Jón Gnarr

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Jón Gnarr
File:Jon Gnarr Passport Photo.jpg
Mayor of Reykjavík
Incumbent
Assumed office
15 June 2010
Preceded by Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir
Personal details
Born (1967-01-02) 2 January 1967 (age 46)
Reykjavík, Iceland
Political party Best Party

Jón Gnarr Kristinsson (Icelandic pronunciation: [ˈjouːn ˈknar̥ː]; born 2 January 1967)[note 1] is an Icelandic actor, comedian, politician and the Mayor of Reykjavík since 15 June 2010. Born Jón Gunnar Kristinsson, Jón legally changed his middle name in 2005 to the way his mother pronounced it when he was a boy. He is married to Jóhanna Jóhannsdóttir.

Contents

Early years [edit]

Jón Gnarr was misdiagnosed with severe mental retardation as a child and was treated between the ages of 5-7 at the children's psychiatry ward at the State Hospital at Dalbraut, Reykjavík. He suffered from dyslexia and had learning difficulties as a child. Jón Gnarr recounts these experiences in his book The Indian, an autobiographical account of his childhood. Jón Gnarr has been diagnosed with ADHD and has actively discussed his life with ADHD publicly, participated in conventions on ADHD and published articles about his experiences as an ADHD sufferer.

Jón was known as Jónsi Punk as a teenager and played bass in a punk band called Nefrennsli ("Runny Nose").[1] While attending a number of high schools, he didn't complete the university entrance exam, Stúdentspróf.[2] As a young man, he held jobs with car maker Volvo and drove a taxi in Reykjavík.[3] During the 1980s Jón and Jóhanna became acquainted with the members of the Reykjavík-based alternative rock band the Sugarcubes, including Björk Guðmundsdóttir and Einar Örn Benediktsson. Björk remained a close friend to Jóhanna, dedicating a song to her on her 1997 album Homogenic,[4] while Einar would prove to be an important political ally to Jón in the years to come.

Performance career [edit]

In 1994, Jón teamed up with Sigurjón Kjartansson to form the radio duo Tvíhöfði. In 1997, he joined TV station Stöð 2 where he wrote and starred in several seasons of the Icelandic comedy show Fóstbræður. His best known movies are The Icelandic Dream and A Man like Me. His stand-up comedy show Ég var einu sinni nörd (I Used To Be a Nerd) is autobiographical. In 2004 he wrote, starred and produced a short film, "The Man On the Back". Jón worked as a creative writer and actor at the Icelandic advertising agency EnnEmm, producing several popular TV ads. He played Georg Bjarnfreðarson on the television series Næturvaktin (Night Shift), Dagvaktin (Day Shift) and Fangavaktin (Prison Shift). He was also a co-writer in the series, which introduced a number of new actors. In 2009 he starred in the feature film Bjarnfreðarson, which endeared him even further to the Icelandic mass audience.

Jón is a member of Félag íslenskra leikara (Icelandic Actors Guild) and Félag leikskálda og handritshöfunda (Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild).

Entry into politics [edit]

In late 2009 Jón formed the Best Party with a number of other people with no background in politics, including Einar. The Best Party, which is a satirical political party that parodies Icelandic politics and aims to make the life of the citizens more fun, managed a plurality in the 2010 municipal elections in Reykjavík,[5][6] with the party gaining six out of 15 seats on the Reykjavík City Council (34.7 percent of the vote). Einar, who was second on the party's list behind Jón, won one of the seats on the city council.

The results, which came as "a shock" to Icelandic Prime Minister Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir, defeated the centre-right Independence Party-led municipal government of Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir. Jón's victory is widely seen as a backlash against establishment politicians in the wake of Iceland's 2008-2011 financial crisis.[7]

Jón's political platform included promises of "free towels in all swimming pools, a polar bear for the Reykjavík zoo, all kinds of things for weaklings, Disneyland in the Vatnsmýri area, a 'drug-free' Althing by 2020, sustainable transparency, tollbooths on the border with Seltjarnarnes, to do away with all debt, free access to Hljómskálagarðurinn (orchestral rotunda park)."[8][9]

Upon being elected, Jón announced that he would not enter a coalition government with anyone that had not watched the HBO series The Wire.[10] He is an avid watcher of the series, and stated his favorite character is Omar.[11] Ultimately, Jón's Best Party entered into a coalition with the social-democratic Social Democratic Alliance (Samfylkingin) as its junior partner to govern Reykjavík.

