Did Fischersund spring organically from being raised together or was it something you consciously created?
Lilja: We’re all artists in different ways, and very close. Iceland is a small community. My mom has weekly dinners, and when we would come together back in the day, we felt, “oh, it’d be amazing if we could bring all our different strengths together in one pot and create something amazing.” That happened in 2017. Jónsi had a private studio in Downtown Reykjavik. It was a beautiful standalone black house, one of the oldest in Reykjavik, from 1875. He and his American partner decided to move to LA, so the studio was empty. We thought, “okay, let’s just do this. Let’s make our dream come true.”
Sigur Rós had this beautiful music festival in December 2017, and Fischersund opened during that time, with one perfume, from Jónsi–with music playing and art on the wall. It has grown gradually ever since. It was intentional, this focus on combining different mediums together to create a holistic experience. It was our dream to create this, a rest in this busy world where all of your senses could be touched.
I was sad I couldn’t make it to your museum show on the West Coast.
Lilja: We also opened another exhibition in Iceland for Sequences Art Festival where we combined hand-colored photographs, 3D video flowers, musical pieces, and scents, of course.
That’s incredible. I live in Greenpoint, Brooklyn and found the brand at Teak, where the owner mentioned visiting you in Iceland for foraging trips. What are those trips like?
Lilja: Iceland isn’t a big country, and it only takes a 10 minute drive out to be in wild nature. There’s also a culture where people have summer homes they visit on the weekends. Nature is a big part of being an Icelander. When you’re there, nature is bigger than us and you really sense it with these volcanic eruptions. The weather can just be so crazy and powerful.
Yeah, I’ve been twice, and on the last trip I had to get wind and ash insurance for the car.
Lilja: Yeah. When we were kids, our parents took us on foraging trips to collect leaves and a little Icelandic flower called Arctic Thyme that is dried and used for teas and spices and in food preparation. Today we work with an Icelandic distiller. Her name is Hraundís Guðmundsdóttir, and she has been helping us to distill Icelandic nature; All of our scents have Icelandic essential oils, then high quality fragrance oils we mixed together to create an Icelandic story.
Do you still lead trips or do they only organically come to fruition when the family’s all together and you’re exploring new scents?
Lilja: It’s kind of both. We have been doing events, we did two this summer, where we worked with Hraundís to distill the heart of Reykjavik. She has this beautiful copper distiller. We literally walked around Reykjavik, picking whatever grew there that had a scent and distilled on point. Everybody walked away with a scent of Reykjavik.
But it happens naturally, mostly around our summer house. And Hraundís is also really good at harvesting. She works with the forester society. When they need to cut down trees to preserve the forest, if it’s getting too thick, they send it to her and she distills it into oil for us.
In the line, each scent has its own story, and in some cases, color palette. Did you set out to create “light” and “dark” scents?
Lilja: That came later. First, we started with 23, which is inspired by old Reykjavik. Our father is a metalsmith, and when Jónsi was working with our father at the docks in Reykjavik, he came up with No. 54, which is also a rather dark scent inspired by our father’s garage in the countryside where he builds things and fixes old cars. Then came No. 8, which is a light scent inspired by our childhood growing up in a small village.
The set came gradually. We noticed that three were darker and three were lighter. that’s why we decided to pair them like that. People are often drawn to either light or darker notes.
It’s funny that you mentioned metalsmithing. I was curious about the tins your pieces come in, and found a video of them being made by blow torch. Is this something you still do or is it outsourced?
Lilja: No, we do everything ourselves. Most of the time our father does it. He also does our incense. We’re all together in the studio, and then whatever needs to be done, we do it. So it’s kind of this natural process.
Yeah, I was wondering if another sibling does the graphic design for the scarves and the bags.
Lilja: My sister, Inga, is an amazing visual artist, and a self-taught designer. Self-taught is a leading word in this family. Jónsi is a self-taught musician and a self-taught nose. When you have drive, if you’re passionate about something, you will always find a way. Inga, who is really good at drawing, designs all of our bandanas and makes us look good.
I have one of your bags. It’s actually my favorite tote. I was outside Barcelona at the top of a mountain at a monastery in the middle of nowhere and all of a sudden a man came up behind me and showed me he was wearing the same bag. It was such a nice, surprising moment of, I guess, community? When you see the logo, it’s more than just “someone likes the same scent”—they like the world behind it.
Lilja: I love that. Also, that is such an Icelandic moment because in Iceland we’re so few, so everybody knows each other and everybody’s connected. I feel that it has spread to the world. So when you meet somebody with our bag, it’s such a moment like, “Hey, we know each other.” I love that. Thank you for sharing.
Tonight, are you unveiling any new scents or will this be more of a way to meet your community?
Lilja: It’s definitely both. But we brought with us something special, of course, because we love doing limited editions where we can just go crazy. We brought a set called Quarter To Five, which is inspired by a special moment; Iceland can be so dark and gloomy most of the time, but then you have the summers, and especially in June and July, when there’s light twenty four seven. Icelandic people go a bit crazy and party a lot.
It’s all about that moment when you’re inside a dark bar, you’ve been dancing and drinking, and the bar’s closing at 4:30 AM, and it takes a bit to get outside, but then you do and the sun’s shining, the birds are singing, and you’re like, “Get me my sunglasses, get a takeaway beer, let’s find an after party.” It’s about that particular moment.
