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GÞ Hey BB, what was that story about the holes?
GÞ I don't remember any of the details, you are so good at them.
BB I don't remember all the details but what I do remember is that they changed the source of the hot water for the first time.
GÞ For the first time?
BB Yes, it was for the first time, and now they do it regularly, after that summer of 2020. They did it again last summer, because it went well. But because they did it for the first time, there were loads of things they had to plan for: water from one place had more magnesium than the other, there was some kind of buildup of minerals, it was hotter, it was colder. there were lots of things.
GÞ Wait wasn't that related to the thing about Vesturbæjarlaug?
BB Ah yes! The poolwater turned red. Turns out it was because of the new water in the pipes, I feel like that was the magnesium thing. Because the waterpipes had a buildup of some kind of chemical, and reacted in some way, turning our pool red. Also something with hard or soft water? What that is, exactly I'm not sure. But also, this wasn't reported – we just knew it because my cousin worked at the water company.
Anyway.
All of a sudden, we were getting hot water from Hellisheiði, which is a high-temperature area, while we used to get it from Laugardalurinn, which is a low-temperature area. That's the reason why it became so hard to regulate the water from the faucets, because it was way hotter than before. Luckily, there were not any hot water-related accidents that I know of.
But yeah, they changed the source of water to rest the old supply. The water level rose and rose in Laugardalur, and it had never been so high, I think it was nearly 10 meters under the surface.
I thought it was pretty funny, so I imagined that it was a gigantic cellar, a basement under everything, and the water filled the basement, but then it's actually just about "water in the earth" and I don't understand at all how that works.
GÞ Yes that's what I'm so curious about! Is it just a hole? An empty space under the ground? Maybe I don't want to know what it means.
BB Exactly, I don't get it, I mean, was the ground 10 meters below us squishy or fluid or what.
And then there were all the holes.
People have dug a LOT of experimental holes around all of Reykjavík, and they weren't neccesarily recorded or documented. Some of them were made a really long time ago, decades even, and usually they have been filled with something, somehow plugged, and it evens out the pressure inside the great basement of water.
My cousin, was looking for them, the holes, that is. Imagine him saying something like: "What could be a hole? Is this a hole?" He was checking if they had a plug in them or if they were open. Because if they are open, the water can travel up because of a change in pressure, and they become geysers.
Which was so crazy, because then one day we could wake up in our house and have a geyser in our garden
GÞ Wait, did you see that article? About the geyser in the garden?
BB No what! What was that?
GÞ Ok so … there was an article about this, last summer I think, some man or some family that lived I think in Mosfellsbær, I don't really remember, but they had been digging for something, fixing the pipes or other. They then when in for lunch, and looked out the window and all of a sudden a geyser erupted in their backyard shooting boiling water up 20 metres into the sky, from an old borehole.
BB Wow that is so their fault …
I found it! The article! Geyser opened up in garden in Biskupstungur; "This wasn't the plan"
GÞ Oh, so it was not Mosfellsbær … I never remember names of places.
BB Where are Biskupstungur again? Oh it is there, up by Flúðir, close to Bláskógabyggð.
GÞ That's pretty far away, then it can't be connected.
BB "The hole had been cold for more than 20 years, I was digging a canal and came close to the hole, it must have started around then" – there was this change in pressure, as the hole was not plugged.
GÞ I find it such a funny interview, because they were looking into making it a tourist attraction. Like "now we have to live with this new hole in the garden."
BB This happened just last summer?
GÞ Yes!!
BB Wow. But the best thing about it, is that this whole operation – it felt like a spy movie – an undercover operation happening all hush hush in secret. It was an experiment, not reported at all, and they just hoped for the best. And then to realise "wait there might be hundreds of undocumented holes all around town."
A lot of these holes are residential areas now, and we just have to trust that the houses are built on cement. I once called my cousin and he was just in a car park on Rauðarársstígur, inspecting a very old hole, that had apparently been plugged.
When I heard about this, I was coming home to Reykjavík from the highlands where I had been for some time. There is NO gossip at all in the highlands – and I brought this story that was supposed to be the gossip of the year. You had just come home from LungA, from where you could obviously bring endless amounts of gossip.
