Happy Leif Ericson Day!!! Calypso Calling From Faraway Worlds--Bogomil Font Og Flis and Bananaveldid

So you're all set for another round of celebrations in honor of Leif the Lucky. It's October 9th once again.You've got the cloudberry jam, the Brennivin, the Mead, you've dug up the shark meat (Hakarl), your Hrutspungar and the Blóðmör for your Þorramatur. If Odin appears at your door disguised as a beggar, you are well prepared. You've got the Indridason books, the Angels of the Universe video, your well worn copies of Snorri Sturluson sagas. Mugison, Kolrassa Krokridandi & XXX Rottweiler is blasting from your stereo. Yet somehow, something is missing.

At a time of joviality, you feel empty, unsatisfied, in an existential rut.

Little known historical fact. Everybody knows that Leif Ericson visited the New World prior to Christopher Columbus. What scholars and cranks dispute is just where he wound up. In my studies over the years I have come to a conclusion that Leif Ericson and his men actually wound up a lot further South than previously thought. Certain excavations have uncovered medieval percussion instruments thought to have been used in religious rituals. Such speculation has flown out the window and been discredited since my discovery of
Bogomil Font and Ekki þessi leiðindi the Rosetta Stone of the Viking Mediterranean sojourn. Scandinavian graffiti in the Hagia Sofia is small potatoes compared to this.

Apparently after stopping for cranberries in the bogs of Massachusetts, Leif Ericson was blown off course and wound up in Trinidad, hence the long history and tradition of Calypso music in Iceland. Carnivale in the Arctic Circle. This is globalization we can believe in. Or as they say, Ég borga bara með reiðufé*.



Women Want To Be With Them, Men Want To Be Them

 Bananveldid is a lot of fun. Of course it is lacking in the swagger of a traditional Calypso album, but overall they do a good job musically. Granted, for me it is a bit of a novelty album, but it I like listening to it. I used to be on the e-mail list for Smekkleysa, and every few months Dr Gunni would send me an e-mail with descriptions of albums like this. And for me, it was like coke to a cokehead--in what possible world would I not want to hear Icelandic Calypso? And they do a nice job, maybe not with the panache of classic Calypso. A lot of these songs sound like traditional Calypso songs with Icelandic lyrics. The first tune is in English and is entitled Eat Your Car, so from the very beginning you know that these guys are quite mad.



So enjoy the day, in another year we'll be doing it all over again!! Skal!!

*I Only Pay With An Angry Sheep-famous Icelandic proverb