UNDERGRADUATE

maps with little people and drawings representing different
places featured on the maps. For example, the cover of the
Eat & Sleep Iceland map features a drawing of a cute girl
eating a fermented shark head (see figure 1). That drawing
by itself portrays a common myth of Iceland as a place
of odd traditional food, while simultaneously making it
accessible to a generation of hip tourists coming for the
more urban Reykjavik experience. Given the company
goal of creating a map that is like having a local friend, two
important questions come up. First, if maps have symbolic
grammar of a place that translates into the translation and
understanding of Iceland by the non-Icelander, what do
these maps say about Iceland? What does the aesthetic
appeal attempt to claim about a real 3D local Icelanderfriend?
The second question centers around what the maps
do not show or tell about Iceland. For example, the Tar
House Fish Restaurant in Isafjordur is not listed on any
of the maps, yet having been, I would say it is certainly a
hub of community in the town and is mostly frequented
by locals, even in the summer. It was a place that our real
3D local Icelander-friends suggested we eat. Why then is
it not on the maps? Perhaps it does not fit the Iceland that
the mapmakers are trying to portray. This could be the case
for a variety of reasons. Although it is a cute place with
large wooden tables in a barn and twinkle lights hanging
throughout, if there is a specific sentiment of Iceland that
the mapmakers desire Iceland to be known for, perhaps it
does not fit. True, all the furniture is uniform there are no
mismatched antique chairs, there are no collectables of any
sort on the walls or tables like in the coffee shops featured
in the maps. In addition, there are no direct ties to artists
of any type. It does however, have traces of the past in its
cultural biography. Isafjordur was long a center for trade
and in 1757 The Shop was built to accommodate trade. In
1782, Tar House was built as the warehouse for the shop
(Creek, fieldnotes). However, there seemed to be a lack of
nick-knacks in the restaurant to document this past, and
perhaps the fact that its history is not mentioned boldly,
unlike some of the coffee shops, make its aesthetic not quite
as “HandPicked” as it needed to be to make the map.
The exclusion of a local-favorite and old restaurant
from the HandPicked Iceland maps is important for a
couple of reasons. One, when looking at specialty maps,
it is equally as important to consider what is not on the
map and why as it is to consider what is on the maps.
The maps themselves invoke a visceral response about
“adorable Iceland” as well as carry a moral weight. The
maps indicate that the important places to eat and visit
are the ones that fit into this idea of tying the past to the
present seamlessly. The maps were created with a specific
type of new traveler in mind. They are ideal for the café
lover, the city lover who came to Iceland to experience the
awe, but who still wants their coffee and a place to read
and write. They appeal to the artist-traveler. Second, this
particular breed of coffee shop or restaurant picked for
these maps reminded me immediately of movie director
Wes Anderson’s aesthetics and the idea of timelessness
felt in his films. I decided to go ahead and explore the
regime behind the Wes Anderson look to see if it was
possible to uncover similarities within the coffee shop
culture of Iceland. If similarities arose, I would be able to
make the claim that Iceland participates intentionally in
its own myth-making and amorphous time.
Wes Anderson films: Representation of Amorphous
Time + Three Places
Tony Bravo writes, “No matter what part of the movie you
happen to come in on, you can always tell when you’ve
FIGURE 2
28 CREATING KNOWLEDGE