Johnny lydon iceland punk rock museum

You don’t walk into Pönksafn Íslands; you descend into it. The new Icelandic Punk Museum in Reykjavík is located in a former public toilet: 0 Bankastræti in the city centre.

As I descend into Pönksafn Íslands on my second day in Reykjavík, curator and famous Icelandic punk Svarti Álfur Mánason is rocking out, noisily and messily, at the bottom of the graffiti-covered steps, his pink spiked hair the first thing I see.

He apologizes for his messy riffing, welcomes me to the museum and tells me I can play any of the instruments and put on any of the clothes in the place.

Johnny lydon iceland punk rock museum

“Go in order,” he advises. “And read the doors; that way you won’t miss any of the humor.”

Each stall, of course, features a (non-working) toilet, along with an impressive array of archives from Icelandic punk, 1978-1992 (from the nation’s first punk band, Fræbbblarnir, to the disbanding of The Sugarcubes).

The walls are plastered floor to ceiling with photographs, posters, newspaper articles, record covers