As Reykjavík mayor [edit]

Jón dressed in drag at the head of the Gay pride 2010 march through downtown Reykjavík.

After Jón became mayor of Reykjavík, it was irreverently proposed that the city be nicknamed Gnarrenburg, the title of an earlier television talk show featuring Jón.[12][13] As Mayor, Jón has been a source of amusement and shock by appearing at the 2010 Gay Pride parade as a drag queen,[14][15] posting a video holiday greeting wearing a Darth Vader mask and a Santa Claus cap,[16] and suggesting a merger with neighboring municipality Kópavogur.[17] Jón Gnarr protested the Chinese government's treatment of human rights activist Liu Xiaobo, before the announcement of Liu's award for the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize.[18] He has also stated that he believes the importance of the European Union is highly over-rated. [19]

Diary [edit]

Jón keeps an online Mayoral diary in English on Facebook, where he documents his day-to-day activities as the Mayor of Reykjavík.

See also [edit]

  • Gnarr, a 2010 Icelandic film

Notes [edit]

  1. ^ This is an Icelandic name. The last name is a patronymic, not a family name; this person is properly referred to by the given name Jón.

References [edit]

 This article uses bare URLs for citations. Please consider adding full citations so that the article remains verifiable. Several templates and the Reflinks tool are available to assist in formatting. (Reflinks documentation) (December 2012)
  1. ^ Nefrennsli Myspace
  2. ^ Jón Gnarr, Reykjavík city bio.
  3. ^ http://www.grapevine.is/Features/ReadArticle/Feature-What-Are-You-Voting-For-Reykjavik
  4. ^ bjork.com GH&FT special : Jóga (accessed 24 January 2012)
  5. ^ "Icelandic comedian to become Reykjavik's mayor". The Telegraph. 4 June 2010. Retrieved 11 June 2010. 
  6. ^ "A dispatch from Jón Gnarr" (in Icelandic). June 20, 2011, DV
  7. ^ "Satiric political party wins council poll in Iceland", Indo-Asian News Service, 30 May 2010. (accessed 24 January 2012)
  8. ^ Orchestral Rotunda Garden (in Icelandic and English)
  9. ^ McGrane, Sally (25 June 2010). "Icelander’s Campaign Is a Joke, Until He's Elected". The New York Times. 
  10. ^ http://www.grapevine.is/Features/ReadArticle/He-really-did-it-Jon-Gnarr-Haukur-Magnusson
  11. ^ http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/14obcf/i_am_j%C3%B3n_gnarr_mayor_of_reykjav%C3%ADk_ama/c7ewb6o
  12. ^ "Life in Gnarrenburg" (in Icelandic), Morgunblaðið, November 7, 2002.
  13. ^ "Political-Comic becomes mayor of Reykjavík Gnarrenburg" June 4, 2010. Blog.de.
  14. ^ "Reykjavík Mayor Jon Gnarr leads Gay Pride IceNews", August 7, 2010.
  15. ^ [1]
  16. ^ "Christmas Greeting of Jon Gnarr - in the guise of Darth Vader" (in Icelandic). December 25, 2010, DV.
  17. ^ "Jón Gnarr: Have a right to go to Smáralind (shopping mall in Kópavogur) without leaving the city limit" (in Icelandic). October 17, 2010, DV
  18. ^ Jón Gnarr criticizes China" (in Icelandic). September 14, 2010, Mbl.is
  19. ^ "I am Jón Gnarr, Mayor of Reykjavík. AMA", January 16, 2013.

External links [edit]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Jón Gnarr
Preceded by
Hanna Birna Kristjánsdóttir		 Mayor of Reykjavík
June 2010 – present		 Incumbent
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