I didn’t want this photo. I was six and very shy.

My mum, Hafdís, bribed me with a My Little Pony stable and said I’d be thankful one day.

Backstage in Reykjavík, I sat in the green room doing a word search while Europe got ready to play to a packed arena. I think the venue may have been a converted horse stable — I need to check that.

My dad was the band promoter making it all happen.

Between 1986–1990 he brought bands to Iceland and somehow always found a way to make it work — alongside running his hair salon, Töff, on Laugavegur.

If only I’d had a camera back then.

This is the start of a new project: Bits + Bobs.

#bitsandbobs #icelandmusicscene #backstage #musicmemories #familyarchive #behindthescenes #rockhistory #personalarchive

BITS + BOBS

Bits + Bobs is an ongoing archive-led project exploring fragments of my parents’ lives and work.

The project has grown out of loss — both of my parents passed away four months apart in 2012 — and a desire to return to that time, to understand it more fully, and to reconnect with my own sense of identity and roots.

One chapter focuses on the music scene in Iceland during the late 1980s, with other chapters emerging over time as the archive expands.

Bringing together photographs, ephemera, interviews, and other people’s memories alongside my own — including personal VHS recordings and recovered broadcast material — Bits + Bobs traces small moments, backstage stories, and cultural fragments. Some are complete, others still in progress — part recollection, part reconstruction.

The project is being developed with the intention of forming a wider public body of work, with potential outcomes including exhibition, moving image, and publication.