Valur Gunnarsson

Valur Gunnarsson was born on August 26th in Reykjavik. He grew up in Norway, Britain and Iceland but spent his summers as a teenager in Saudi-Arabia and China. He graduated with an MA in creative writing in 2003 and soon took part in founding the Reykjavik Grapevine Magazine. In 2021 he graduated with a master’s degree in history from the University of Iceland. 

Valur has written for most Icelandic papers and worked full-time for Fréttablaðið, Fréttatíminn and DV. He was a correspondent for Associated Press and The Guardian newspaper during the economic collapse of 2008. He has made three albums, Reykjavík er köld (2000) which is a collection of Leonard Cohen songs in Icelandic, the punk album Seljum allt (2003) with the band Ríkið, and Vodka Songs (2008), a collaboration with multi-instrumentalist Gímaldin. 

In 2004 came the poetry collection A Fool for Believing, which won best beginner award at a poetry convention in Washington DC, and contributed to the poetry collection Iceland: Red, Green and Blue, which came out in Finland. 

His first novel, Konungur norðursins, was published in 2007 and since then he has written two more novels. In the past years he has written historical works, travelogues which also fall under the banner of creative non-fiction. The first was Bjarmalönd, which was set in the post-Soviet sphere. 

Valur has also written the book Hvað ef? which wonders how history could have turned out differently. An English version has also been published, which a greater emphasis on Iceland and the Nordic Countries.