Singing Army of Children Everywhere!

It was “Öskudagur” yesterday in Iceland, which is our weird version of Ash Wednesday.

As usual, the Icelanders bastardize the day in their own eclectic way. Ash Wednesday is kind of like our Halloween but with a fun twist that juxtaposes art and music with commerce and capitalism.

You see, on Ash Wednesday morning kids wake up early and put on their favorite costumes just like children would do for Halloween.

However, instead of trick-or-treating door-to-door in residential neighborhoods, they descend on the commercial districts, the malls, and the shopping streets.

There they walk from store to store and sing songs for the clerks, bank tellers, and employees who give them candy in exchange for their performance.

This goes on for a few hours until the candy’s gone or the children get too hoarse to sing another rendition of “Gamli Nói.”

It’s a perfectly normal and fun tradition for me and I’ve certainly sung my fair share of folk songs for the fifteen-year-old supermarket cashier, but I suppose that from the outside it might sound a bit weird.

But I like to believe that it subconsciously teaches kids to overcome the fear of singing in front of other people, and helps them feel comfortable with stage fright so that they’re better…