Blame it on the natural thermal pools, ample wine, native soup dishes, or the fact that the land of ice happens to be the home of the kindest people on earth, but Iceland, for all its rumored coldness, is indeed a place of extreme warmth and all-encompassing cool.

PAPER witnessed this first-hand in Reykjavík earlier this month for the 25th anniversary of Iceland Airwaves. The festival was a convergence of all the energetic magic of Iceland met with the wealth of imaginative music that only the small Nordic island could offer. During our three-day stint we heard, saw and felt some of the best music from around the globe and even got to speak to a few Iceland-based artists that won’t be able to keep their secret talents to their home country from much longer.

While running in layers to a colorful performance from Magdalena Bay on night one (they played Imaginal Disk from start to finish, chills), dancing in scarves during a raucous takeover from Lambrini Girls (the Brighton duo left the crowd smiling from ear to ear with their angsty punk songs, and riotous “fuck the patriarchy” chants) and swaying in tights during a nostalgia-inducing performance for The Vaccines (“Post Break-Up Sex” will forever be a bop), we got a real taste of what makes Iceland Airwaves an incomparable musical showcase (and we’re not just talking about the Kjötsúpa).

From venues that are actually art museums and protestant churches, to a community of musicians who play together, grew up together and encourage one another, to once-in-a-lifetime experiences like hearing Kjartan Sveinsson of Sigur Rós discuss each track of ( ) in the same studio it was recorded in (people cried, not saying who, but there was crying), this year’s festival left an indelible mark.

But the biggest impression we walked away with was the knowledge that Iceland is still fertile ground for some of the most inspired music and song-making on earth. In between festivities — like sampling scents at Fischersund, taking the seven-step ritual at Sky Lagoon, and crying (again) in public — PAPER sat down with Icelandic artists Elín Hall, Sunna Margrét and Lúpína to talk about their music, what they’re excited to share next and how their Icelandic roots impact their creative pursuits.

Lúpína

Scandi pop artist Lúpína is an enigmatic, whimsically dressed singer with a voice that pulls you into different dimensions, with jellyfish stage props and sea-themed makeup in tow. During the Iceland Airwaves weekend, she played at least one show a day — sharing tracks from her debut album, 2023’s ringluð, and recently released sophomore album marglytta. “It’s been really fun, I really like it,” she says of the festival. “Every time I perform I want to do it again ’cause it’s easier, this is perfect.”

After the release of her second album, Lúpína decided to imagine her live set. “I used to be solo, but now I have more live elements. He plays bass and drum samples and I’m playing more synths with loops. The vocal looping is something people seem to resonate with,” she says. At a recent showcase in Seattle, Lúpína’s live looping grabbed the attention of the audience, as well as their real-time collaboration. “I really enjoyed that moment,” she says of the ambient sounds in the room becoming part of her music. “I started the song while the audience was clapping for the previous song, then the echo for the claps got into the loops. It played in the beginning of every bar, like a ‘woo,’ and then I sang on top of that. It was like we did the performance together.”

For Lúpína, it’s important that each live set feels unique. “That’s the thing about my old set, it was just me, and that felt limiting,” she says. “Also I like to have big sounds. And when you play a gig and you see the same people you know they’ve seen you before, it felt like I can give more and make it special.”

When asked about Iceland and how artists and why it feels like such fertile ground for creativity, she shares her theory. “I feel like Icelandic people always want to do something different,” she says. “We always want to stand out in some way. We think in a more creative way. It’s also [pride]; we don’t want to be basic,” she laughs. “For some people, it’s like, ‘we’re not gonna make pop music, we’re better than that, I’m gonna make something different.’ Like Sigur Rós, it’s so cool but it’s so hard to put a genre on that. Also with Björk, she sings in a way that no one has song before,” she adds, with a smile. “We tend to think out of the box more than following the rules.”

Elìn Hall

Elín Hall is not only an award-winning actress and chart-topping pop star in Iceland but a singer-songwriter with cutting lyricism, beckoning her to the world stage. “It’s very exciting and terrifying at the same time,” she says when asked about her plans to pursue a global career. “It’s not something that I could’ve guessed would happen in a million years,” she adds. “Even the opportunities that I’ve gotten here locally have surpassed my expectations in every way.”

