 and welcome to Inside Leather History, a fireside chat. I'm Doug O'Keefe, the host of your chats that I produce with Mistress Joanne Gaddy. Today I'm sitting down for a chat with Magnus Hakenorsen, who is in Iceland. Magnus is the former chairman and one of the founders of the Icelandic BDSM organization. He originated the current munches in Iceland and he's one of the organizers of the Icelandic BDSM scene. So Magnus, welcome to the fireside chats. Oh, thank you for having me. Well, I'm very happy that you can be part of this. Did you notice the image that I have, the backdrop? Yeah, I love it. I took this picture when I was in Reykjavík about two years ago. Okay, awesome. I don't remember the name of the street, I'm sorry. Frahtastirur. Ah, easy for you to say. So let us begin at the beginning. Tell us a little bit about growing up in Iceland. Well, my childhood was just as normal as it can be. For my generation, I went to work on a farm on the east side of the country. I live in Reykjavík. I started to work on a farm when I was 12. I spent the summers in the East Shorts on a small farm for two summers. Just basic stuff working in the summer and going through school in the wintertime. I found out early that I was not like the general public, we can say. How did you find out? Well, it's just interest in bondage, we can say, and things like that. That was the main thing. And I went into pet store when I was 12 and bought some dog colors and leashes, but I never owned a dog. But yeah, that was the thing. I have no idea what was going on with myself at the time. I found out in some school library, a book about sexuality, that there were people who liked to be tied up, and that just sparked my interest. Playing cops and robbers, all the normal childhood stuff. But that was the thing. I think it was not until I was probably about 14, 15, I found out a magazine about Asadam. It's a British forum. I think it was called Small Size. It consisted of letters from readers, advice columns, personal lads, and things like that. And this is probably about 1984. How did you find this? Just in a bookstore. Just normal bookstore, top shelf of course. And I remember vividly one time with the older woman who sold me one of the, I think the title of the magazine was Why Are You an Asadam Lover? And she specifically put it in transparent shopping bag, trying to embarrass me or something. I have no idea, but that was not the norm carrying, getting things in transparent plastic bags or shopping bags. But this magazine, yeah, the information saved me to know that there was somebody out there like me. At that time, I think Iceland must have been a very isolated country. There was no internet, very limited television. So a magazine like that had to be very unusual. Yeah, it was, this magazine was kind of, we could say educational safe sex magazine. It was one issue that was for a kind of a BDSM emphasis. So, but normally it was not. So this was kind of a breakthrough or some kind of, yeah, breakthrough moment for me finding it. Were you specifically looking for something like that? Probably, you know, you're young, you're exploring and there is something that you find more interesting and you just, yeah, there's some, some magnet that drives you through it. That's the only explanation, explanation that I have for that. And yes, there was no internet, the television was all evenings, but not on Thursdays. There's no television on Thursdays and no television in July because there were summer vacations. Oh, interesting. And we had one radio station. Yes. Wow. So when you were looking at this magazine, you mentioned you discovered other people had a similar interest to you. Did you learn anything else from it? No, basically just that BDSM, well, S&M, like it was called then, was a thing. And what I had been doing privately, non-sexually, was a thing for more people than me. And so it opened up my eyes for everything BDSM connected. So, yeah. How did you begin to find this world? In 1987, I dated a girl who told me that she was not in some pillow talk. She told me she was not into kink at all. I did not bring it up, but she brought it up and said she was not into any kink. That moment I decided, well, I'm not going to spend my life not doing things that I craved. So I ended that relationship soon after that. Later on, some years after, I wondered, well, was she trying to fish or trying to bring the discussion into that area or something? Was she testing me? I have no idea, but the relationship ended there. Nothing happened really. Well, this is one thing that happened in 1987. I saw Rocky Horror picture show. And don't be it. No, don't dream it, be it. That phrase did everything. It's responsible for everything. It opened my eyes. You see something that you fell on and I saw. And basically nothing happens after that until the Internet, IRC, IRC chat channels that you could connect to. And that opened my world. You could talk to like-minded people all over the world. And I had been starting to try to find like-minded people without success. In 1988, when I was 18, I put in an art in one of the newspapers, Personal Art. Looking for people into S&M, leather, spankings and things like that. And it was censored, never printed. Oh. Then you had this, I'm alone in the world feeling of it. There was no way to connect to other people. I had no idea or connections into the gay world or LGBT world at the moment. It was so far away that I could not, I was just, I just didn't imagine that how I would fit in that. But I heard rumors, the Men's Motorcycle Club or MSC Iceland, that was operating from 1985. The