What It’s Like to Volunteer at Iceland Airwaves Music Festival

I’m a first-time volunteer at Iceland Airwaves.

Standing in a sweaty store cupboard, mere inches away from the main stage at Reykjavik’s Harpa concert hall, I hold up a green tee shirt against my bare chest with a certain amount of scepticism.

I’ve been promised untold amounts of ‘female, size medium’ by the grumpy bouncer out front. Clearly, these are all masquerading as men’s larges.

Lost in a tee-shirt-sizing reverie, I fail to hear the turn of the doorknob as it squeaks behind me.

The door opens suddenly.

I gasp, turn, see a face I immediately recognise, and turn quickly back around towards my tee shirt stash.

“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she says, blushing furiously. “I didn’t see anything!”

And with that, Nanna Hilmarsdóttir, the female lead singer from ‘Of Monsters And Men’, backs out of the store cupboard, leaving me free to regain my dignity, and cover up my bra.

The joyous music festival that is Iceland Airwaves kicks off each November in Reykjavik, the coutry’s capital. Running for four days throughout the city, it’s a place for music lovers to come together in a freezing cold country and avoid getting too soggy and windswept by heading to cosy little cafes and listening to an eclectic mashup of wildly innovative music from both local and international artists.

I first heard about the festival when browsing through websites for volunteers. I’d been interested in travelling to Iceland for years, but I’d wanted an experience more unique than taking a Golden Circle tour and heading for the Blue Lagoon.

Enter Iceland Airwaves: one of the weirdest volunteering experiences I’ve ever had.

Iceland Airwaves Music Festival: a rundown

A lot of the festival’s attendees are from Iceland and the nearby Scandinavian countries (which would explain why most venues are thronged with tall, beautiful, blonde people who almost certainly all have Viking ancestors), but every year there are more and more visitors from further afield. Last year I heard a lot of American accents, and I can imagine there’ll be many more of them this year since Of Monsters And Men hit headlines Stateside this year.

It’s a positive surprise though – because Iceland Airwaves, unlike many other music festivals, has one really unique stipulation. While maintaining its status as an international festival, any international act invited to perform can only ever appear here once. This ensures that the Icelandic musicians, however new or with however small a fan base, always have a yearly platform to perform.

And oddly enough, there is a huge multi-national audience who flock to Reykjavik each year to watch these primarily Icelandic acts take to the city’s stages (it’s not odd, by the way; it’s because these acts are bloody awesome).

Many of these festival goers only know Airwaves from the outside – and one of the things I love so much about Iceland is its inclusive attitude. Everyone is welcome.

Which is why the organisers thought it a great idea to offer the privilege of working backstage to a group of eager volunteers, on the premise that they get free tickets to the festival itself.

In 2012 I was one such volunteer, enduring a series of six hour shifts where I embarked on litter picking, security detail and sitting on a chair guarding a backstage fire exit door. In return, I was gifted with a complimentary festival wristband and the ability to spend any free time I had gig-hopping.

Which my fellow volunteers and I did with absolute glee.

My long shifts also gave me a chance to properly observe the regular goings on at an Airwaves festival, with the slightly smug feeling that I was ‘behind the scenes’.

So I thought I’d share my accumulated observations from my role as an Iceland Airwaves volunteer. From Icelandic lessons and impromptu run-ins with irate managers to frozen fingers and exploding garbage bags, it’s one heck of a wild ride, that’s for sure…

What’s the atmosphere like at Iceland Airwaves?

If you don’t know already, you have to willingly accept one key fact: Iceland is mental.

From the food to the architecture, the language to the music, the people to the weather; everything about this country is surreal, strange, and downright crazy. And I’m pretty sure it gets even weirder and more colourful for the five days of Airwaves each year.

Psst: Iceland in November is pretty damn cold!

Regardless of what shifts you might be working at the festival, the outdoor temperatures in Iceland in November are barely above freezing – so it’s essential you arrive in Iceland with the proper clothing. That means thermal leggings and vests, a good thick coat (preferably with a hood), and a combination of hat, scarf and gloves.

