May Day parade.

Icelanders, sadly, do not celebrate Vappu/1st of May quite as vigorously as Finns. No May-eve binge-partying, no sima (often translated as "mead" but in fact a completely different drink), no morning picnics by the sea. But a leftie parade there always needs to be and lo! and behold!

BIG PARADE.

There were two marching bands, both awesome. This is the best thing about May Day parades: communists have the best music. Naturally when they started the march they played L'Internationale, but later on there were also some completely unexpected tunes such as When the Saints Go Marching In. 

Well, the more I saw the parade the clearer it became that this was not a specifically leftist parade at all. All sorts of flags started popping up for whatever people wanted to say, in protest or otherwise.

The drum, alias empty barrel. They became famous during the Kitchenware Revolution and are now Icelandic protesters choice of weapon whenever they feel like telling something to the government.

Awww...

Arriving to the little clearing in front of the house of parliament.

They had a stage set and apparently there were many interesting speeches that I mostly missed. Not to say that I would have been that keen on listening anyway, my Icelandic-fu is weak and political brouhaha is not where I'm going to start practicing my hearing comprehension.

Loootsa banners.

Lol, ok, now define "auðvaldið".

Ending this with a quality moment with the band. Based on their later performance I've no idea what's going on here unless Retuperän WBK somehow managed to hijack the show...