“I enjoy the feeling of the unknown”: The boundless magic of Björk

I’m meeting Björk for lunch, but first, I have to find her. Just as confounding as her music, her style – and indeed, most things about her – is where she’s currently staying in Paris, far from the gilded hotels surrounding the Place Vendôme you might expect one of the world’s best-known musicians to frequent. Instead, I’m climbing a steep street in Montmartre, scanning the blue-plaque street numbers, before pushing through a discrete gate to find a tangle of cobble-stoned pathways. Eventually, I spot an arresting helmet of ashy blonde hair through an open garden door. Underneath that hair – currently decorated with reptilian streaks of blue and red – a woman sits in a leafy courtyard, perched on a wire chair and sipping a coffee. “Hel-lo!” Björk chirps in that unmistakable voice, beaming and taking off a pair of oversized black sunglasses. “Would you like something to eat?”

It’s been nearly 18 months since the release of Björk’s most recent record, Fossora, and two months since she wrapped up her visionary Cornucopia tour (labelled the musician’s “most ambitious show yet”, the spectacle featured jaw-dropping projections of animations by 10 different artists, an all-female flute septet, choirs, a magnetic harp and a Greta Thunberg cameo). Most of her interviews happen in the direct lead-up to promoting a specific project, she notes, but this one is taking place during one of Björk’s creatively fertile quiet periods, during which she’s out in the world, researching, absorbing, and finding the various threads of inspiration she’ll weave together to create her next masterpiece. “With all that back-to-back travelling and touring after Covid, I was just like, ‘No more long flights, I’m done!’ I never want to go on a plane again,” she says, laughing and plunging her fork into a plate of glazed celeriac. “Although you could ask me that question in a few weeks and I’ll probably give you a completely different answer.”

But she’s not only letting the ever-shifting sands of her creative impulses flow; she’s also taking a moment to reflect. Fossora, released in September 2022, ended up closing out what became something of an accidental album trilogy. The first chapter was 2015’s Vulnicura, which charted the dissolution of her relationship with harrowing honesty. Then came 2017’s Utopia, which invoked a matriarchal future world soundtrack via harps, flutes, and trilling birdsong. On Fossora, she returned to earth with a thud. The title, which roughly translates as a feminised version of the Latin word “fossor,” or person who digs, nods to the record’s subterranean sonic landscape of bass clarinets and brash gabber beats. It’s also a poetic meditation on grief following the death of her mother in 2018 and the family legacy she’s passing on to her children. Both her son, Sindri, who she had at the age of 21, and her daughter with ex-partner Matthew Barney, Ísadóra (currently carving out her own lane as a multi-hyphenate creative and Miu Miu model) sing on the album.

“I was actually thinking about how refreshing it is to be doing this between albums during the photoshoot,” she says of her first Vogue cover. “It is unusual and I think one of the images [from the shoot] illustrates that – me going from Fossora’s world to a new unknown world. I enjoy the feeling of the unknown and the often scary vertigo at the beginning of a new project.” Still, despite the endless variety of disciplines she’s mastered throughout her career – in the past few years alone, she returned to acting with a brief appearance as a seeress in Robert Eggers’s Viking epic The Northman, and narrated an IMAX documentary about fungi presented by the British biologist Merlin Sheldrake – she’s found herself gravitating back towards the album format as the ultimate vehicle for her own self-expression.

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“It’s not a coincidence that films are the length they are and concerts are the lengths they are and books are the length they are and albums are the length they are,” she continues. “Even for me, watching films on Mubi, I sit there on my sofa and it’s like... swallowing a whale. You start with the tail, and then there’s the middle bit, and then there’s the mouth – you’re absorbing the whole structure, you know?” I nod, because somehow, I do know. “I like that about an album too, that same idea. The beginning, the middle, the end.”

Within that structure, though, Björk will always find a way to bend the rules. Many of her previous albums seemed to exist as their own, hermetically-sealed universes – notably, the deliberately contained odyssey of self-discovery that is 1997’s Homogenic, or the bracing intimacy and sensuality of 2001’s Vespertine. With Utopia and Fossora, on the other hand, you get the feeling she’s reaching for something more open-ended, questioning how to imagine, then build, a better world (the questions of our lifetime, really).

In that sense, does she feel like the two albums have opened up a new chapter in her career? Björk fidgets with the Band-Aid wrapped around her middle finger, brows furrowed. “Let me have a sip of coffee,” she says, as if it will jolt the answer out of her. “I think the things I was interested in with Homogenic are very much the things you’re interested in when you’re in your 30s – when I look back on it, it’s quite navel-gazing.” Navel-gazing feels a little reductive, though, given the profound impact her music from that period has had on generations of artists and listeners. “Today, I try not to overthink it too much,” she replies.

