Iceland

I want to be truthful about Iceland and being from Iceland," Björk says. "And I don’t mean Viking helmets and all of that shit. I was born here in 1965. I was born with raw nature everywhere, but still brought up with computers and technology. For a lot of people, nationalism is a bad thing, because it’s about the past. What’s beautiful about modern days now, all over the world, is more and more people are having similar lifestyles.

And because of that, our identity becomes even stronger, because the opposites meet in an even more fierce way. I go to London, and I’ve never been so Icelandic. When I lived here, I didn’t even think about it. The sound of the album was an attempt to be truthful to updating what we are today and what we sound like.

I am from Iceland. I was born with two legs, two arms, and genes that go 1,200 years back being what I am, with my nose, my eyes, whatever. That is Icelandic. I’m singing in English because I’ve chosen to communicate and it’s not going to get us anywhere if I’m singing in Icelandic. So I’m just being truthful about being a person who comes from Iceland who’s willing to communicate. I think what’s most Icelandic about this album is, energy-wise, it’s kind of raw. There’s a sense of identity I can hear very strongly in the music. But it’s purely emotional, rather than particular sounds or noises.

Request, december 1997