What It's Like to Go to the World's Most Remote Disco

A guy wearing steampunk goggles for no apparent reason has just arrived and taken up a central spot on the dance floor with gusto. One woman in dungaree shorts and a man in a bright red bowtie are dancing as though it’s their first-ever club night, forcing everyone in their orbit to jump out of the path of their unpredictable flying limbs. Two people have had passionate, life-depends-on-it kisses (we weren’t looking for them, they just crossed our eye line). There is a whoop and communal energy rush every time the antique, spotlit disco ball revolves into action, casting speckling gems of light around the hall.

The Community Hall disco venue in Þingeyri, in the Westfjords of Iceland.

So far, so typically discotheque–we could be in Bethnal Green on a Saturday night surrounded by East London’s regular merry band of eccentrics and artistes. But the thing that really stands out is that, when you draw back one of the vintage red drapes, it’s still daylight outside–at nearly 11 p.m.. So much so that other dancers crinkle their eyes and screw up their faces until you block the light out again. It’s also unusual for the security team to come and slyly watch the DJ sets themselves from the back of the room. “It’s nice to see people dancing and not just drunk,” one local mutters.

These are the giveaway signs that we’re actually somewhere a little further from home. A lot further. Because this is the inaugural Detour Discotheque, the so-called party at the edge of the world–“a pop-up nightclub bringing peace, love and mirror balls to incredible locations.” And the very first destination is Þingeyri, in the Westfjords of Iceland, population of approximately 326 – which means that when 200 or so visitors arrive for two nights of clubbing, most residents are going to notice.

We have snow to thank for the choice of venue. Editor, DJ and Detour Discotheque founder Jonny Ensall first visited the village in 2018. He was there to write an article about a co-working space that had opened the summer before, Blábankinn aka The Blue Bank, intrigued by the fact that true digital nomads could now travel to such remote places. The village is accessible via a short domestic flight from Reykjavík on a small, 30-seater plane, landing in a narrow, often windy valley that only top-level pilots can handle (the standard of the local pilots is a matter of pride), followed by a 45-minute drive. During Jonny’s visit, a snowstorm meant his return flight had to be postponed, leaving him with a surprise extra night in town. His hosts took him to the annual Hjónaball–a couple’s dance in the village hall – and the rest is disco history. “There was something so special about the vibe at the venue, I knew I had to share it with more people,” he says. Throw in some blue-sky thinking triggered by a boundary-shifting global pandemic, and the idea for Detour Discotheque was crystallized.