Ólöf Arnalds

UK & Europe Spring 2026

With just a small guitar and her distinctive soprano voice, Icelandic singer-songwriter Ólöf Arnalds can enchant an entire room.

Over the past twenty years, the Icelandic singer-songwriter has released five albums on which she has used plucked guitar, charango, violin, and koto to lay the foundation for vivid narratives drawn from the mundane and the mythological. Throughout her career, she has collaborated with artists such as Björk, Stórsveit Nix Noltex, Slowblow, and Skúli Sverrisson—whom she is now married to—and has garnered acclaim from media outlets including The New York Times, NME, and Paste. It was Björk herself who described the rare emotional breadth of Ólöf Arnalds’ voice as “somewhere between a child and an old woman,” a testament to the singer’s enormous range. Now Ólöf Arnalds is announcing a European tour to present her new album “Spíra” and return to international stages after a long hiatus. The tour will bring her to Berlin’s Prachtwerk on April 26.

Ólöf Arnalds is a classically trained singer and violinist from Reykjavik who has also been involved in popular music for nearly thirty years. In 2003, she joined the Icelandic indietronica group múm for five years before focusing on a career as a solo artist. The turning point in her career came with the release of her debut solo album “Við Og Við” in 2007, produced by Kjartan Sveinsson (Sigur Rós). The album became a true classic in her home country, won an Iceland Music Award for Best Alternative, and was named not only Album of the Year by the Icelandic daily newspaper Morgunblaðið but also by eMusic as one of the 100 best albums of the decade.

This was followed by the albums “Innundir skinni” (2010), “Sudden Elevation” (2013), and “Palme” (2014), which was also released as “Palma” in Icelandic. More than ten years after the release of her last record, the singer-songwriter returned to her musical roots on her latest album. On “Spíra” (meaning “sprout”), released in 2025, Ólöf Arnalds reconnects with the fundamental qualities that have defined her art from the very beginning, once again collaborating with Kjartan Sveinsson as producer. On the album, which blends immediacy with restraint, she sings entirely in Icelandic. Created almost exclusively from single-take recordings, the work allows each performance to shine with impressive clarity. The songs explore themes such as renewal, memory, and creative rebirth, evoking expansive emotional soundscapes despite sparse instrumentation.

Runtime: Sun, 26/04/2026 to Sun, 26/04/2026

Next date: UK & Europe Spring 2026

• Date Sunday, 26/April/2026 20:00
• Venue Prachtwerk
• Address Ganghoferstraße 2, 12043 Berlin-Neukölln
• Price from €35.20

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