Iceland.

The Land of Fire and Ice.

As winter approaches, darkness delivers.

During the height of winter in Iceland, there is only four hours of daylight.

Here it is always magic hour.

A cinematographer's dream.

Filmmaking is the art of light and shadows.

Iceland provides stark realities of both.

And while winter may be long and hard, there's never a more pertinent time to visit and see what life is really like for a 33-year-old filmmaker living on the outskirts of the Arctic Circle.

Hi, I'm Stephanie.

I'm a 33-year-old American filmmaker, and a complete cinema nerd.

I love the oldies, the goodies, the New Waves, or Golden Age, you name it, I'm in.

On my 33rd birthday, I decided to travel the world to meet and document other filmmakers my age.

Travel with me to over 33 countries to meet the storytellers who are dynamically challenging the status quo of the world today.

Together, we will watch their films, hear their stories, engage with their cultures, and perhaps, learn a little bit about life, love, cinema, history, and me!

[in Icelandic] [upbeat, quirky, saxophone music] Ever hear of "Game of Thrones?"

If you are familiar with the TV show, everything “North Of The Wall” was filmed in this here land of ice and fire.

Iceland has a small but extremely professional film community.

And it's an amenable place for foreign film crews to come shoot their epics with complete freedom in an isolated democracy.

[epic orchestral music] Eyۢr is a modern-day Renaissance man.

He has lived so many lives in his 33 years.

He was a chef on a fishing boat, a photographer, writer, publisher, printer of maps, entrepreneur.

He's done it all.

But the one constant in his life, is storytelling.

Growing up in a bookstore in the West Fjords, Eyۢr, perhaps, was destined to be a writer.

In university, he studied to become an architect, and graduated in 2008, just in time for the global economic crisis.

[sizzle of frying pan] Iceland was hit harder than almost any other country.

Declaring bankruptcy at the start of 2009.

Alright!

That looks amazing.

Fresh fish!

Dig in.

No one was building new structures, so being an architect fresh out of school, left him jobless.

While I was living in Reykjavik, and I got unemployed, of course.

Because, there was no job in the architect industry.

So I moved back here to Flateyri.

and, didn't know what I was going to do, and, I was probably on unemployment for like two, three, four months.

And, then, I decided to open up a store.

In Ísafjör█ur.

Some friends, both actors, wanted to make a short film, and since I was publishing books and publishing a lot of stuff, they asked if I could be a producer for one of their short films.

Eyۢr, who spent his life surrounded by books, has always considered himself a storyteller.

And once he discovered filmmaking as a different medium to tell his stories, he was hooked, and became a director himself.

Yeah, so I had this one story, and asked them to, to help me put that into a short film, and they decided to do it.

"Yeah, well, he has been helping us for three films now, let him do one cute little film.

And then in the end, that turned out extremely well, and it got screened all around the world, Eyۢr's first film, "Sker," made the rounds at the most prestigious festivals: Tribeca, Edmonton, Rhode Island, Aspen, and within a few years, his film, "Playing It By Ear," was nominated for an Icelandic Academy Award.

[man practices playing a recorder] Eyۢr has since gone to film school in Reykjavik, and later received his third university degree: a Master in Cultural Communication.

He loves comedy, and started his own Comedy Film Fest, housed in an old shark fish oil tank on the edge of Flateyri.

The festival draws an attendance of 1,000 people per year from across the island.

Consistently named one of the happiest countries in the world, and the most peaceful country on Earth, these accolades are contributed to the high standards of living and civil rights records of the country, offering its citizens free health care, free higher education, a relatively low income tax and gender equality protected by law.

Iceland was the first country to elect a woman president in 1980, and the first to have an openly gay head of state in 2009.

To boot, Iceland claims to have the oldest Parliament in the world.

Originating in the year 930.

The Al█ingi was a place where all free men gathered to make decisions for the betterment of society.

And I heard it was quite the social gathering until 1232, when Iceland fell under Nordic rule.

Later to be traded over to the Danes.

But even so, if the sun shines only half the year, and your closest neighbor is ten miles away, how does one maintain sanity, let alone happiness, in the remote regions of Iceland?

