makes Reykjavik a killer place to host a festival. They have a famous, stunning hot spring called the Blue Lagoon, which is worth the trip right there. But one thing the Icelanders do not have are jokes.
Me and my team of Reyka vodka-fueled anthropologists set out into Reykjavik armed with tape recorders and on a mission: to hear an Icelandic joke. After all, Iceland is a nation still reeling from a historic financial collapse. They believe in elves. They believe in copulating with elves (really!). They eat those adorable puffin birds. That right there should be sufficient comedic fodder (an elf and a puffin walk into a bank ...). So we interviewed a broad cross section of the populace hoping to discover the elusive Icelandic joke, speaking to newspaper editors, club promoters, clerks, secretaries, waiters, bartenders, bankers, fishermen, musicians, artists—a whole range of Icelanders. They only thing we got was the following (and from several different people, making this Iceland’s only official joke):
Q: What do you do if you get lost in an Icelandic forest?
[Pause for dramatic effect]
A: Stand up!
[Ed: Icelandic forests have extremely low trees.]
So, note to aspiring stand up comedians: Go to Iceland. Why try your luck in LA or New York? There’s much less competition in Iceland, and everyone speaks English. If you have more than one joke, and it doesn’t involve forestry, you’re Iceland’s Chris Rock.
Photo: Eric Ervin
Comments (4)
Posted by Tati on Mon Oct 19, 2009 at 09.36 pm
Iceland is f*n’ great.
Do you really care that they don’t joke, or not really?
Posted by anonymous on Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 04.21 am
Apparently, based on the “informed” commenter above, there is no written humour either.
Posted by Ari Eldjárn on Tue Oct 20, 2009 at 11.12 am
Thanks for the feedback anonymous!
There’s always room for improvement and I guess my comment wasn’t very funny after all.
But then again, I did write it when I was feeling very depressed and perhaps I put too much faith in it to judge correctly whether it was worth posting.
I’ve been going to a therapist for some time who says I have confidence issues and told me to write a random comedic comment on the web as a homework assignment. I was terrified to do it.
I spent a week building up the confidence to be able to actually write anything and then spent around four days writing my comment. Editing, polishing, rearranging, the works. The process was both emotionally and physically draining.
I was thrilled when I finally mustered up the nerve to post it yesterday. I called my father and asked him to do it for me. He said, and I’ll never forget this: “Son. I believe in you. But you have to believe in yourself.”
And for the first time in years, I put myself out there. And I was truly thrilled. The future lay bright ahead.
Until I read your comment. Then everything shattered and my universe became gray again.
I just wanted to entertain. I thought a little joke might bring a smile to someone.
Why does everything I do fail?
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Posted by Ari Eldjárn on Mon Oct 19, 2009 at 04.52 pm
Being both Icelandic and a stand-up comedian I must protest, Sir.
This is not Iceland’s only joke.
The first recored Icelandic joke is from 874, when our first settler Ingólfur Arnarson remarked to his slave Karli: “What a totally amazing excellent discovery. NOT!”
That joke was told 1118 years prior to “Wayne’s World” and would later become the centre of a hard fought law-suit between Mike Myers and the Icelandic government who own the publishing right to all Icelandic jokes written prior to 1981. Myers eventually settled out of court for an undisclosed sum.
In fact, jokes have long since been one of Iceland’s main exports (28% GDP), second only to fish and disappointment, which remain our main exports to this day.
And according to a rough estimate, out of all the world’s countries, Iceland is actually the country that has most jokes, per capita. It might be worth to note however that the phrase “per capita” is itself considered a joke in Iceland.
But I agree, send your stand-up comedians over here. Not because we don’t have any of our own but because we love them: Chris Rock, Dave Chappelle, Sarah Silverman, David Cross, Demetri Martin, Louis CK.... I could go on and on. You guys don’t know how lucky and spoilt for choice you are!
How do you write a smiley on this darn thing?