In W.H. Auden and Louis MacNeice’s Letters from Iceland they include one quote about the Icelandic landscape from a 19th Century observer: “If the Italian landscape is like Mozart, if in Switzerland the sublimity and sweetness correspond in art to Beethoven, then we may take Iceland as the type of nature of the music of the moderns – say Schumann at his oddest and wildest.”

Only the moderns’ most atonal symphony could accompany Ísafjörður. It is wedged between two near vertical black-white streaked escarpments that travel kilometres up into the air, high bright cliffs set against the dull white air. A knife-blue lake streaks between the cliffs, and the imminent cliffs reinforce the sense of being near the edge, where things end and the negative over-exposes.

The fishing town is situated in the northern fjords, half-lakes situated between tentacular spits of land that reach out like fingers on the map. The town is small, with 4,000 inhabitants, constructed out of sheets of corrugated iron – greens and dirty ochres look out of the fog, and snow insulates the graves of hundreds of fishermen outside the local church.

We watch Tower of London ravens peck at the curing fish fillets as we trudge our way to Aldrei fór ég suður (I Never Went South) festival, organised by Matthew Herbert roster boy Mugison. On our first day in Ísafjörður, we meet the legend that is Mugison, who exudes a quiet cool cultivated abroad and refrigerated by years pioneering the Reykjavic music scene.

He is typical of the ‘new’ wave of Icelandic music that, as Björk explains in a documentary on the genre, fully embraces its runic madness – after decades of cultural insecurity, of occupation, of punk avatar scenes, Iceland has arrived.

Here in the north, Mugison explains, the cold forces a sense of communion; here he has organized the event in an old cement factory which, despite the snow maelstrom achieves that sense of communion. The factory is in no way comfortable, those not hermetically sealed against the cold suffer without a hearty uptake of hard liquor and local dance steps.

Inside, kids trail legs over the side of the stage as an odd spectacle of what can only be described as a Salvation Army band look-a-like strike up a surreal tune. Mugison appears soon after, playing an array of impassioned blues numbers that are aeons away from his fare at Accidental records. His Christmas jumper – and his music – a look favoured by a largeproportion of the audience, bar a few Reykjavic hipsters – seems tempered by a self-awareness and pride with respect to his culture.

Lara Runars follows, bringing some heat to the Clash scribe’s frozen hair with some Caetano Veloso-soft vocals from under her poncho. We take a break from the packed floor for some in-car drinks-mixing with a Berlin-based journalist who was wearing an overcoat resembling a mid-70s shag pile carpet which he valiantly insisted was Astrakhan. Despite stylistic differences, we got along like a blazing house fire and after consumption of a soup bowl of variegated liquids (we had no cups) to a soundtrack of calypso we returned in the direction of the pit.

On the way however I encountered a pair of Filipino revellers who worked at a fish factory in town. Undaunted by the pressing differences between Ísafjörður and Manilla, they treated me to some cold beers and conversation (mainly conducted in pidjin Spanish and hearty thumbs ups).

In the meantime, stars and up and comers were gracing the stage, in the respective forms of Jakob Magnusson, who used to play with Björk in Tappi Tikarrass; here jamming for a selection of bands. Ólöf Arnalds, an underground tip for the summer months was also on stage playing a blinding acoustic set to a rapt audience.

Other bands included Bróðir Svartúlfs’s MCing – in a manner of the word – and the art rock Bloodgroup, who close the night to an increasingly half cut crowd. The night ended, and yet…the spirit of Loki seemed to descend upon Clash and what followed only a procession of sprites at their most impish can account for.

In 1780, the Uno von Troil, one day the Archbishop of Uppsala, said of the Icelandic dish of Hákari- “(It) had so disagreebale a taste that the small quantity we took of it drove us from the table long before our intention”.

The next day assembled journalists were confronted with this Hákari, which is rotten shark pickled in its own piss. The puffin first course is unpleasant enough, and seeing my brave Berlin fellow hack stomach a bite I wisely decided to hold back.

That day’s set list included Sesar A, the godfather of Icelandic hip hop and a phenomenon by the name of MC Isaksen, a ten year-old local mic shark who, when asked what he liked most in the world, grinned happily and said “Money!”. He had no stage fear, jumping around spitting like a vet MC to a baying crowd. Sesar A, who had spent much of his time in Barcelona, and told me he derived his style from the oral tradition of the stories of the northern fjords, threw it down like a patriarch, cutting it up with the guttural staccato of his mother tongue.

Another performer to feature was Friðrik Þór Friðriksson, the Oscar-nominated director and star of Lars von Trier’s The Boss of it All. The factory was sardine-tight that night, with crews of TV press and documentary makers all vying for a piece of the hip-right-now Iceland scene.

The locals seemed to be totally oblivious to obviously-foreign visitors (ie Clash), a phenomenon that brings you down a peg or two from the mob-a-gringo stance of many remote parts. There is however a self-consciousness from some of the scene’s facilitators, never blind to the aesthetic that Björk has traded on.

The sky was beginning to bruise and the snow getting thicker the following day, so I hitched a lift with an Australian couple for the day’s journey across Iceland back to Reykjavic. HIGHLY recommended. The nauseating brilliance of the sun on the fjords, the raw black waves breaking against black beaches, the nicotine yellow clouds and the freakish ponies (that William Morris is sketched driving into the ground in the 1870s) made the day special. Music of the moderns? To that quote I’d add: there are few licensed rushes stronger than driving through the tundra listening to James Holden’s 10101.

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