If you happen to forget any of these necessities to combat the freezing Iceland temperatures, there are plenty of shops in Reykjavik eager to kit you out (for a price, of course). You can just about see my Icelandic knitted puffin headband which quickly became a must-wear item when I forgot to pack a hat…

Iceland Airwaves is a festival set in a city. How does that work?!

One of my favourite aspects of Iceland Airwaves is how unconcerned it is with emulating a typical music festival.

Instead of huge marquees set up solely for the event, Airwaves utilises the buildings dotted all over Reykjavik for its official venues. Each evening, the streets are filled with music lovers moving between different venues: places like the Harpa Concert Hall, the Fríkirkjan church, the Reykjavík Art Museum, the old Gamla Bíó cinema and the Bryggjan Brugghús brewery are all firm favourites.

But it’s the daytime off-venue gigs which truly make Airwaves unique.

How do you find a good off-venue to listen to new music?

While wandering along the main street of Laugavegur, wrapped in your many layers and hats, you hear the subtle strains of guitars/amps/vocals emerging from an open door or cracked window.

Pushing through a throng of warm bodies, draped in heavy coats and clad in impenetrable Dr Martens, you discover a lone musician, sat atop a chair with no seat, candles placed artfully on the exposed brickwork of the chimney beside him.

You quickly step up onto the nearest table for a better view, as people happily move their glasses to accommodate your feet. You’re entranced.

There are hundreds of off-venue gigs all over Reykjavik, kicking off at 1pm each day and continuing until the wristband-worthy performances start at night.

A popular off-venue choice is KEX Hostel, a one-time biscuit factory which now hosts performances throughout festival week and is also the base for Seattle radio station KEXP-FM, who broadcast all the gigs live.

More surprising is a gig at the Grund retirement home, or at the City Library, or at a barbershop.

You can try to keep up with the various performances by scouring the festival guide and refreshing various pages on social media – but there’s a joy borne of spontaneity too, when you walk down the street, hear the tantalising taste of music from somewhere, and immediately walk in that direction.

What do you actually do on an Airwaves volunteering shift?

Eventually, its time for work, and you make your way to your first shift.

These shifts will have been decided in advance, before the festival begins (probably in a big room with someone reading your name off a clipboard). Depending on the type of job you’re allocated, you could be working all day, all night or somewhere in between; outside, inside or constantly jumping in and out of a door frame. Exciting or what?!

During five days at Iceland Airwaves, I did a number of jobs I hadn’t expected:

• I picked up empty beer cans outside venues with sturdy gloves and a trash bag
• I guarded the door of a then-empty venue by sitting on a chair beside it
• I checked the press wristbands of photographers beside stages
• I forced a metal-loving security guard to teach me how to swear in Icelandic. (He eventually started doing demos of how to sing heavy metal-stylee, which was an experience in itself)

All the shifts were fun enough – usually because I was always paired with someone else, and I really like chatting to new people. Plus you end up making friends much more quickly at events like these!

I spent the downtime between shifts with those same volunteer buddies, talking to bouncers at gig queues and flashing them our staff wristbands in an attempt to gain access. We also utilised our work gloves and faux annoyed expressions while explaining that we’d been working hard yet still had to collect garbage.

Maybe the suddenly splitting garbage bag filled with slippery beer cans that emptied across a venue floor was a bit of karmic retribution.

So too, then, was the painstaking recollection of said cans, and the accompanying beer dregs that covered them…

After hours: what you’ll do post-volunteering at Iceland Airwaves

When our shifts were over was when the fun really started. Something the Airwaves devotees may not often realise is that it’s not necessary to actually buy a ticket for the festival…!

If the off-venue performances that occur throughout the day aren’t quite enough for you, then simply hang around at one of Reykjavik’s many bars, pubs and clubs until the official festival performances end.

