Boat Magazine Issue 6 (the Reykjavík Issue) is available now on loremnotipsum.com. In my mind, Iceland is possessed by art and music like a feverish, all-consuming addiction. The Iceland of its own literature is hard and alarming like the landscape – twisted and reformed by volcanoes, unrelenting weather and the ferocious sea that surrounds it. The sea – the island’s blessing and curse – is never separate from Iceland and its people – their history, achievement, downfall, and certainly not their future.The music that leaks out has become Iceland’s soundtrack; dramatic and otherworldly, it describes the lava fields upholstered in moss so green it glows, the horses unchanged for a thousand years, the thin light that hangs just above the island, the darkness, the people and their city: Reykjavík. Reykjavík sits on the edge of the island, its toes in the sea, and is home to two thirds of the population (200,000 of the 320,000 total). When we landed I wondered how many of my preconceived ideas I would bring home intact. All of them and none of them is the answer. In Reykjavík, the world’s northernmost capital city, I found every bit of strangeness I’d expected, more stubbornness, less of the supernatural, more history but with less attachment to it, an even more stunning landscape than I’d dreamed earning much less reverence from the people than I’d predicted. If you’ve been, you probably know what I mean; Iceland is not what you expect, but it is every bit as wonderful.
Boat Magazine is a nomadic biannual and independent travel and culture publication that focuses on a different, inspiring city for each issue. Born out of our love for travel, we’re not a typical travel magazine that tells you where to eat, where to stay, and where to spa. In fact, you probably won’t find any of those things in Boat Magazine. We try to dig a little deeper when we travel – our editorial is raw and honest from both the locals’ point of view and ours as outsiders working there. Our photos are stunning and gritty, each one telling a story of its own. We take a small team of contributors with us to each city and set up camp for a few weeks. Working with locals to create the stories, interviews, photos, and art that go into each issue, we strike a balance between inside/outside coverage keeping the perspectives varied and interesting.
