Svavar Knútur – Weltkunstzimmer, Düsseldorf; March 24th, 2025

It had been a while since my last Svavar Knútur concert, so I was happy to get to see him in Düsseldorf. Weltkunstzimmer turned out to be a great venue and the concert was a lot of fun. Svavar shared lovely songs and stories, making me forget the trains delays on the way there and any other stress I might have been under. It was a wonderful evening.

With roughly one hour delay I made it to Düsseldorf and was relieved to only see one person waiting outside the venue. I knew him too and we had a nice time chatting until the doors opened. The venue was surprisingly big and had some nice lights on stage. If the sound was anywhere as good, it would be amazing.

Svavar kept us waiting until about 20:15 and by the the room was packed. :9 He started with an Icelandic song that I recognized, but could not name, then continued straight into Morgúnn and Refur. Only then did he tale a break for us to clap. It as a great start and the sound was indeed amazing.

He greeted us, thanked us for coming and talked about the venue being a former bakery. He joked about having face-blindness, but still recognizing a lot of us and talking about ways to find out who you are talking too when you meet someone you don’t immediately recognize and how hard it is to watch movies with him. Completely unrelated, he decided to sing a song about trees, described Icelandic forests and mentioned names that sound tree-like. ‘Undir Birkitré’ was lovely and brought us the first sing-along of the evening. 🙂

Svavar talked about sister songs and how the last one and its sister song ‘Yfir hóla og yfir hæðir’ are two of the happiest songs he has ever written. What I learned then is that it is about a place that used to belong to his family, so it is a sad song as well. I always enjoy hearing it. He did some impressions of things and people, to much laughter, then told us how much he enjoys sharing his language with us. From there he went to languages having their own melodies and giving us examples of songs from different regions in the US and how the language melody changes. 😀

How he got from there to playing ‘Lady Winter’, none of us knew, but it was beautiful and so was ‘Hope and Fortune’. In between he spoke about costumes and how he doesn’t want to be flashy, then went on a tangent about touring by train and the decline of German railways, saying he found faith while praying to reach his destination. I feel you! Oh and did you know about Icelandic killer sheep? No? Well, I won’t tell you.During the song I thought about the show in Vienna and how he challenged all of us to sing along to it. 🙂

We then learned about Icelandic survival strategies and how to destroy your enemies without weapons. Beer Fu was mentioned too – it’s a martial art we all should learn. Or Wine Fu maybe. 😉 He mentioned that, if we still believed in old fashioned things like CDs, vinyls and a functioning democracy without oligarchs, we could come see him during the break for two of these three things. 🙂 The set ended with ‘November’ and it was perfect.

After a brief chat during the break, more drinks for everyone and hopefully a lot of merch sold, Svavar returned with ‘Janúar’ and once again managed to get everyone to sing along inIcelandic. It works every time and it is always lovely. Of course he spoke about January and how beautiful it is when the light comes back and shines on the snow in Iceland.

We learned about broccoli songs versus ice cream songs, including different examples of the love songs he hates. It’s hilarious to hear him make up songs on the spot. 😀 He mentioned that the next song was more relevant now than when he wrote it in 2008 and played ‘While the world burns – so true. I loved it. From there we got to break-up songs and examples of how bad they can be. Breakups hurt, but you can learn from them, he told us and played ‘Emotional Anorexic’. I will never be unhappy to hear that song. <3

Svavar talked about traveling alone and how much he likes it, but sometimes he plays with other artists. This lead to showing us how different musicians tend to be, depending on the instrument they play. 😀 The “Song about friendship”, ‘Ölduslóð’, followed. Then he remembered his ukulele and played a great version of ‘Girl from Vancouver’. 🙂

Somehow, he felt the need to talk about aliens that glow in different colors and how they might have similar problems to us. From there, he got back to language and different sounds in different (nordic) languages. He also spoke about dreams, nice ones, weird ones and the ones where you are not sure if it was a dream or really happened. From there we got to Icelandic monsters and the last song – ‘Isn’t it funny?’

For an encore, Svavar played a song, I had never heard him play, Suede’s The Wild Ones’. He told us he had been wanting to ply it for years. He mentioned they saved his life when he was a teenager. I sure can relate to that. It was fantastic. I would have loved more, but I have to admit it was a great way to end the show. See you again soon!

Setlist

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Morgúnn
Refur
Undir Birkitré
Yfir hóla og yfir hæðir
Lady Winter
Hope and Fortune
November

Janúar
While the world burns
Emotional Anorexic
Ölduslóð
Girl from Vancouver
Isn’t it funny?

The wild ones (Suede cover)