The center of life in Flateyri revolves around The Old Bookstore, which is owned and operated by none other than our main man, Eyۢr.

It is considered the oldest “original store” in Iceland, and was celebrating its 100th anniversary at time of our visit Started as a general store in the beginning.

Then it turned into a bookstore, and now it's more like a second hand bookstore and museum that we keep open.

And, this is the oldest store, or oldest original store, in Iceland.

What's the name of it?

[in Icelandic] But daily, it█s just called, "The Old Bookstore in Flateyri."

And, what's the museum?

Yeah, so here we are in the store, which everything is as it was back in the days, like a hundred years ago.

So all the interior is as it was as they lived.

It was built in 1906, from a store that was here before my great-grandfather started his business.

So nothing has been changed in here for more than 100 years.

And then the other part of the building, is the apartment of my great-grandparents.

And absolutely nothing has been changed there since they passed away.

So they started to live there in 1915.

Lived there their whole life.

And it's just like a time capsule stepping into the past, going like 70 years backwards, going in there.

When I was growing up here, you were very free, you had a lot of freedom.

If you were just five, or six-years-old, you would just go out and go to the harbor, fish, or do whatever, and then just come back for dinner.

It takes a village to raise a boy or a girl.

"Sker" is a tale of a kayaker who sails through the fjords of Iceland and stumbles upon a rocky reef island, getting fatally stuck out there after his kayak drifts away.

Based on a true story, the film is beautifully shot, playing off of the stunning landscapes: empty windy roads, the vast lake with uninhabited mountains and fjords in the distance.

And there's barely a line of dialogue in the entire film.

I'm drawn to, interesting characters, and I'm drawn to interesting characters that are put in some situation that they don't belong to.

And I think that makes good material for good stories.

In Iceland, knowledge of genealogy is a common thing.

Most people there can trace their ancestry back to the year 700 or 800.

And those are my great-great-grandparent's up there.

Eyۢr can trace his ancestry back 33 generations to the founder of Iceland.

33!

A lucky number if you ask me.

This is why his film, "The Genealogist," is so poignant.

It centers around an Icelandic man who works as a professional Genealogist, but does not know where he comes from.

He is lost in his own world.

He is based on my grandmother's brother, who actually used to run the store as well.

And he was a Genealogist, and I thought, like, what would upset him?

What would put him out of his comfort zone?

And that was, of course, if he had lost somebody that he didn█t know of.

He knew every family in Iceland, except himself, his family.

So there I came up with that story.

In Iceland, storytelling is in the bloodline as the Icelandic language remains largely unchanged from the past 1,000 years.

Even more astounding is that the early Viking settlers wrote down much of their conquests, adventures, and family histories.

These texts survive today, known as the "Sagas:" A historical text that tells the tales of Kings and Vikings battling it out in Nordic splendor.

In Iceland, we have these old books and that is our treasure.

We don't have any old buildings, or old anything, but our treasures are the old books that were written a thousand years ago by the Vikings.

And, yeah... it's amazing stories that every kid in Iceland reads.

I first met Eyۢr on the day after we arrived in Iceland's capital, Reykjavik, where two thirds of Iceland's population lives.

[guitar music, singing in Icelandic] Eyۢr picked us up for a road trip to drive us to his home town of Flateyri.

We stopped to see Icelandic horses, the most beautiful breed I have ever had the pleasure to meet.

We walked along the coast of an abandoned fishing village, and soaked in natural hot pots, next to a freezing cold river.

I was dared to enter after the boys dipped in the water as if it was no biggie.

Brrrrr...

I am no polar bear!

[Eyۢr] Welcome to Iceland!

[Eyۢr laughs] [Stephanie groans.]

We stopped in the town of Hólmavík, an area in the West Fjords known for its sheep farming, which reminded me of the Icelandic film, “Rams.” A story of feuding brothers who bond over saving the last of their family█s breed of sheep [film clip in Icelandic] In Hólmavík, the women still knit wool sweaters, and witchcraft is a very real thing.

[spooky music] Flateyri has a population of approximately 150 people in the winter time, which grows to about 500 in summer, when many city dwellers return to their second homes in the West Fjords.

