Svavar Knútur – Glashaus im Paradies, Jena; October 1st, 2023

Svavar Knútur’s concert in Jena took place at the wonderful Glashaus im Paradies, a small bungalow in the middle of a park, where he could sing without any mic or amplification. It was a great show and I was happy I’d chosen to go there.

The trip from Chemnitz was uneventful and since I didn’t have a hotel and it was a beautiful day, I spent my time in the park, where the venue was. Had ice cream, walked around and read a book until it was time to go to the venue. I was still on pain pills because of my arm, but I decided not to take one that night and have a glass of wine instead. Good decision – it was yummy.

Slowly, more people arrived and I talked to some of them about what to expect. It was going to be good. Eventually, Svavar stepped on stage and grabbed his guitar. He greeted everyone and told us how much he loved the venue. I was the last show of the tour and he declared it a good ending point. Svavar checked if there were people, who had never seen him live and there were a few. He told us that he was harmless and hardly ever hurt anyone, except for killing lots of flies while driving. 😀

He started with ‘Kom ég þar að kveldi’, a song about the sea and it sounded very Icelandic, making me imagine waves on the ocean. He spoke about how Icelandic is rarely used in music any more, because for Spotify (and other curators of playlists) songs need to be in English to get played. Thus he was happy to be able to sing in Icelandic for us and sang a lullaby called ‘Sofðu unga ástin mín’ (Sleep my young love) for us. He translated the song for and the lyrics were rather dark. Next was the lullaby for his son, ‘Refur’ and we heard how much he loves to snuggle with him. 🙂

During Covid, Svavar could not work and was saved by ‘Morgunn’ being played on German radio and getting royalties. 🙂 We also learned that he and his producer had disagreed on which version of the song to record and the producer’s version got a lot of radio play and Svavar’s own a lot less. He played us his, “no rock” version. 😀

We heard about Sweden and playing in unpronounceable towns. It turned into a funny rant about Swedish and Danish people and how they like to correct your pronunciation. ‘Medusa’ was next, followed by ‘Isn’t it funny?’, to which we learned a lot about Icelandic mermen – the most important thing about them is their laughter, appearing when you think you have things under control. It turned into a rant about Deutsche Bahn, not being as bad as we make it out to be. 😀

Next he spoke about channeling anger into songs, but never showing it otherwise. Svavar’s breakup songs are constructive though and to prove that point he played ‘Hard Things’. It’s a nice one. To my surprise, he played ‘Hope and Fortune’ after that. I had secretly been hoping he’d play it that night. He told us the story about Icelandic and Irish refugees too, including those Icelanders that ended up in the mountains in Brazil. It was beautiful.

Like the previous day in Chemnitz, Svavar told us the story of Vatnsenda Rósa, who was a traveling midwife, moving from farm to farm, wherever there was a pregnant woman in need. That was at a time when it was illegal to not be assigned to a farm, but she still did it and she was a poet too. He then sang her poem to us and gave us a translation. It was beautifully sad.

This evening contained an experiment with no real break, but a break song, during which we could go to the toilet or get drinks. He told us we could make all the noise we wanted and  played Kris Kristofferson’s ‘Help me make it through the night’. I loved it.

We learned that he never has a setlist and always decides on the spot what to sing. Before ‘Undir Birkitré’ he passed around a book to sign and told us we could write nice things or bad things, whatever we liked. He also spoke about how each language has its own melody and made up some examples on the spot. The song brought a lovely sing-along too.

Before ever playing in Jena, Svavar had always passed by the Jena Paradies train station and liked it so much, he wanted to play there, so Uwe, his promoter for the east of Germany, organized it. Then, he reached for his ukulele and Uwe stopped him to hand him the uke. Svavar got very confused and Uwe had to remind him of the previous day. Then he remembered and Uwe became his ukulele roadie. He joked that if he had the money to hire a ukulele roadie, he’d take that money and buy stuff for his kids. We all cheered for Uwe! The ukulele song was ‘Ölduslóð’.

He said he wanted to sing so many more songs, but would need to send us home soon. We’d get one more breakup song though, to introduce us to the concept of them being wholesome. 😉 ‘Emotional Anorexic’ is one of his oldest songs and only a few weeks ago he realized where the feelings he writes about there come from, so he told us some more about his mother’s family, who are from the Eastfjords of Iceland. Ain’t it cool, to have new revelations after all this time.

Asking Uwe what he should sing next, he asked for ‘Janúar’ and ‘November’ – I’m sure he would have played them anyway. Of course they came with stories about how terrible Icelandic summers are and how winters are much nicer. I prefer summers, but I like both songs, especially ‘November’. In between, we heard about the advantages of German beer and how to say “Skál!”, because “skål” means toilet water, also used as a description of a hair color. The best part was learning about Icelandic insults though. 😀 He was just gonna start ‘Janúar’, but then just had to improvise a love song with a mountain theme first. We sang along again too, he taught us well.

Svavar spoke about ageism in music again and gave an example of how bad it is, especially for women. He’s not wrong. Not in the folk genre though, at least according to him. There you are allowed to age like cheese instead. 😀 He left us with one more story about language and the origin of the Icelandic word for elephant. The last song was dedicated to Roger Whitteker, who had recently died – it was ‘Song of good advice’. That was a fun closer to a fun show!

I chatted with Svavar for a bit, then said goodbye to him and Uwe and happily headed to the bus station to go home. What a great night!

Setlist

Kom ég þar að kveldi by Theodóra Thoroddsen
Sofðu unga ástin mín
Refur
Medusa
Isn’t it funny?
Hard Things
Hope and Fortune
Vatnsenda Rósa’s poem
Help me make it through the night
Undir Birkitré
Ölduslóð
Emotional Anorexic
November
Janúar

Song of good advice