Also to suddenly see the landscape in a new light – it looks different now, everything is full of holes.
GÞ All these maybe-geysers, hiding in plain sight. It reminds me of when we were sitting at a bar and I asked if you had any gossip and you nearly jumped up and exclaimed: "YES. NEW STONE JUST DROPPED"
BB The green stone! I think people should gossip more about geology.
From a conversation in early 2022, self-published as a very small book called The Hole Story.
Released in Trophy Logic as part of a writing seminar in Critical Studies in Sandberg Instituut in Amsterdam in the Netherlands in May 2026.
Thank you to Rouzbeh Shadpey for the editorial advice.
TROPHY LOGIC
Collected writing from the
Critical Studies Department
Sandberg Instituut, 2026
Special thanks to,
and with a preface by:
Mia You
Design:
Miglė Lukoševičiūtė
Design advisor:
Greta Þorkelsdóttir
Editors:
gervaise alexis savvias, António Manso Preto
Copyediting:
gervaise alexis savvias
Contributors:
Mia You, Emanuella Cunt, gervaise alexis savvias,
Greta Þorkelsdóttir, Cecilie Fang, Jody Aikman,
Jumana Azzam, Milda Valiulytė, Iris Verge Ferrer,
Brandon Chow, Kessy Maria Paller, Macarena Magaña
Villar, Xristini Mavrantoni, Sara, Miglė Lukoševičiūtė,
Mehmet Süzgün, Maximilian Pellizari, Emma Ajdari,
António Manso Preto, Paul Schmidt
Printed and bound in Germany
Edition of 100
Errantry.
Written and designed by Greta Þorkelsdóttir.
Published by
EKA GD MA.
Printed in Tallinn, Estonia in
2023 in an edition of 35.
Thank you dearly Alexandra Margetic
Carlo Canún Helga Dögg
Laura Pappa Lieven Lahaye
Mark Foss Michael Fowler
Oliver Long Patrick Zavadskis
Rita Davis Sean Yendrys
Salvör Gullbrá Þórarinsdóttir
Steinn Helgi Magnússon.
Written during a writing and editing workshop with Lieven Lahaye, April–May 2022.
Designed by Carlo Canún and Rita Davis
The drop caps throughout the book were designed by their corresponding authors.
Proofreading by Maris Karjatse
Thank you to Else Lagerspetz, Indrek Sirkel, Laura Pappa, Margit Säde, Rosen Eveleigh, Sandra Nuut and Sean Yendrys.
Published by EKA GD MA, Tallinn 2022
Estonian Academy of Arts
Master of Arts in Graphic Design
www.eka-gd-ma.ee
www.artun.ee
Printed in Estonia by Printon
500 copies
ISBN 978-9916-619-70-4
Every effort has been made to trace copyright holders and to obtain their permission for the use of copyright material.
With thanks to
Agnes Isabelle Veevo Alexandra
Margetic
Björk Brynjarsdóttir
Carlo Canún
Guðrún Ólafsdóttir
Helga Dögg
Laura Pappa
Mark Foss
Meg Miller
Michael Ashley Fowler
Oliver Long
Patrick Zavadskis
Paula Buškevica
Rita Davis
Rosen Eveleigh
Salvör Gullbrá Þórarinsdóttir
Sean Yendrys
Tóta Kolbeinsdóttir
Þorkell Atlason
Paper
Holmen Book White 70g
Cover
Five teaspoons of sand from Linnahall Pier
Printed in 37–49 copies
Published in partial fulfilment of the degree
of Master of Arts in Graphic Design
at the Estonian Academy of Arts
Tallinn, 2023
A DREAM
My eyesight had become blurry, so I went to get laser eye surgery. While I was getting the surgery, my mind left my body and went to the mall. Upon my mind's return, after a bit of window shopping, I discovered that the surgeon had experienced some difficulties. He said he could not perform the procedure because I had an ingrown hair somewhere – I needed to find it first. The nurse said that this was because of America.
[sorting through individual grains of sand]
meaningful. meaningful. boring.
entire world. kinda cool. boring.
ooh deeply meaningful.
(tinyobscurae, Twitter Post,
17. October 2022, 11:51.)
Right now, you're wondering why you can't see anything.
Right now, someone just got a taste of the future.