As someone who has spent so much of her life in the public eye – releasing her first album at 11, and being catapulted to global fame in the early 1990s – it makes sense that Björk has learned not to overthink things. Does she even care what the public perception of her is at this stage in her career? “Overall, I pay it no mind,” she says. “I think I’ve learned to refine the boundary between the hopefully universal, personal, and intimate on the one hand, and the private, specific, and secret on the other hand. And through the years, I believe I’ve gotten a little better and better at it. To share more and more, but never overshare. It is tricky. I know it sounds like a contradiction, but that is the magical coordinate in songwriting."

More recently, that magical coordinate can usually be traced back to Iceland. At the beginning of the pandemic, she spent more than two full years there, the longest stretch since she was a teenager (although, as she points out, it’s not like she ever truly left: even when she was living in London or in New York, she still spent more than half her time in her home country). This extended stay, though, saw her reconnect with her Icelandic circle of friends – and, of course, the country’s majestic natural surroundings – in a different way. “It makes sense that as you go through life, you become more reliant on community,” she says.

While Björk has hinted previously that part of her urge to spend time back in Iceland lies in the country’s lack of interest in celebrity, it’s hard not to imagine her role as a totemic figure for the next generation of Icelandic musicians. Back when the world knew little about Iceland, she became something of a cipher for her country’s culture around the world. “The Icelandic Ministry of Fisheries were desperate to have me help them to sell fish at one point, but I did say, ‘Absolutely not’,” she says, breaking out into a knowing chuckle. “I didn’t go that far.”

The surge in tourism to Iceland over the past decade, she notes, may have played a part in people no longer “othering” her in quite the same way. “I think I feel more freedom, as I feel like people know much more about me now,” she continues. “They understand what is me and what is Iceland. Because I’m not a typical Icelander, really. I don’t particularly look Icelandic – people told me that all the way back when I was in school. The way I dress isn’t how most people in Iceland dress. I was always attracted to strong colours and textures and patterns, even as a kid. So it is a relief to sort of feel that people recognise that separation.”

Ah yes, those colours. And textures. And patterns. Before arriving, I wasn’t entirely sure which of Björk’s chameleonic style identities was about to receive me. Aside from that shock of kaleidoscopic hair, I was somewhat surprised to find her in a more casual mode, wearing a navy blue woollen peacoat. Until, that is, she took off her sunglasses and revealed a bruise-like smudge of purple and yellow eyeshadow and, later, poking out from underneath the bottom of her coat, the billowing pleats of an Issey Miyake gown in a swirling, abstract pattern of multi-coloured florals.

Fashion is a subject that sees her visibly brighten. “I feel very grateful that I captured the ’90s in a way, with the pictures of me just wearing a T-shirt and trainers at a rave in London,” she reflects when I ask her about her role as a fashion icon (a term to which she, with trademark modesty, demurs). “When I was in the Sugarcubes, I was hanging out with drag queens in New York, and glueing these huge lashes on me, I learned how to do that then. And then I came to London, and it was this big moment where everyone was throwing away all the baggage of the ’80s, all that extra-ness. There was no big hair, no big anything. No makeup, and the tiniest dresses in the world. I loved that start-all-over-again energy, I remember loving Corinne Day’s photos.”

Björk’s major fashion moments are too plentiful to count. Who could ever forget the Hussein Chalayan paper airmail dress she wore on the cover of Post, or the imperious, kimono-like folds of the Alexander McQueen showstopper she wore on the cover of Homogenic? “I think I’ve always really loved doing both,” she says of her ability to shape-shift between extreme and scaled-back looks. “When I was doing photoshoots with Nick Knight, I was also running around with Juergen Teller in some park to get that casual, anti-fashion image.” Arguably no Björk look, however, is seared onto the public consciousness quite like the Marjan Pejoski Swan dress she wore to the 2001 Oscars, which she paraded down the red carpet while pretending to lay eggs; it sent American fashion commentators into meltdown but is now recognised as a major moment in fashion history. “When I wore it, all my mates in London were like, ‘ha ha ha!’ They totally got it,” she remembers (it also points to Björk’s wry – and often overlooked – sense of humour, which these days is mostly satisfied by tucking up in bed and “crying with laughter” at episodes of drag queens Trixie Mattel and Katya’s YouTube series).

Related: 9 of Björk’s most iconic looks of all time

It’s noticeable that over the past few albums, however – from 2011’s Biophilia onwards, really – her style has evolved into something bigger. Her on-stage dresses are more like pieces of architecture; enormous constructions by the likes of Noir Kei Ninomiya, Rick Owens, and Iris van Herpen that bloom like flowers or bristle like icicles. While it’s befitting of the records’ epic sweep and her increasing preoccupation with the natural world as source material, it also speaks to a great sense of ambition on the fashion front. “I always had very strong opinions, but I didn’t know how to work with the fashion industry,” she says. “I would go into situations and there would be a stylist, who would be full of good intentions, but they would bring things that were just not me. They’d clearly said, ‘Oh, let’s just pick out the weirdest things we can find.’ But just because it’s weird doesn’t mean I’ll like it. It’s not as simple as that. I’m pretty particular, actually.”

