Björk, an Eclipse, and 40 Years of Icelandic Underground Music

I was warned that the light change right before totality would feel the strangest. As I looked up at the cloud-strewn Icelandic sky, the crowd pulsing around me, it was as if the world had transformed into a film noir—our upturned faces suddenly cast in washed-out shades of grey. Then, for a minute, everything slipped into pitch-black darkness. In those few moments, strangers hugged; I cried and laughed simultaneously; and one person yelled “You’re doing great, moon!” When the moon crossed between the Earth and the sun on August 12, we couldn’t see the total solar eclipse—but we could feel it. We were standing in the moon’s shadow. There were no groans, complaints, or frowns, in part because our anticipation was two-fold. The dark green weather forecast (indicating the heaviest level of cloud coverage) had sent many of the more devoted eclipse chasers north, chasing clear skies. But thousands of us chose to remain in Víðistaðatún, a sculpture park strewn with massive lava rocks in Hafnarfjörður about six miles from Downtown Reykjavik, for Echolalia, a one-day rave headlined by Björk, arguably Iceland’s most famous musician. Devoted eclipse chasers fled the de