Flateyri originated as a trading post in 1792, and met its heyday in the 19th century as a home base for shark hunting and whaling operations.

Like many of the peninsula towns in Iceland, Flateyri is first and foremost a fishing village: a vital industry for the West Fjords.

Though Flateyri's main warehouse for fishing shut down years ago.

Flateyri is a town with almost no services, and the next closest village is 14 miles over the icy mountain.

There is a gas station with a small convenience store, a church and cemetery, one pub, and little houses lined up in a row parallel to the harbor.

[singing in Icelandic] [operatic singing in Icelandic] In 1995, Flateyri was struck with tragedy, when a devastating avalanche came crashing down on the town, burying 40 people, and killing 20 men, women and children.

17 houses were completely destroyed, and even more were damaged.

Eyۢr was ten-years-old.

I cannot imagine the impact this would have on a young kid.

Everyone in town lost loved ones.

After that, many families moved out of the area.

Decades later, the town still remembers.

It's part of the legacy of growing up in Flateyri.

[Stephanie] And you were ten then.

So how did that impact you in your life, if at all?

Yeah, absolutely, it impacted me.

It impacted me a lot.

I was, yeah, of course, ten-years-old.

It's like, not all my friends, but some of my friends, were hit by the avalanche.

I knew all of the people that were killed.

So it was like, being ten-years-old, and being already to 20 funerals.

That's, of course, has a huge impact on your life.

And of course, daily life changed quite radically.

Of course there's a lot of grief and, yeah.

And there's a lot of sorrows in the town.

So I too, of course, it had a huge impact.

"Noi the Albino" is a quirky film about a bald-headed loner, a teenager, who is too smart for his own good, and gets bored easily, in a town where the only thing to do is to go to the local gas station.

It is at the gas station where Noi falls in love for the first time, and gets heartbroken for the first time, and where his girlfriend, whom he plans to run away with gets crushed by the avalanche.

Sound familiar?

Indeed, "Noi the Albino" was filmed in Flateyri.

I can see myself in that character, quite a lot.

I think that the director and scriptwriter did a good job of representing how the life is.

There are some iconic scenes there, that people recognize, all Icelandic people.

Like the character Noi, Eyۢr was an only child raised by a single mother living at home with his single grandmother.

Eyۢr spoke to me of his grandmother as his closest friend and confidant, the figure in his life who most influenced him, who also provided the funds to get him to film school, even though she was not a wealthy woman.

These sentiments are reflected in Ey█ór█s filmmaking, and when he speaks about his own films, Ey█ór highlights not the films which played at prestigious festivals, nor the one nominated for an Icelandic Oscar, but rather a documentary short he made about his grandmother, "Last Christmas."

[film clip in Icelandic] The film that I love, and it's like closest to my heart, is a documentary about my grandmother, "Last Christmas," or, "Amma," as we call it.

But... if you look at it as a filmmaker, it█s not very professionally well done.

Like the shots and everything is quite amateurish.

But still, there is some feeling to it.

[film clip in Icelandic] Ey█ór█s instinct to document this last Christmas, and to continue to find new ways to capture the stories of his life in Iceland, puts him in the ranks of his Viking conquerer, storytelling ancestors, who found themselves compelled to use the written and spoken word to teach future generations about their lives and adventures, thus creating a living history.

[choral Christmas carol in Icelandic] What you might not know about me is how much I love Christmas.

That's why I was especially excited to experience Iceland at Christmas time.

I guess I'll make my way up to the Arctic Circle, introduce myself to Santa, and ask him to introduce me to Comet and Cupid.

Wait, what?

No Santa Claus?

Instead of one top dog Santa, Iceland celebrates Christmas through a more mischievous fable.

During the advent season, Icelandic children are visited by the 13 Yule lads.

One arrives each night.

They are giant trolls who live in the mountains, and only emerge out of hiding during the Christmas season.

The Yule Lads are all named and known for their distinguishing, mischievous traits; such as Sausage Swiper, and Ladle Licker, and Bowl Scraper, and Candle Begger.

Door Slammer, not to be confused with Door Sniffer.

And the most disturbing Yule lad of all, perhaps, is Window Peeper.