National Queer Organization in Iceland was formed in 1978. So it's all kind of, still kind of new in that time. And most people, most queer people in the past, they went abroad. You couldn't, you didn't stay in Iceland. You went to Denmark, you went to Germany to be yourself. And it was very difficult to, just to find out, I had no idea about about these things. There was no connection. But I found out, yeah, there was a club, but it was far away. And I had no idea about it. Far away in Iceland or elsewhere? No, just far away in your mind. You know, it's so outlandish. There was no connection. And I wasn't gay. I didn't belong. I mean, it was not for me to get there because I wasn't gay. Yeah, in 1995, I started to educate people about BDSM. How did you do this? People from the chat channels. I said, hey, I have toys and I can show you. I'll talk about BDSM. And they said, yes. And that was the beginning of my BDSM education, teaching other people about BDSM. How did people respond to this? Well, quite well. That is those who attended because it was, it was kind of, you know, talking to my friends about this. At about that time, I started to reach out, trying to connect to the BDSM organizations in the Scandinavia, in Denmark and Norway. But it was far, it was, everything was harsh, you know, kind of forbidden so much taboo about it, everything. So it's very difficult to connect. It's not like today when you can find all the information. You didn't know what people to talk to and nobody, you know, you didn't know what people to trust and people else who didn't know how to trust or whatever. So it was very difficult. And in, yeah, 1996, 97, I met up enough people on only chat channels that were interested in creating an organization. And the website was put up in 31st of December, 1997. What website? I'm sorry? The Icelandic website for the Icelandic BDSM organization. Okay. Which hadn't performed yet. Okay. And we had the first official meeting in January in 1998. And the first questions we were trying to get answers to was, is BDSM illegal? What we had been seeing all around us was the Spanner case. That was, in what media you could read about, find, we saw the Spanner case. And that was, yeah, where are we compared to them? Yes. And that influenced us a lot. How so? Just trying to get legal advice and just be aware of you could be judged in a similar way. So we were scared about these things. You were uncertain. What legal advice were you given? Well, the legal advice we were given was that you can consent to being tied up. You can consent to with being or spanking up to a point where there are some injuries. There is a similar status in the law like in the UK and like in Nordic countries. It's very similar. And so, yeah. But the ground grounding was we were okay in that matter. And so we didn't have to worry about it. Yeah. Then we collaborated with the people in the BDSM organizations who were also in the gay leather club. So they provided us, we could write their premises. They had the club, they had the club. And we were allowed to be there for our first meetings. So we put up regular meetings there. But it's funny and but sad at the same time, there were people who didn't want to come to our meetings because they were hosted there in the gay leather club. In retrospect, we did a very large mistake in the beginning. Well, I think at the same time, when you look back it was a mistake, but I don't think the Icelandic society was ready for it. But that is we decided to keep the organization and keep stay in the closet. So do you feel keeping it in the closet was a mistake? I'm not. Yeah, that in a retrospect, it was a mistake. But at the same time, I don't think Icelandic society was ready for us coming out of the closet. After the meeting, the first meeting, we went on national television. Okay. There was a newscast program that wanted to interview us. And, you know, they did a short story about us, about the BDSM organization. At the time, nobody, we were not out of the closet. So we came behind, we talked behind the screen. So we were just backed out. So, you know, there was no person. It's just shadow figures. Yeah. And the interview was, we just spoke about, yeah, what BDSM is, consent, and say same consensual, you know, these just, and we're talking about education or things like that. And instead of showing it on prime time, like the show was usually hosted, they kept the segment and put it at the latest point in the schedule on a Monday evening. So just to make sure that nobody would see it. How, some people must have seen it. How was the reaction? The reaction was, there was a lot of people who shocked. I mean, it was an illness. It was crazy. You know, it was perverse. So we just stayed under the radar and just stayed there, kept it, made the closet roomy and comfy for everybody. Everybody's invited. All genders, everything, nothing matters. We just create a safe space in the closet for all of us. Were you still meeting in this gay space at that time? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we were doing that and kept on doing that for years. So the Icelandic scene rose up and it became, there was a need for it. There was a need in this society for, so the months just got bigger. And we also created events and parties. And the scene, yeah, imploded in 2007, 2008. Let's take one step back, though, before we go down that section. Tell me how many people were coming to your original gatherings? 