Jón Hallur Stefánsson

Mansöngvar - unplugged

Mansöngvar is an ancient Old Norse word for love poems – and love songs. It is also the title of Jón Hallur Stefánsson’s double LP released in 2025, which was named singer-songwriter album of the year by Morgunbladid, Iceland’s largest newspaper.

For this intimate unplugged concert at Svanekegaarden, the piano has been brought out. Jón plays and sings a selection of the songs, accompanied at intervals by cellist Anja Zdyb Lillemæhlum. The songs are in Icelandic, but along the way Jón Hallur talks about the lyrics and experiments a little more with translation for this concert.

Jón Hallur, who lives in Svaneke, has his musical roots in folk, art rock and punk, and in Reykjavík’s underground scene of the 1970s, but he has also experimented with rock and pop. His work as a writer and poet also shines through. Writing about the songs on Mansöngvar, Arnar Eggert Thoroddsen/Morgunblaðið says:

“The lyrics here are wonderful, as are the vignettes of everyday life, and the music is exceptionally beautiful… This is singer-songwriter music in which Jón Hallur’s subdued, gentle and slightly rough voice leads the songs, which are both melodic and wistful and far from ordinary… It is a deep Scandinavian sound, somehow, yet the mood of the songs also recalls American indie music from the ’90s. Jeff Mangum (Neutral Milk Hotel), Will Oldham, Robert Pollard (Guided by Voices). Tom Waits and Bob Dylan are not so far away either.”

The double LP Mansöngvar will be available to buy at the concert. On it, Jón Hallur is accompanied by, among others, his brother Hermann on bass and guitar, his son Dagur on theremin, former Sugar Cubes bassist Bragi Ólafsson, cellist Gyða Valtýsdóttir (Múm) and drummer Ólafur Björn Ólafsson (Sigur Rós and others), who also produced the record.

Listen to the music

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