For the scent, we collaborated with an iconic bar in Iceland called Kaffibarinn. They donated an old stool that had experienced 20 years of spiltering, secrets, melted into years, kisses. We felt that was the heart of Icelandic nightlife. With that, we distilled this stool into oil that’s in the set. You really have the heart of the Icelandic nightlife in it–the bar, the wood furniture, leather jackets, rolled tobacco. But then you also have sweet drinks, aperol spritz cocktails and then the outside–the fresh Arctic air. It’s a mix of these two worlds.
Did you come up with this together?
Lilja: We all remembered that moment–it’s just such a weird but magical feeling. The source of everything we do in Fischersund is family and this bank of shared memories we’re always pulling from. Whenever we’re coming up with a new concept, it’s easy to go wild because we start the dialogue and it’s like, “Oh, remember this?…” Then someone makes a little composition that inspires an artwork and the artwork inspires the scent. It’s a whole chaotic, beautiful mess.
It’s an inspiration for everyone who has brothers or sisters.
Lilja: We really just love each other and are good friends and all really easygoing. But I think why we work so successfully together is that everybody has a clear role, their own voice, but then when we come together, it becomes something bigger. For example, my sister, Ingibjörg, is the art director and visual artist, and designs everything and does amazing 3D videos. Jónsi, of course, is a musician, artist and perfumer–he is the number one in making the perfumes.
Each scent is like a poem that tells a story. And I just really love that because scent can be so abstract. It can be difficult for people to understand what they’re smelling. That’s why they get confused if they smell a few perfumes. But when you have these hits and can visualize what you’re smelling, it helps people to be transported to a place or feeling. I love that. Jónsi is an amazing writer.
[Jónsi is patched in]
Lilja: Just in time! Did you hear me? I was just telling them what an amazing writer you are.
Jónsi: Oh, thank you. Okay. Wow. Thank you, sister.
Lilja: Sigurrós, the fourth sibling, is the artisan and hand-blends all of her perfumes and candles in Iceland, but is also a nose in training with Jónsi. Our partners are also very involved. My husband and my sister’s husbands are composers, so they are with Jónsi in the music collective. And Jónsi’s partner is with Jónsi in the perfume making.
Mom has the most important role of caring for our mental health and watching our kids and bringing home baked goods to the studio.
Jónsi, when did you become a nose?
Jónsi: I’ve been doing it for 16, 17 years. I just started collecting essential oils and smelling. I always loved scent, but never liked perfume. But then it became more intense as the years went by. You collect more and more oils, stuff like that.
Perfumes can be almost like mix tapes–you can share them and connect with people and there’s that kind of overlap between music and scent, especially in the indie scent world. When you first started, did you give away your scents or was it a private language you were building?
Jónsi: No, it was just for me personally, just the same with music. It’s like everything you do is for yourself. It’s very egocentric.
Lilja: It was actually us sisters that kind of twisted his arm and were like, “Oh my god, this is so amazing. You must fill the world in on what you’re doing.”
Jónsi: Yeah, I’m never happy with anything.
Lilja: But I like what you say about perfumes being mixtapes because I feel like especially with younger people, they’re collecting and exchanging scent and there’s so much fun culture there.
Jónsi: Younger people are getting into scents more, reading more about them, getting more interested in it. And it’s really cool I think.
How do you know when a scent is finished?
Jónsi: I never know it. And like I said earlier, I’m never happy with anything. So I just am never happy. And the scent is never done.
Yeah, I feel like it’s like any art piece–you can always keep working on it.
Jónsi: When you do music–I’ve been doing music my whole life, basically–that’s more instinctual. Like, okay, the song is done. I don’t need to add any more to it. It’s kind of what it is and it sounds good and I don’t need to add more. But scents, I have only been doing it for 16 years, so it’s not quite to the place where you feel really comfortable or where you’re very sure of yourself or something. Which is good, I think.
Lilja: One thing I’ve experienced is when you play a song, everyone hears the same thing. But with perfume, it’s so individual. When you’re trying a scent on us sisters or our partners, they all smell different depending on the Ph value of our skin.
Jónsi: Yeah, everyone’s skin is different, the Ph level of skin and oil and stuff like that.
There’s notes in music, but there’s also notes in perfume. Are there notes you keep returning to that underlie these scents?
Jónsi: I love vetiver, I’m very attracted to vetiver. So it’s probably vetiver in every scent we do, I guess.
Lilja: And bergamot. You love bergamot. You always say it kind of lilts.
Jónsi: Yeah. It’s a classic top note. It works with everything and it’s super diffusive and really great.
I imagine at this point it’s hard to hand-forage–you’re making perfumes, touring. or in the studio. Do you still make time to do a little foraging or do you have people you work with who farm for you?
Lilja: We don’t forage anything ourselves anymore that we do for perfumes, more for events. And we have Hraundís to distill all the Icelandic oils for us. But Jónsi was really good back in the day, making all kinds of things. But it is so much work and you have to be so precise and it is a skill. And we discovered quickly that “let’s just leave this to our professional distiller and we can concentrate on creating the concepts and artworks and music and the world around them.”
Jónsi: and Lilja recommend:
We have a destination for culture, the Marshall House, built with money the American government set for Iceland after World War II through The Marshall Fund. It’s a historic house and has four different galleries and museums, all free of charge. On the first floor it’s a restaurant and bar. It’s such a good destination because it’s right in the Harbor of Reykjavik.
The local food scene.
Going to the pool. It’s such a culture in Iceland because it’s often so cold, so we love our hot tubs. I would recommend the swimming hall in downtown Reykjavik. It’s also a historical house.”
The creative scene in Iceland is crazy–there’s just so much happening and we know so many amazing visual artists and musicians. Come for Design March. We have something cooking up.”
This content originally appeared on The Creative Independent and was authored by Laura Feinstein.