Ingunn Huld is a rising Icelandic star, and produces beautiful acoustic folk pop. She’s trying to raise funds for her debut album on Karolinafund, an Icelandic crowdfunding website. I caught up with her to find out a bit more about crowdfunding in Iceland and the album itself.

You are crowdfunding your debut album at the moment. How’s it going?

It’s going super surprisingly well! In just a week it was up to 60% and now as I write this it’s 90% and still 21 days left!

Is crowdfunding big in Iceland?

It’s getting bigger I think but to be honest I’m not sure how big it is. Icelanders are a bunch of creative people thus a lot of creative projects being made all the time – so crowdfunding fits very well with that I think.

 
What happens of you don’t raise enough funds? I mean, I’m sure you will…

Karolinafund works like this: People can support and in return get something like an album or concert ticket or something but it only will be funded if the goal is met. So if you don’t raise enough funds no one pays nor gets their CD or whatever they chose.

Your debut album is called ‘fjúk’. It sounds a little like another word in English. How should we say it and what does it mean?

Tough question. We have a lot of words in Icelandic for different kinds of wind and snow and fjúk is one of them. I was having a meeting with my friend that does the album artwork and he suggested why don’t we check out different names for wind or snow since the lyrics on the album are rather nature friendly… – When I came across this word I thought it fitted really well and later found out that it actually is found in one of the songs and that song is accidentally connected well with the album photo. So Fjúk can mean skafrenningur or whiteout – snow with wind.

  

  
Can you describe your sound? What should we expect from ‘Fjúk’?

Another tough question! Ehmm… maybe folk-pop something… I really value live music and wanted to keep that factor so when we recorded most of the instruments the geniuses were all playing together in the epic studio Geimsteinn in Reykjanesbær. The drums were in one room, the bassist in the room where the sound engineer was, the guitar player in the kitchen, the piano player in a room with an old grand piano and in the hallway while playing the keyboards. I was sometimes in the bathroom singing demos so that for the live feel of the album – and then when we recorded the strings and vocals in a studio called Aldingarðurinn it was with another sound engineer that added something new to the sound of the album with his creativity – and I’m very happy about how it sounds!

 
Are you playing Iceland Airwaves this year? Any special plans?

I’m playing a few off-venue gigs but super excited about going myself to Iceland Airwaves to listen to all the wonderful bands. My younger brother is playing and everyone should check out his band Vio. 

Special plans – the album will hopefully be out in the beginning of November so later this week I have to go full on into planning release concerts. Up to now I haven’t had much time to think about because all the album publishing work is pretty new to me and time-consuming. I think I’ve learned a lot from this.

   
Find out how to support Ingunn’s Karolina Fund here.