Reykjavik festivals · Festivals in Reykjavik
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Festivals in Reykjavik
Festivals in Reykjavik
At least three times a year, Reykjavík comes out to celebrate.
Culture Night (Menningarnótt), . Third saturday of August. This is the biggest date in the cultural calendar of Reykjavík. What started out in 1996 as only an evening celebration today starts already in the morning with the Reykjavík Marathon. The day progresses with ever more cultural activities, most of them free, in central Reykjavík and culminates in several huge concerts and a fireworks show by the harbour. Attendence is usually around 100,000 or half of the population of the city. �
Gay Pride (Hinsegin dagar), . Early August. Icelanders are proud of their LGBT community, and every August they show it with one of the biggest annual festivals in Reykjavík. Typically a parade will wind its way through the city with floats of varying degrees of outrageousness. It then ends at Arnarhóll with a large outdoors concert. Gay bars and bars that normally don't self-identify as gay alike tend to be very full this evening. In the preceding days there are various events celebrating LGBT culture. �
National Day (17. júní). It may come as a surprise, but the National Day celebrations on June 17th every year are probably the smallest of the three festivals mentioned here. Nonetheless, it is a public holiday day of festivities in the city where people (especially families with children) celebrate the date Iceland was declared a republic in 1944. The date itself was selected because it is the birthday of the Icelandic independence hero Jón Sigurðsson. �
The city also annually hosts a music festival and an international film festival, both take place over several days in the city centre.
Iceland Airwaves, . Second weekend in October. A music festival held in pubs, bars and clubs in downtown Reykjavík. It literally takes over the city for a few days in October. Airwaves prides itself of frequently having artists on the line-up that are just about to make it and become world famous, before you've ever heard of them. They usually have a wide selection of both Icelandic and international acts, but keep the "big names" to a minimum. Book early, in 2011 the tickets sold up 5 weeks in advance. �
Reykjavík International Film Festival (RIFF), . Late September. Several days of excellent cinema. Screenings of most Icelandic productions of the last year, short and feature length as well as documentaries, and the best of what's happening around the world. The main prize, the Golden Puffin, is awarded in a category called "New Visions" which is limited to directors' first or second films. �
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Reykjavik Travel Guide from Wikitravel. Many thanks to all Wikitravel contributors. Text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0, images are available under various licenses, see each image for details.