Iceland’s new football anthem?
Iceland fans in good voice. Photo: Golli / Kjartan Þorbjörnsson
Liverpool fans support their men on the field with ‘ You’ll never walk alone ’. Barcelona fans raise the roof with ‘ El cant del Barça ’. French fans even plumped for Gloria Gaynor’s camp classic ‘ I will survive ’ to propel their national team to World Cup victory. But what about Iceland?
It seems that boisterous football fans the world over need a team anthem to channel their energies into when viewing from the stands. Iceland’s highly successful Euro 2016 qualification campaign has seen the emergence of an unofficial new football anthem: ‘Eg er kominn heim’.
The rousing anthem, the title of which translates roughly as ‘I am back home’, was made popular in Iceland by Óðinn Valdimarsson.
Óðinn Valdimarsson. Photo: Wikipedia
But this most traditional of Icelandic songs is not actually Icelandic at all. It is, in fact, a song from the operetta Das Veilchen vom Montmartre by Hungarian composer Emmerich Kálmán, with the original title ‘ Heut’ Nacht hab’ ich geträumt von dir ’.
Óðinn Valdimarsson (1937-2011) was a popular singer from Akureyri in North Iceland and turned this German-language Hungarian ditty into an Icelandic classic.
The song really broke though as an Iceland football anthem when Iceland played the Czech Republic in Plzeň back in November 2014. Since then, it has gone from strength to strength and was belted out by a capacity crowd in Reykjavik at the national team’s historic match against Kazakhstan last Sunday.
You can listen to Óðinn Valdimarsson’s version of ‘Eg er kominn heim’ here (Icelandic lyrics below):
Er völlur grær og vetur flýr
og vermir sólin grund.
Kem ég heim og hitti þig,
verð hjá þér alla stund.
Við byggjum saman bæ í sveit
sem brosir móti sól.
Ljúfu lífi landið Vítt
mun ljá og veita skjól.
Sól slær silfri á voga,
Sjáið jökulinn loga.
Allt er bjart fyrir okkur tveim,
því ég er kominn heim.
Að ferðalokum finn ég þig
sem mér fagnar höndum tveim.
Ég er kominn heim,
já, ég er kominn heim.
Sól slær silfri á voga,
Sjáið jökulinn loga.
Allt er bjart fyrir okkur tveim,
því ég er kominn heim.
Að ferðalokum finn ég þig
sem mér fagnar höndum tveim.
Ég er kominn heim,
já, ég er kominn heim.
Ég er kominn heim,
já, ég er kominn heim.