An important factor in this shift, she explains, was meeting the British artist James Merry, who began as her assistant in 2009 and is now co-creative director on all of her visual output. “He loves fashion so much, so it’s this very rich, interesting conversation between us now. It’s not a boring, narcissistic exercise of, ‘Ooh, which dress do I want to wear?’,” she says. Merry is responsible for those distinctive masks, whizzed up out of everything from latex to copper to lace, as well as about a million other things. “I feel incredibly lucky,” says Merry. “My job has evolved like 26,000 times over the past 15 years, which I’ve loved. But we have similar tastes, and we’re both very much about intuition and following the scent of something.”

Bringing the world of Björk’s imagination to life is a lot of work. Since 2015, she’s also collaborated with the stylist Edda Gudmundsdottir, who continuously sends suggestions from luxury houses, independent designers and design students to inform Björk’s fashion choices whilst managing the head-spinning logistics of sourcing, transporting and fitting her looks. “Björk has a real knowledge of fashion, but also when she sees a garment, she really understands what the designer is trying to say,” says Gudmundsdottir. “It’s a very respectful approach, and it’s about true collaboration between the designer and the artist.” It’s thanks to the help of Merry and Gudmundsdottir, Björk explains, that she’s now been able to integrate fashion into the formidable scale of her live shows more harmoniously. “I think if I’d had James or Edda back in the ’90s, I would have done it then. If I was still having to do all of that myself, I’d be like, F*** that!” Björk says. “I’d rather be writing a string quartet.”

As the group of collaborators that surrounds her has grown ever more tight-knit – a circle that includes Viðar Logi, the Icelandic photographer who shot the cover of Fossora and this Vogue Scandinavia story – so too has it begun to revolve more around Reykjavík, where Merry now lives permanently. With that, it seems, has come the sense of deeper responsibility to Iceland itself. While Björk has long been outspoken about environmental issues, participating in charitable projects fighting climate change as far back as the early 2000s, it’s a subject that returned to the forefront through her recent single, ‘Oral’, a collaboration with Spanish alt-pop sensation Rosalía. All of its proceeds will go to raise funding for activists in the town of Seyðisfjörður, who are fighting industrial fish farming, which has already had a devastating impact on the wild salmon population in Iceland.

“You might ask why I went with full force into this fight and not all the others, but it is kinda a monumental moment for Iceland,” says Björk. “If we let this pass by, we are OK-ing factory farming in Iceland. We are guardians of the largest untouched area in Europe.” The Icelanders’ harmonious relationship with nature is present in the traditions of sheep farming, she notes, where the animals have been left to roam free in the centre of the island for over a millennium. “Modern open-net fish farming is of the total opposite philosophy,” she adds, firmly. “It is not possible to do without harming the animals, and a large percentage of them dying.”

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Even on this perilous subject, though, she remains adamant there’s a light at the end of the tunnel. “It’s a marathon, not a sprint,” she says. It’s this, really, which seems to be the running thread of any conversation with Björk. Just like the distinctive upward inflection she places on the final syllables of her sentences, it’s rare that she doesn’t end on a final note of optimism. “These days, anything involving spirituality? Count me in,” she says. “Anything happening in the godly realm? Count me in.” Not long after, our time is up. She leans in to hug me goodbye, and retreats back into the mysterious manse she’s staying at (it turns out to be a tucked away boutique hotel).

A few days after we meet, however, we reconnect briefly to discuss the epic, 12-hour Vogue shoot, which saw Gudmundsdottir and her assistants blowing up inflatable jackets and pulling in one of the show-stopping sheer dresses (complete with merkin) that John Galliano had sent down the runway for his seismic Maison Margiela couture show just days before. “We actually all got super mushy at the fashion shoot,” she admits. “When I put on the Margiela dress, and I slipped on the prosthetic hips, it seemed such a full circle moment.” It turns out that she wore Margiela pieces from her own wardrobe for the cover of Debut. “It was such a profound thing. I am so honoured to have gotten to wear this garment.” A full-circle moment in Björk’s world, where time is also a flat circle. Where albums are both self-contained and open-ended, where conversation is both cryptic and candid; where she’s serious about her work, but sees the humour in it too. I’m reminded of how many times Björk has remarked on her own contradictions throughout our interviews – and I get the sense that’s just the way she likes it.