20 up to 30 people. That's a good number. Yeah, a very good number. Were they coming from all over Iceland? Mostly the capital area, yeah. Okay, yeah. But we have about 200,000 people there and the rest is spread across the country. You mentioned some people did not want to go because of being a gay space. What did you do for them? Nothing. They just didn't come? Yeah. Oh, that's a shame. Yes, but it was, but we didn't have any other opportunities for locations. So it was like, there's nothing else we can do about it. This is the only venue that we can have at the moment. And so that was the, yeah, that was the only thing. Tell me about the venue. What did it have? It was just a dark, small basement with a dark room, small bar, couple of 50-gallon-dron oil drums for tables. Yeah, it was kind of fun, sleazy, dark, shabby. Yeah. Did it have, for example, slings? Did it have other? In the dark room, yeah. There was a sling there, yeah. Oh, okay. There were hooks in the, there were hooks, eyeballs in the ceiling and things like that. So they had some basic things that you could use? Yeah. Okay, okay. Now, how big was the gay club at that time, this SM club? It was not big. The scene was not big and they were not very strict on dress code. But the thing is, you have a small society and if you want to be overly strict on dress codes, then you have a rubber knight with the two rubber guys and you have a leather knight with the three leather guys and then one army guy or whatever, one puppy. So you have, if you want to do something, you have to invite everybody. How did the people come together? So were people comfortable being heterosexual BDSM people with gay BDSM people? Yeah, but in the beginning, we always presented the organization as pansexual. That was always, so, but in the beginning, we had probably about, now, let's just say eight guys with two females. That was proportional, something like that. And there was no sex or very little play in the meetings. It was mainly just educational and kind of a munches with some educational aspects to it. So you have mentioned these munches. How many people would come to those? Well, in the beginning, the munches, they outgrew that premises. And so we were able to put the munches onto some of the local pubs or venues. And they were up to 25, 30 people, 35, something. That was, that was the norm for munches. Wow, that's great. Yeah. We had one website. There was a local community website or social media site that everybody used. And when the scene imploded, split in two, that website went down. So certainly in 2008, there was nothing. There was no way to communicate with other kinksters or communicate or advertise anything. Let's come back to this because you have mentioned that the scene imploded. What led up to this? Basically, you had two influential persons who were friends, who became enemies. And they kind of split the scene. You know, you're either against us or with us. And so the scene split in three. You're one group, one person A, one group with person B. And then you have a whole lot of people. I don't want to participate in this fight. Hmm. In such a small community, that's very surprising that there would have been such a strong breakup like that. Always when you have groups, you have some friction between who's in power, who's in not. And that might play some part in it. But what did everything was this personal fuel from these two, basically from these two persons? I have heard of this because over the last couple of years, I have been trying very hard to find people in Iceland to interview. And I must honestly tell you, it was very, very, very impossible. And I thought, what must have gone on to have created such animosity? So that's why I took another direction and was able to meet with you. Yeah. But what came out of that? Out of it was in 2009. I started the munchies before the implosion. The munchies were run by the BDSM organization. It's a top-down process. When I started, I decided, okay, we're not going to go that way again. So I basically built it up as a grassroots movement. Start from the bottom and you build it up. I started the munchies, just said, I'm going to be at this venue at this time. Everybody's welcome. So you start with five people, four, five persons. And that kept on growing without grew that room that we had been occupying. So you went to a bigger one and a bigger one. And it just grew from there. I wanted to be, nobody was organizing it. But later I found out, well, you have to have somebody in charge. I have to have somebody who is calling the shots. And I did it for the first 100 munchies, 100 something. And it was sometimes difficult. Venue holders were not always glad to have us. We were kicked out of some venues. And not kicked out, but you should not come here again or we're occupied and things like that. But there was nothing wrong. People are not showing up in fetish gear or anything. Only discussions could be about kinky subjects or something like that. How did you see people grow with their kink? When I started to host the parties, both in the leather club and at my home, there were maybe 10, 15, 20 people showing up. But it was usually in the beginning, it was just me playing with some people. That was a norm for the first parties. People showed up in some fetish gear, awesome. But it was me playing with this one, that one or something like that. But I still remember probably almost eight years, nine, the sound of spanking. That somebody else was doing, not me. And it was so, it was just growing up. Other people were starting to play or do something. Yeah, I love the sound of spanking in the morning. So it was just awesome and just slowly building up. And it was just people getting more comfortable being themselves