Svavar Knútur – Tafelhalle, Nuremberg; February 12th, 2023

After a great day at Nordklang Festival in St. Gallen, I moved on to Nuremberg to see Svavar Knútur once again. On all his most recent tours, I didn’t have time when he played near me, so I take any chance I can get to see him elsewhere and this was such an occasion. It was a beautiful show, just as I had hoped and left me smiling.

My trip to Nuremberg was uneventful and I even had time to relax a bit at my hotel before leaving. The venue was a 30 minute walk away and the weather was nice enough so I enjoyed going there. Had a drink, waited, found out photography was not allowed (why can they not print that info on the ticket?) and settled for an evening unhindered by my camera. Found a good seat at the front and watched as the venue filled up.

Right on time, one of the concert organizers introduced Svavar and he stepped on stage. He greeted us in German, saying he had not been there since 2014, apologized for his bad German, which slows down his thoughts and switched to English. He told us about language creating melodies and how it fascinates him, saying that Icelanders use the sea and the weather to describe their feeling, while Germans use forests and mountains.

He started with ‘Fagurt er í Fjörðum’, a song about the beggar-woman Látra-Björg, who wrote positive poems about the farms of people, who helped her and negative ones about the farms that didn’t. That way the farms had their stories and lived on. After this melancholia, he felt we needed a happier song and continued with ‘Undir Birkitré’, to which we all sang along. 🙂

We learned that he loves the fact he is allowed to drink beer on the job and taught us some made-up words. 😀 Then he spoke about breakups as a learning experience and played us a breakup song: ‘The hard Things’.

Before ‘Morgunn’ Svavar told us he never wants to leave anyone out and therefore offers translations of all his lyrics on his website. After that g, he spoke about frozen grief, losing his father and being a late bloomer in music, which finally helped him feel his pain. ‘Clementine’ was the song we got to hear then. <3

His upcoming album, ‘Ahoi Side B’ took a long time to finish, because it was missing a song about his youngest son. ‘Refur Song’ was beautiful. We then learned that he started writing ‘Wanderlust’ last time he was in Nuremberg and he talked about the need to go back on tour as soon as possible after Covid so people would know he was still there. We got a nice sing-along going of course. 🙂 ‘Girl from Vancouver’ was a request and put a big smile on my face. “Cute” is the only word to describe that song. It was a good end to the first set.

The second half started with ‘Emotional Anorexic’, “another breakup song”. I always love it. <3 After that he spoke about losing his aunt in an accident not so long ago and what that meant for the family, then played us her song, called ‘Impossible’.

We learned about Jonas Halgrímsson who invented 30000 new words for the Icelandic language and taught us a few words that only exist in Icelandic. He said that we should not use our language and thus it is important to sing in your own language, because it gives us a unique way of expressing ourselves that no other language can. It was the introduction to Brahms’ ‘In stiller Nacht’. To show us more language melodies, he played ‘Les berceaux’ by French composer Gabriel Fauré.

Svavar warned us about Icelandic rain – “never use umbrellas” and played winter songs, first ‘November’ and then ‘Janúar’, the month when light returns and hibernation ends. 🙂 In-between he taught us about the “many shades of black” worn in Iceland, because colorful clothes might attract polar bears. 😀 Before ‘Krummi Svaf í Klettagjá’ we heard a bit about Icelandic history with a side note on how people in different countries argue.

In the end, he spoke about how Covid times were harder for venues, sound engineers and other people that work to bring you live music, then it as for the musicians. The final song was ‘Song of Hope and Fortune’ – he could not have picked a better one. <3

We chatted a bit after the show and I got goodbye hugs before I left. That was lovely, hope to see you soon.

Setlist

Fagurt er í Fjörðum (Látra-Björg)
Undir Birkitré
The hard Things
Morgunn
Clementine
“Refur Song”
Wanderlust
Girl from Vancouver

Emotional Anorexic
Impossible
In stiller Nacht
Les berceaux
November
Janúar
Krummi Svaf í Klettagjá
Song of Hope and Fortune