Long Hair, Long Lines

Barber shops and hair salons will be allowed to reopen in Iceland tomorrow, after having been closed since October 7 due to disease prevention measures.

The businesses are swamped with phone calls and bookings, and those contacted by Morgunblaðið report being very busy.

“Right now, I’m fully booked until Christmas,” states hairdresser Hrafnhildur Harðardóttir, who works at the hair salon Portið.

Some restrictions still apply. For the first two weeks, a maximum of ten customers are allowed to be inside each hair salon at a time.

Hrafnhildur admits that there is no guarantee everyone can get a haircut by Christmas. “We’ll do our best to serve everyone, but this is a special situation we haven’t experienced before,” she states.

Barber Þorberg Ólafsson expects it to take three to four weeks to meet the demand. In the spring, barber shops had to close for some time. Once they reopened, they were very busy. “We started work at 7:30 every morning and worked for 12 to 13 hours a day. That’s the hardest I’ve ever worked the 55 years I’ve been in business,” Þorberg states .