The Football Association of Iceland released its new crest today, and to describe it “as the most metal thing you’ve ever seen” does it an injustice. From now on, any heavy metal song will now be described as, “That’s Iceland’s crest.”
The video touches on Iceland’s unique blending of fire (volcano) and ice (glaciers) (note to Jon Snow: this is how you do it, you dimwitted nincompoop), while illustrating the creation and idea behind the crest. The combination on the crest of bull, eagle, dragon, and giant are the four protectors of Iceland in Icelandic lore. You remember all this from the Icelandic literature course you took in college because you thought it sounded cool and would impress female English majors with lots of tattoos and was taught by some guy who definitely has Geezer Butler’s number in his phone but you ended up blowing off just like all the others because you were hungover and it was before 11 a.m. (You really shouldn’t have though, plenty of sagas about how the vikings actually discovered North America you could use to sound truly worldly and put this Columbus shit to bed once and for all).
The kicker is this video was made by national team goalkeeper Hannes Thor Halldorsson, because a video like this could only be made by someone with “Thor” in his name. This isn’t the first time Halldorsson has dabbled in creative video arts to promote the national team.
Iceland faces a playoff to get to Euro 2020 (2021), first a home match with Romania and then visiting the winner of Hungary and Bulgaria. Should they play this video before their home match, it would be a true surprise if the Romanian squad even took the field. The fear that Odin himself is going to come down and punch your nose through your spine would leave one apprehensive, you have to feel.
The women’s team has yet to qualify for a World Cup, though after this video Vegas has installed them as favorites in 2023, merely out of pure terror out of what might happen if they didn’t.