and doing what they did. How is the currency? It's extremely diverse. And for the last year, they have been running the munchies all on Discord because of Covid. But we had to shut down all play parties. But the scene is getting more and more public, it's more open. I have, for example, went with my friends on the club that I can see in your left corner on the screen. We have been there in fetish gear and all fetish regalia. And there's no problem being in public and playing and being outside in fetish gear. Do you participate in the Pride parades? Yes, when we had been running the munchies for some time, we decided it was time to revive the BDSM organization. To start collaborating with the queer organization in one way or another. And so we ended up with applying for to become an official associated member of the queer organization. There is a process for organizations and groups to connect under the queer umbrella, I could say that. And in 2016, we applied to become a member of it. And there was a general meeting where members of the queer organization were able to vote on it. It was accepted. But then all hell broke loose. The old generation that had been working with participating in with the queer organization for some time, they stepped back and said, hey, wait, wait a minute, something is wrong. And there was a serious, there was a serious feud going on. It was really bad. It threw a lot of BDSM people back in the closet. And a lot of gays quit the queer organization, left it. And so there was a lot of feud. There was a lot of animosity and a lot of bad things going on for quite some time. And so there was another meeting and it was ruled that the general meeting that it was in March 2016, it was illegal. It was not, there were some legalities on the meeting that so it was scrapped. And there was a lot of noise. It was, we had, there was a lot of media. It was a kind of a media war going on. People ended up on front page of newspapers and on television news and things like that. And to make this long story short, it was the biggest general meeting. They had to put in some external envoy to get the parties within the queer organization to reconcile. There was some, there was, and basically, and we had the biggest, yeah, probably about 10 times bigger than the general meeting in March. The general meeting that was, special meeting that was held in September 2016. There were more than 10 times more people who showed up there. The biggest general meeting ever. And it was voted on again. And it was accepted again to have, to have that, to make the Icelandic BDSM organization associated past under the queer umbrella. And yeah, and then the years, a year after that went into, you know, just trying to, everybody getting along, making peace with everybody. And it was a very difficult time for all people. Has there been peace now? Yeah, well, some people, we never accepted. All the people, and to be fair, a lot of people of the old generation, they were against it in the beginning. But when they realized that the talk against BDSM people from within the queer organization, from the queer community, used the same phrases that were used against them 10 years earlier, or 20 years earlier. Only thing you had to, only thing was changed, that was, you changed homosexual for BDSM. Again, the outside image of Iceland is that it is a very progressive society. Do you, how do you see it? When coming to sex, porn, porn is illegal here in Iceland. Really? Yeah. I'm surprised. So yeah, it's, and it's, there was a very heated discussion on social media earlier this spring regarding only facts. And so it is, and also there is, we have the Scandinavian model for prostitution. So you can, it's not illegal to be a prostitute, but it's illegal to buy. There is not a lot of support for people in sex work. Wow. That is, that is, but I sensed a little notch in that direction, in right direction, getting more support for people in sex work, but it's very heated topic. Where do you see the community in five years? I think we will see more people do about the distinction between BDSM orientation and just being interested in BDSM pain. I think we will see some distinction there, but I think we do not want to go into, you know, your real BDSM and you're not, that rabbit hole is, you don't want to go there. The BDSM community is by far consisting of people who are pan or bisexual. It is, it is, I think the proportional, it is way out of all proportions compared to elsewhere in here in Iceland. So, how do you mean that? Straight people are only about 50% of the BDSM community, instead of 80, 90% in general. Yeah, yeah. But the proportion of homosexuals and lesbians is probably the same as in the general, about 5%. Okay. We have a, well, we have a large proportion of non-binary and trans persons. Oh, I see. So, I think we are just seeing more diversity. And it's kind of, in the parties that I'm, we're hosting monthly about, monthly play parties that we are hosting, we have about between 50 and 70 guests. Because we have to be open to everything and because everybody is exposed to everything. So, you're not only seeing leather people or not only seeing rubber people. You see all the spectrum and that opens your eyes to diversity. What is the biggest misconception about you? I don't know. Assertive, but I mostly just cut it. I use, I identify as a princess. I'm a princess. Yeah. Okay. What do you mean by that? I, who doesn't love attention and praises and being a princess. Yeah. Well, Magnus Hakunarsson, I thank you very much for a wonderful interview for Inside Letter History, a fireside chat. you