Now, whilst nobody has ever gotten anywhere worth being by attempting to hold above any group of people, let alone an entire nation, any sort of umbrella fashioned from the threads of The Unifying Traits, it is still fairly evident that the musicians and composers and performers featured herein do share a set of Core Characteristics, even though they may all operate within wildly different musical genres or disciplines, and even though some of them might be shite.

These Core Characteristics, they probably go some way towards slapping an answer 'longside the last of those questions, being, as you'll recall from a wee while back, Why The Hell Do These Sounds Sound As They Do?

The majority of these folks, for instance, obviously harbor a sense of experimentation, of adventurousness. They share a disregard for the rules concerning what might constitute a pop song, or a musical instrument. They also share a sense of community, of self-preservation. Rock bands and hip-hop acts and acoustic jazz-techno outfits play alongside one another, swapping personnel and equipment and audiences when the need arises. It's inspiring as all hell, is what it is, in the same way that the similar situation in, for example, Omaha is inspiring as all hell.

And if that doesn't offer explanation enough for why the sound is so distinctive, then there are plenty other possibilities offered throughout, whether by musicians or historians or cultural commentators or pagan scholars or whoever.

Most likely, the answer lies somewhere in the middle of all the potential reasons one might well conjure out the yap, reasons relating to cultural identity (the reclaiming of such), economic necessity (we had to create these bizarre instruments and fashion music in this manner because we couldn't afford anything else - how different Rock N Roll might've been had The Beatles not been beneficiaries of the welfare state and the advent of hire-purchase…) and a sense of genuine detachment from commercial concerns. As one interviewee has it, the bands become accustomed to the fact that they're probably not gonna get on the radio, that they'll probably play to no more than a handful of people, so why shouldn't they allow themselves the freedom to take their music whatever the hell direction they feel like?

If one were to grab those last couple paragraphs by the neck and riffle about their innards like they were chickens out the olden days, one might well find glowering therein the explanation for The Icelandic Sound.

Then again, maybe Bjork has the right idea, and since she made Medulla and Vespertine, we have no reason to assume she has anything else. What Bjork suggests is that there's no such thing, really, as an Icelandic Sound, that the music is no different to the music being produced anywhere. What is different is the mood of the performances.