The Hafnarborg Songfest received the Icelandic Music Award 2021 for The Music Event of the Year (Festival), in the field of classic and contemporary music, but the Songfest took place for the fourth time from July 2nd until July 12th 2020.

The programme of the Songfest consisted of eight concerts, featuring outstanding singers and musicians, as well as courses for young and old, but we were so fortunate to be able to hold the festival without restrictions in the middle of the summer, when the Songfest normally takes place.

We are deeply honoured by this acknowledgement and would like to congratulate Guðrún Jóhanna Ólafsdóttir and Francisco Javier Jáuregui, the founders and artistic directors of The Hafnarborg Songfest, on their continued success, as well as thanking them for their noble efforts in service of music and culture in Hafnarfjörður in the past years.

The Hafnarborg Songfest will take place for the fifth time from June 19th until July 4th 2021.

All of us at Hafnarborg would like to congratulate Guðrún Jóhanna Ólafsdóttir and Francisco Javier Jáuregui, the founders and directors of the Hafnarborg Songfest, on the nominations for The Icelandic Music Awards 2021, as the Hafnarborg Songfest has been nominated as “Music Event of the Year – Festivals” and Stuart Skelton‘s concert, The Modern Romantic, which took place at the Songfest, has been nominated as “Music Event of the Year – Concerts”, both in the field of classic and contemporary music.

We also congratulate Andrés Þór Gunnlaugsson, the artistic director of the Hafnarborg Afternoon Concert series, on the nomination of this new series as “Music Event of the Year – Concerts”, in the field of jazz and blues music, as well as congratulating Andrés Þór on his personal nomination as “Performer of the Year”, in the same field.

We would then like to congratulate all of the nominees, many of whom have performed at the Hafnarborg Songfest, at our Afternoon and Midday Concerts, as well as at the concert series Phonemes, and we would especially like to give our good wishes to violinist Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir, who is nominated as “Performer of the Year”, in the field of classic and contemporary music”, but Halla Steinunn played a special role in engaging with Davíð Brynjar Franzson’s exhibition, An Urban Archive as an English Garden, on view at the museum last year.

We thank all of you for enriching the programme of Hafnarborg with your music and your art and express our gratitude to the judges and affiliates of The Icelandic Music Awards for the honour shown to the institution with the nominations.

Due to the current restrictions on public gatherings, Hanna Þóra Guðbrandsdóttir and Antonía Hevesi’s midday concert will be streamed live online, both on Facebook and here on the website of Hafnarborg, as we can unfortunately not accommodate an audience at this time.

The live stream will start at 12 p.m. on Tuesday, November 3rd, as usual, and the concert will last for approximately half an hour, being accessible through the player here below. This recording will also be available for viewing online, once the concert has ended. A direct link for the stream can be found here.

We hope we will be able to welcome you back at our midday concerts in Hafnarborg before long.

D’Arcy Wilson reads her creative text “Dismantling the Meadow” that opens with 19th century history of The Language of Flowers, the text being published in the accompanying catalogue to The Wildflower, Hafnarborg’s 2020 autumn exhibition. Questioning the meaning, sentiment and culture that Western thought assigns to plants and flora, she wanders through The Wildflower, stopping to notice and attempt translation of each individual work and artist. Her research, memories and personal experiences lead her to plots of suburban landscaping and tangles of wilderness where the rhododendron and its wild cousin, the rhodora, grow in her home on the east coast of Canada.

D’Arcy Wilson is an interdisciplinary artist whose work considers the representation of nature in a Western context, lamenting colonial interactions with the wilderness. Her work has been presented across Canada, most recently at Dalhousie University Art Gallery, Halifax, The Rooms Art Gallery, St. John’s, and the Owens Art Gallery, Sackville, as well as a part of M:ST, Flotilla, and the Bonavista Biennale. She is the recipient of several awards, including a Sobey Art Award earlier this year. Wilson graduated with an MFA from the University of Calgary in 2008. She is currently Assistant Professor in the Visual Arts Program on the Grenfell Campus, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

The Wildflower is a group exhibition of works by artists based in Iceland and Canada, curated by Becky Forsythe and Penelope Smart. The exhibition catalogue, in which D’Arcy’s text is published, is available in Hafnarborg’s museum shop. The exhibition will stand until November 8th, being temporarily closed to guests out of concern for public health.