Growing up, Hall had no plans to build her creative pursuits outside of Iceland. “I was just thinking about the scene here and getting on the charts locally,” she says. Despite that, she recently picked up the Best Female Performance award at the Chicago Film Festival for her performance in When The Light Breaks, a look at where her talent could take her next. “I’ve gotten so many opportunities [in Iceland] because it’s such a small space,” she says. “It’s also very encouraged to take partake in art, music and dance. I feel like this is a paradise for that. You have a lot of freedom, also as a woman to do whatever you want.”

Still, even with the amount of success she’s gained in her career, she still has a tendency to “underestimate” herself. “When I won this award in Chicago, for a week I was waiting for that phone call, like the La La Land moment, when they read [the Best Actress award] wrong. I much rather live my life underestimating where I can go because I’m always pleasantly surprised,” she says. Hall also shares that she’s not interested in fame, not in the typical sense anyway. “That’s part of Icelandic culture,” she says. “As well I have experienced being prominent in the scene here and I have been doing acting and films that everyone has seen in this small country, and I know what it’s like for people to not see you as a person. I do crave to be accepted from the right people, a green light or a thumbs-up from the right person means the world to me, but I know from the experience of this small place, this testing ground that fame is something I will only tolerate,” she laughs.

Now her sights are set on releasing her third album, the follow-up to heyrist í mér (can you hear me) which was released earlier this year. “It’s almost ready,” she says. “I’m going to be debuting some of the songs tonight.” It’s Hall’s first time writing songs in English, a challenge she’s excited to take on. “What I truly wanted was to still be me and for it to transcend with me. That was the biggest goal — to not leave myself behind and everything I’ve created.”

Sunna Margrét​

Sunna Margrét recently released her debut album Finger on Tongue, her voice crystalline over staggering percussion and dizzying spirals of sound. It’s a trajectory she’s been on for years, since joining electro-pop act Bloodgroup in 2010 when she was just 18. Coming from a family of celebrated musicians, Iceland’s artist community has been at the nucleus of Sunna’s creative endeavors. “The collaboration between bands and musicians, that’s at the heart of it,” she says, when asked what makes Reykjavík such a unique place for artists. “It’s a small place, you’re constantly bumping into each other, your friends of friends of friends. Everyone knows each other. That’s what everyone is constantly doing, working on each other’s music.”

Sunna’s music, which combines glitter trip-hop, lo-fi beats and her haunting vocals, has been leaving a lasting effect on listeners, who’ve been able to watch her music transform in real-time, live. “There is one song I’ve been doing live for a few years that always seems to make an impression,” she says. “It’s an acapella song I wrote called ‘Amma,’ which means grandmother. Now, for my live version, I use a vocal looper. I loop everything live. The vocal and the simplicity, I transform that energy and integrate the whole band and it emerges into the end of the song. Then we bridge into another one, which is more built up with time. It ends in this really big power. That’s really fun to play.” She adds that she’s played it so many times but she’s still nervous. That sensation came up for her at a recent show in Seattle aimed at sharing Icelandic artists: “I had this moment towards the end of the song and… because they had cameras [for radio station KEXP live sessions] and I got nervous, I was like ‘I’m gonna break, I’m just gonna fall apart.’ But I managed to turn that energy in a split second into ‘Don’t freak out, go into bliss,’ and I just completely managed to go into full bliss mode. That does not happen all the time.”

A month before our conversation, Sunna released an echoing, staccato-paced indie-pop track called “Fern.” “You know like the plant, people are always asking me that it means… it’s just the plant,” she laughs. “We’re playing it for the first time live tonight. It’s always special when we play for the first time live. I’m really excited.” It’s a special track for Sunna, one of the first times she had the strong feeling to say something “direct” with her music. “Sometimes, when things aren’t going how you want, when people are abusing their power you just let it happen,” she says. “This is the opposite of that. This is when you say, ‘This is not okay; I’m gonna put my foot down.’ It’s a plea to say just listen to me. Listen to us. Can’t you this perspective? That’s what this song is about.”

Photography: Joana Fontinha, Julie Van Den Bergh, Jackson Ducasse