Don't worry!

It's not what you think...

Window Peeper is merely looking for something sweet to eat.

Who can blame him?

When I was younger, and, you know, was bad, they would just bring you a potato.

Like, for a gift.

Instead of something nice.

[Stephanie] A potato?

Yeah.

[Stephanie█s voice] And this is among the happiest places in the world?

Then we use to scare the kids, so the kids would behave.

[film clip in Icelandic] "Playing It By Ear” is the story of a banker, the father of a teenager, who has little interest in his desire for her to become a musician.

When he signs her up for music lessons, she drops out, and he takes her place attempting to play the recorder; which he is embarrassingly bad at.

[sloppy playing of the recorder] A mocking video goes viral, which causes him to lose his job as the head of a bank.

Though as a result, he bonds with his daughter.

At the end, we see the father happy in a new occupation as a book seller.

The first feature film known to be shot in Iceland was “Son's of the Soil," directed in 1921 by a Danish actor and filmmaker, Gunnar Sommerfeldt.

"The Adventures of Jon and Gvendvur" is considered to be the first Icelandic film.

Its director, Loftur Gu█mundsson went on to create Iceland's leading production company, The Icelandic Film Corporation.

And in 1978, the founding of the Icelandic Film Fund encouraged the growth of the film industry.

Since then, the government has been a source of funding films for its filmmakers.

In 1991, Iceland received its first Academy Award nomination with the film, "Children of Nature."

In the 1980's and 1990's, filmmakers such as Ágúst Gu█mundsson, Hrafn Gunnlaugsson, and Gu█n█ Halldórsdóttir came to the forefront of Icelandic directors, paving the way for the slightly more internationally known filmmakers of 2000s, such as Benedikt Erlingsson's 2013 quirky flick, "Of Horses and Men," and Baltasar Kormákur, whose "101 Reykjavik" defined Icelandic Culture for the millennial generation.

[party guests cheer] My favorite part about staying in Ey█ór█s home, which is an apartment above the old bookstore, formerly owned by his great-grandparents, was experiencing Ey█ór█s culinary skills.

[Stephanie] Maybe you can talk a little bit about what you're cooking?

Yeah, I'm cooking traditional Icelandic Sheep heads.

[Stephanie giggles.]

The eyeball is apparently many people's favorite part.

It took me a lot of willpower and a little bit of Aquavit to build up the courage to eat the eye.

But I did it!

Tasty.

[upbeat music] The Old Bookstore in Flateyri is now one of the most popular tourist destinations in the West Fjords, Thanks to Ey█ór█s ingenuity, and marketing, and entrepreneurial spirit.

We just so happened to be in Flateyri the week of the store's 100th anniversary.

Eyۢr was throwing a big party in celebration, and initiated a time capsule, which all the townspeople participated in to be reopened in another 100 years by the citizens of Flateyri.

A National News crew documented the town's momentous occasion, and came to interview Eyۢr, who it seems is becoming quite the celebrity.

[Eyۢr speaks in Icelandic] For three nights in a row, Eyۢr took me Northern Lights hunting.

By the third night, we lay under the stars, and saw purple hues dance like a Russian ballet performed in the night sky for a private audience of gods.

And here is when you realize, maybe the isolation, frigid weather, and darkness of rural Iceland isn't that lonely after all.

You have the clear night sky, the mountains, and a thousand year heritage of storytelling.

Maybe filmmakers such as Eyۢr thrive off of this natural landscape.

Living among the books and relics of his forefathers, Eyۢr has great company and can dream up all the stories, with multiple mediums at his fingertips: be it through photographs, his writing, or a handful of short films that travel the world and show audiences stories from this Icelandic fjord village.

Maybe “happiness,” in the modern sense of the word, is overrated.

And all we really need in this life is a certain contentment that the landscape and lights of Iceland can infuse into our souls, providing a legacy of storytelling to pass along for generations to come.

By recognizing this, Eyۢr is contributing to the written history of Iceland; through his films, his bookstore, his publishings, and the time capsule he's left behind.

To learn more about the Cinema Nomad Filmmakers and dive deeper into the exciting world of global cinema visit our website CinemaNomad.TV