In Camden’s cosy folk café, children are colouring-in, and adults are eating vegetarian cake, as excitement simmers giddily for Hafdis Huld‘s arrival.
Hafdis is a sprightly performer, always engaging with the crowd. Full of amusing anecdotes and whimsical observations, she is someone who clearly holds precious the element of storytelling, which enriches her songs. She hails from a tiny, rural community just outside of Iceland’s capital city, where folks gossip about the plights of the village dog. But Hafdis draws on a vigorous sense of delight and imagination as well as poking fun at provincial concerns.
While one lyric goes: ‘you get your picture in the paper, if you catch a fish’, we also hear the exploits of a Spiderman-like legend, scaling skyscrapers: ‘You never see him in an elevator… He’s got style, and still they tell the police. Just you wait, he’ll come down in one piece…‘ There is a joyous ode to building a robot ‘using nuts and bolts and just a little bit of glue, and some tinfoil on his feet.’ She also wrote a response to her neighbours’ prying about the waking hours of the songwriting couple: ‘They think we’re vampires…that would be cool!’
Hafdis is heart-warming and her energy refreshing. Her songwriting is like a happy puppy bounding up to you. Her voice can be exuberant but soothing. There’s a maturity with it as her wonderful songs and stories also have appreciation and gift for careful crafting.
Hafdis’ husband, Alisdair, plays delicately tempered guitar – Hafdis would join him on ukelele, as usual – but she fell out of a car and broke one of her fingers! She’s amused to tell us that it happened as soon as she’d got out of an airport hire car, on arrival in the UK. She chats to us, offering mischievous tales, chatting away as if we’re fond old friends.
The music world is enriched with someone like Hafdis’ wit and personality. How lucky we’ve been to have her come from Iceland to sing to us in this snug cafe. A chart-topper in her homeland, may many more people the world over come to treasure her enchanting songs and performances.