Every night, dozens of the festival’s musicians and artists flock to these venues. They’re so hyped from their earlier performances – and from the sheer energy of Iceland Airwaves – that they’ll play unexpected shows in these dingy bars and cramped clubs until the sun comes up

They can’t get enough of the festival buzz and, unsurprisingly, neither can their audiences. There really isn’t such a thing as a closing time in downtown Reykjavik.

The local Icelanders

Before arriving in Iceland, I hadn’t met many people with Viking origins. I don’t think I had many stereotypes in mind about said folk, but I certainly picked up on some idiosyncrasies.

To start with, Vikings are ridiculously tall, which you’d think would make them somewhat problematic gig buddies. But amazingly enough, they will actively crouch down so they look smaller, and will sometimes move to the side to make sure you can see. They’ll also make sure you know when ‘the big song’ is about to start, for which I am forever grateful.

Many Icelanders dance like they’re trying to hit an invisible enemy. Some also sit down to watch heavy metal. This is amazing to witness, and I only wish I had photographic evidence of such wonders.

They also seem to be waterproof. I know this because no matter how many types or layers of clothing I had on, a significant number still seemed to get wet – and let’s not even start discussing what happened to my hair in the climate. Icelanders, on the other hand, always look stunning, barely ever seem damp, and are never spotted holding vast amounts of dripping coat while stuffing a sopping scarf into a handbag.

Finally, you’re more than likely to spend half your time in the company of the very bands you’ve just seen performing. We first spotted the lead singer of Mammut buying beer beside us at the bar on the first night;  by the end of the festival we’d run into her so many times that a friend of mine was certain he’d fallen completely in love with her.

And let’s just not mention the night we waltzed past Bjork while out clubbing, blissfully unaware that she also happened to be drinking with two of the guys from Sigur Rós.

My favourite musician-encounter, though, was experienced simply from the wonderful vantage point of the press photographers walkway at the base of the stage, where I was checking wristbands with the bouncers.

Unofficial Lennon/Yoko Ono Family Music Day

In 2011, the organisers at Iceland Airwaves pretty much decided that they’d dedicate a whole night to the infamous Lennon family.

Sean Lennon opened with his chilled wispy music, accompanied by his girlfriend Charlotte Kemp Muhl in ‘The Ghost of a Sabre Tooth Tiger’. They were followed by a strange Japanese band who sang about scary mice in the kitchen, Yoko’s warm-up band with an insane drummer, and finally the impressive name of Yoko Ono, who screamed her little old Japanese lungs out. She’s seventy-seven, but her dance moves were like something from the sixties; hip bumps and gyrations and a great amount of bum wiggling.

Standing about ten metres from the stage certainly had its advantages: I was right below the stage, staring up at Sean’s face in close up (which is mighty pretty) and watching his impeccably speedy finger-picking guitar skills.

The one disadvantage? Being that close to the same stage for over two hours of Yoko Ono’s screaming throat-rattling ‘music’ is slightly more uncomfortable. The woman’s performing techniques really have to be seen to be believed.

The aftermath of Iceland Airwaves festival

After all the craziness of the festival, when the wristbands come off and the last bin bag gets taken away, it’s ultimately back to normal. On my last afternoon in Reykjavik, I sat with some friends in the Laundromat Cafe, sharing a slice of cake, when one of them suddenly whispered,

“Woah, look!”

We all stared at the cash register, where a young girl was busy tapping keys with one hand and handing out menus with the other.

“Isn’t that the girl from Mammut?”

We surreptitiously stared a bit harder. If I’d stared for long enough, I’m sure I would have seen the last remnants of face paint smeared into her hairline.

But then I turned back to my cake, and carried on chatting with the girls I’d only met two weeks before. The festival was over. The girl from Mammut got on with her day job.

Until next year, when Iceland Airwaves kicks off all over again.

How can you volunteer at Iceland Airwaves?

I volunteered for the festival through an organisation called ‘World Wide Friends’ – but Airwaves itself also offers its own official volunteering process which you can see here.