Synopsis

Jonsi's "Gathering Stories" unfolds as a snowy animated fable. A solitary traveler moves through an expansive, dreamlike landscape, encountering a changing procession of animals including an igloo-dwelling hedgehog, a wolf, birds, and other creatures. The journey carries him from icy terrain into warmer, desert-like surroundings, with the animals gradually transforming his isolation into companionship. Rather than illustrating scenes from the film that inspired the song, the video creates its own gentle adventure, using shifting environments and a colorful menagerie to echo the track's themes of connection, memory, and storytelling.

Factoids & Trivia

• The song was written for Cameron Crowe's 2011 film "We Bought a Zoo." Jonsi and Crowe collaborated on the track, with Crowe contributing the lyrics.

• The video deliberately avoids using footage from "We Bought a Zoo." Instead, it presents an original animated world that reflects the movie's animal-centered premise without recreating its plot.

• Crush Creative produced the animation. The studio described the project as involving a large menagerie and an epic journey across ice and desert.

• Production materials for the video mention extensive overtime and sleepless nights during its creation, appropriate to the clip's unusually detailed succession of animals, landscapes, and visual transitions.

• "Gathering Stories" appeared on the "We Bought a Zoo" soundtrack, released in December 2011. The song was also included on the Academy's preliminary list of 39 songs eligible for the 84th Academy Awards' Best Original Song category, although it did not receive a final nomination.

• The soundtrack version was produced by Jonsi and Alex Somers. Percussion was performed by Olafur Bjorn Olafsson.