Due to public health considerations, we have decided to stream Hanna Dóra Sturludóttir and Antonía Hevesi’s midday concert live online, both on Facebook and here on the website of Hafnarborg, as we can unfortunately not accommodate an audience in accordance with current assembly limits.

The live stream will start at 12 p.m. on Tuesday October 6th, as planned, and the concert will last for approximately half an hour, being accessible through the player here below. This recording will also be available for viewing online, once the concert has ended. A direct link for the stream can be found here.

We hope we will be able to welcome you back at our midday concerts in Hafnarborg before long.

Every Saturday, during the course of the exhibition An Urban Archive as an English Garden, a programme of live events will be presented, where composer Davíð Brynjar Franzson‘s collaborators engage with and activate the exhibition through the playing of live instruments, as well as with their own presence. The live performance will respond to and reflect on moments within the soundscape, a sonic garden, which guest can explore, alongside the performer, on their own terms in both time and space. The events take place twice during the day in the exhibition space, at 2:30 and 4 p.m., on the following dates:

August 29th
Júlía Mogensen, cellist
live performance in Hafnarborg

September 5th
Matt Barbier, trombonist
live stream from Los Angeles

September 12th
Russell Greenberg, percussionist
live stream from New York

September 19th
Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir, violinist
live performance in Hafnarborg

September 26th
Matt Barbier, trombonist
live stream from Los Angeles

October 3rd
Russell Greenberg, percussionist
live stream from New York

October 17th
Halla Steinunn Stefánsdóttir, violinist
live stream from Malmö

October 24th
Júlía Mogensen, cellist
live stream from Hafnarborg

On October 10th, Skerpla, a group of students at the music department of the Iceland University of the Arts, under the guidance of Berglind María Tómasdóttir, professor, will host their own live stream event in the space at Hafnarborg, working from the ideas and perspectives offered by Davíð.

We wish you all, near and far, a very Happy Icelandic National Day and bid you welcome to Hafnarborg, to celebrate with us.

On this occasion, we would like to share this video of renowned soprano Diddú, Sigrún Hjálmtýsdóttir, performing the lively aria “Je veux vivre” from the opera Roméo et Juliette by Gounod, accompanied by Antonía Hevesi, pianist and artistic director of the Hafnarborg Midday Concert Series.

The museum is open today from 12–5 p.m. and entry is free, as usual, but, in addition, live jazz music will be playing at the museum in the afternoon.

This month‘s Midday Concert can unfortunately not take place, due to current circumstances, despite the new guidelines for the ban on public gatherings that took effect yesterday. Then there will still be some disruption to our schedule here at Hafnarborg, mainly in regards to concerts and other big events.

Instead, we will continue to share things with you online, both music and art, and now we would like to share with you a wonderful musical piece, as renowned soprano Diddú, Sigrún Hjálmtýsdóttir, performs the aria “Casta diva” from the opera Norma by Bellini, accompanied by Antonía Hevesi, the artistic director of the Hafnarborg Midday Concert Series, on piano.

We look forward to sharing more art with you, both here on social media and in the real world, but the museum has now finally reopened its doors to guests.

In this video tour, Ágústa Kristófersdóttir talks about select works from the Hafnarborg Collection, all of which depict the town of Hafnarfjörður, though each in its own way. There, we see the town through the eyes of artists – including some of the leading artists of our nation – working in different times and in different media, such as painting, drawing, print and photography.

The works featured here are by Jón Hróbjartsson, Hörður Ágústsson, Nína Tryggvadóttir, Gunnlaugur Scheving, Greta Björnsson, Eggert F. Guðmundsson, Gunnar Hjaltason, Pétur Friðrik Sigurðsson, Jón Þorleifsson, Erla Stefánsdóttir, Árni B. Elfar, Spessi and Astrid Kruse Jensen.

In addition to this video tour, we have opened a special online exhibition on the website of Sarpur (only accessible in Icelandic, at this moment), where you can learn more about these works, as well as find information on other works in the Hafnarborg Collection.

Captions available in English and Icelandic.

On the occasion of the First Day of Summer, we share with you a little song, in the hopes of lifting up your spirits.

Here, Gissur Páll Gissurarson, tenor, sings the passionate aria “De’ miei bollenti spiriti” from La traviata by Verdi, with Antonía Hevesi, the artistic director of the Hafnarborg Midday Concert Series, playing the piano.

We wish all the friends of Hafnarborg a very happy summer and we look forward to seeing you at our museum in the coming months.