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Stuck at Home? Send Your Scream of Frustration to the Wilds of Iceland | Frommer's Visit Iceland

Stuck at Home? Send Your Scream of Frustration to the Wilds of Iceland

Babies, mental health experts, and teenagers who hang out near freight trains in movies all agree: Screaming helps relieve frustration and anxiety. 

And 2020 has given us a lot to scream about, what with its pandemic, record unemployment, divisive presidential election, brutal displays of white supremacy, and tantrum-throwing Karens. Not to mention the murder hornets. (Did anyone take care of those?)

Travel has been a reliable tension reliever in the past, but our ability to get away from it all has been severely curtailed this year by lockdowns, closed borders, and an understandable reluctance to breathe in the exhalations of others. 

So therapeutic screaming in isolation it is.

And thanks to a new initiative from Iceland, your bloodcurdling shrieks can travel abroad even while you're stuck at home.

To participate, anyone can go to LooksLikeYouNeedIceland.com and record a scream via a laptop or phone. Then the yells are broadcast from big yellow speakers set up next to natural wonders throughout Iceland, from the volcanic Reykjanes peninsula to the dramatic Skógafoss waterfall on the southern coast. 

The project, dubbed Let It Out, was devised by the country's tourism board. Icelanders have time to think up cute ideas like this because they seem to have soundly defeated the coronavirus with an aggressive program of testing and tracing. 

At the same website where you upload your howls, you can also watch and listen to a livestream—or live-scream, in this case—of the yellow speakers and their scenic surroundings, along with the names and locations of those doing the screaming. 

Recordings will be accepted online for the next two weeks. If you have any ambition to hear your disembodied voice shatter the peace at an Icelandic landmark whose name you can't pronounce, this may be your only chance in summer 2020.

Or ever, really.

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