The Northern Sights

If you happened to be watching ESPN, any soccer highlight shows, or browsing random clips on YouTube at any point during the past two weeks, chances are you’ve seen one of the strangest, most creative, and dare I say, more impressive goal celebrations in recent memory.

After finding the back of the net in a recent match, Stjarnan FC striker Thorvaldur Árnason ran towards his jubilant teammates who celebrated with him in typical soccer fashion, wrapping their arms around their colleague and embracing the euphoric goal-scorer. It was natural, basic, and expected. But Árnason and his crew were far from finished.

As the crowd applauded their side’s strike, Árnason raised an index figure to the supporters, signaling for them to wait. Seconds later, three other members of Stjarnan assembled behind Árnason forming what has quickly come to be known as the Human Toilet. The 30-year-old forward then took a seat, skimmed over his imaginary newspaper, and took care of business—at least in simulation—much to the raucous incredulity of those in attendance. Oh, and not only did Árnason have the courtesy to flush, but he remembered to put the seat down, too.

Stjarnan (pronounced SHTAIRT-nahn), who play in Iceland’s top-flight division, Pepsi-deildin, have become major celebrities in the soccer world almost overnight for their unique choreographed goal-scoring celebrations like the aforementioned Árnason’s, whose shenanigans made number one on SportsCenter’s Not Top Ten just two Fridays ago.

The lavish celebrations, which, in addition to the Human Toilet include a Rambo shooting spree, a human bicycle, and an exceptionally realistic depiction of reeling in a fish, have become a hit on the Internet and soccer television shows around world in recent months. And while each possesses its own peculiar blend of novelty, cleverness, and imagination, an onlooker witnessing these extravagant celebrations for the first time might think them all to be just a tad out of the ordinary. But they would be right, for in a land where puffin and fermented shark meat are considered delicacies, where all children are named after their fathers, and where everyone—even the Prime Minister—is listed in the country’s solitary telephone book, it’s best to expect the unexpected.

Having traveled to Iceland this past weekend, I sought out after the natives of Reykjavik to see if they might be able to explain to me this bizarre on-going phenomenon from the club that makes its home just down the road from the capital in the municipality of Garðabær. And I didn’t have to stray far, as two managers—Ingi and Svavar—working the front desk at my hostel proved not only to be rabid soccer enthusiasts, but de facto authorities on all-things Stjarnan.

“There was a tradition of strange celebrations in Pepsi-deildin (then known as Úrvalsdeild) that began in 1999 when club ÍBV performed a version of human bowling after scoring a goal, “ started Svavar. “Ten players lined up as pins, while the goal-scorer ran into them as the ball, knocking them down in a perfect strike. It is this mantle of odd celebrating that Stjarnan have now taken up, and theirs are pretty ingenious,” he admitted.

Entertaining they may be, however, the celebrations can only carry the intrigue of an entire league so far.

“I cannot stand watching Icelandic soccer,” conceded an honest Ingi, “it just doesn’t have anything exciting to offer.”

“So how does a team like Stjarnan and the rest of the teams in Pepsi-deildin compare to those big clubs on the continent like Real Madrid,” I inquired.

Ingi just stared at me blankly.

Okay, so it was a silly question, and of course I had known the answer well before asking it (surely anyone who follows soccer even a little bit would): the gap between the two in terms of talent was wide. Very wide. Just to give you a reference point, of the 53 top-flight divisions in all of Europe, Spain is currently 2nd in the UEFA coefficient rankings, while Iceland, clocking in just above Kazakhstan’s Premier League and just below Macedonia’s Prva Liga, is a measly 40th.

“The Icelandic people have never regarded Pepsi-deildin as being a professional soccer league, but instead as a step between amateur and professional, and it starts and ends with the Icelandic National team“ said Ingi.

To be sure, Iceland has produced a handful of notable soccer players, perhaps most famously that of current Stoke City striker Eiður Guðjohnsen, whose illustrious career has included successful spells at Chelsea and Barcelona, among others. However, at least for these Iceland fans, the amount of stars that have emanated from this tiny island in the north Atlantic seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things.

“Our country’s National team has never qualified for a major tournament (such as the World Cup or European Championship), they have never gotten anything done as a team, and they constantly give up,” continued Ingi, “which is why I have a difficult time supporting them and our country’s club teams. Liverpool is my true club.”

One need only take a stroll down Reykjavik’s main drag Laugavegur to confirm his latter statement. With several sports bars advertising match times for English Premier League fixtures featuring Manchester United, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Liverpool, it’s obvious that Icelandic soccer, like a little brother, will always succumb to the big boys and take the back seat.

Curious as to how Pepsi-deildin compared in play to England’s Premiership, a friend of mine and I journeyed southward on foot to Vodafonevöllurinn, the home stadium of the Reykjavik-based club Valur, who were fortuitously playing, yup, you guessed it: Stjarnan. Maybe I would get a chance to witness one of these ridiculous celebrations after all, and in the process, dispel Ingi’s accusations of Iceland’s top-flight division being unwatchable.

I was wrong.

Even for its wealth of collective goals scored (6), Valur’s 5-1 drubbing of the web’s most athletic goof troop was a paltry, shambolic affair to feast one’s eyes on. Throughout the entire match both teams were devoid of organization, creativity, and rhythm: three ingredients whose lack thereof inevitably lead to appallingly ugly performances. And the one glimmer of hope for seeing a new outrageous celebration vanished as quickly as it had arrived when a Stjarnan penalty (duly converted by Halldór Björnsson) came late after halftime when they were trailing 3-0; certainly not an appropriate time for such aforementioned antics.

But the fans were there—the visiting Stjarnan contingent in blue, the home supporters of Valur in red—cheering back in forth, singing their club’s songs in vociferous, yet indecipherable Icelandic expression. The fervor for clubs in Pepsi-deildin, which I had been told was nonexistent, was instead abundantly palpable. Even when a young fan ran past me in the stands wearing a Manchester United cap and a Stjarnan sweatshirt, it was evident which team had taken priority for this youth at this particular moment. And the soccer wasn’t that bad either. In fact, the sheer strength and physicality being displayed on the pitch might have rivaled some of the top leagues in Europe.

We returned to the hostel to be informed by one of the managers that a player from UMF Selfoss, another club from Pepsi-deildin, was staying in our room that night. The player, Martin Dohlsten, is the lone Swede on a team predominated by Icelandics, and when asked what he thought of Stjarnan’s unique style of celebrating goals, the 24-year-old defender just laughed.

“They are really funny,” he says with a grin, “I think our league needs something like that; they’re brilliant.”

As evidenced from Sunday’s match, Stjarnan don’t unleash their trademark histrionics after every goal they score, and playing in a country whose volcanoes are unpredictably active, that seems rather appropriate. We soccer fans have no way of knowing when the next epochal Stjarnan celebration will surface, but I have no doubt that it will catch us all by surprise and entertain as much as, if not more than the club’s previous on-field theatrics.

When asked what he thought the celebrations and their global publicity meant for Icelandic soccer and its country in general, Ingi was unexpectedly earnest:

“I honestly can see nothing bad coming from it. I’ve seen all the celebrations and they’re really cool. If [Stjarnan] continue to do them, and people see them on the Internet and identify the club as being from Iceland, that can only be seen as a positive thing for our league and for our country.”

Iceland’s national team and top-flight soccer league may be far from the best, but as long as the country and its most popular sport are getting worldwide attention from this tiny club made up of all but one home-grown player, it would appear that these unique celebrations have no end in sight. We just can’t wait to see what Stjarnan is cooking up next.