Iceland Reports: The Funny Mayor

Jon Gnarr, Mayor of Reykjavik

That's right. Gnarr. 

According to some, Jon Gnarr, originally Jon Gunnar Kristinsson*, is the funniest man in Iceland. He's done stand ups, acted in movies, had a show on the radio, and written and starred in popular TV shows. I have to admit that it took me a while to understand his humor. In fact, I didn't like him one bit at first. His humor is crude, often offensive. But he grew on me, and I now "get" his Gnarrism.

It came as a surprise to the nation when he formed a political party in 2009 for the upcoming Reykjavik elections. Up until the day of the elections, people kept asking him if it was all a big joke. He had campaign promises such as to put a polar bear in the Icelandic Zoo (of farm animals), give stuff to "weaklings", and a drug-free parliament in 2020. 

Jon Gnarr at work

His election campaign was hilarious. He gathered his actor/singer friends, who also signed up for the party, and they wrote and sung lyrics to Tina Turner's Simply the Best. Why? Because his political party is called the Best Party. You can watch the video here.

The members of the Best Party are mostly artist: singers, actors, producers of various sorts. Augusta Eva Erlendsdottir who role-played Silvia Night in Greece 2006 during Eurovision has the 18th place. 

Silvia Night

What came as an even more surprise was that he was actually elected as mayor. Some days later, a stuffed polar bear that usually sits outside a shop in Reykjavik disappeared from it's place and was found in the Icelandic Zoo. I still don't know if Jon Gnarr and the store owner planned that, or if it was the act of someone else who thought it would be funny.

I sometimes can't help laughing when I hear his interviews on the radio. They try their best to ask him all sorts of complicated questions about various issues to try to throw him off. He readily admits that he has no idea where some of those issues stand. He says that there are other people in charge of those things. He also makes a lot of jokes to steer away from topics.

Is it bad to have a comedian in charge of the city? I don't think so. On the contrary, actually. He brightens the heavy atmosphere that suffocated the city after the financial crash. He lets the specialists handle the complex projects while he makes his people smile. Examples? Sure! This is how he showed up on Gay Pride:

The mayor on Gay Pride

He also addressed his coworkers like this in a video one day, where he suggested they celebrate that particular day yearly as the "'Good Day' Day":

The "Good Day" Day

The people of Reykjavik like him as their mayor. I think every town should have a copy. Specialists should take care of the real work (you know, people educated in that special area), mayors should be there for the people. I just hope he'll sign up as a candidate for the next parliament elections - we need him there!

I've had the pleasure of meeting Jon Gnarr. A few years back, he and his sons took taekwondo lessons with us for about a month. I even coached one of the training sessions (plus, I was the cashier - I'm always the cashier for some reason -.-). Jon Gnarr may be the funniest man in Iceland, but he is also the most serious man I've ever met.

Jon Gnarr

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* If you say Gunnar really fast, it comes out as "Gnarr". I'm pretty confident that that's how he came up with his last name.

Icelandic Goals

http://don.blog.is/blog/don/

Since I don't have time to blog this week (I'm going on a little trip), I'll just throw slap video on your screen. It's an Icelandic football (soccer) team doing goal-dances. I don't like to watch sports, but this had me laughing.

Here's also Krummavisur, very old Icelandic folk song sung in a very cool way by a German band called In Extermo. The singer sings in Icelandic, with a heavy German accent, but kudos for doing it anyway.

Aaaand...here's the original music, if interested. Hearing it always reminds me of vikings.

Fun Facts about Iceland II

Fun in Iceland! Photo: Holger Leue/Lonely Planet

I know, skimpy picture, but it's supposed to represent how fun it is in Iceland with pretty girls smiling. Picture is taken from the Blue Lagoon, which is just outside my hometown.

I got nice critiques on my query synopsis, so I'm still working on that (perfectionist here). Until then: More facts about Iceland!

Photo by Ómar Smári Kristinsson

- You can’t get lost in an Icelandic forest. The trees aren’t tall enough and the area isn’t wide enough. You can, however, get lost in the mountains and glaciers, and unfortunately it happens that foreigners sometimes die that way (three this summer that I know of, they were off to see the volcanic eruption in Eyjafjallajökull - come on! It's not that hard to pronounce!).

- Iceland has a female prime minister. She’s gay, but nobody cares.

- I don't like the Icelandic prime minister because she's trying to force us into the European Union.

http://net.visir.is/eurovision/1997.jpg

- Our most beloved pop star is also gay (Paul Oscar), but again, nobody cares.

- Earthquakes don't scare me. They’re too common and our houses are especially built to withstand them. A picture frame broke the last time, but it was a cheap frame anyway.

- There was a big earthquake two years ago in south of Iceland. That one would have scared me. Check it out! I‘m just glad nobody was standing in the aisle in the last bit.

- Most Icelandic candy is salt liquorish covered in milk chocolate (yummmmy).

http://annajfreak.bloggar.is/sida/39543/

- Our chocolate easter eggs are stuffed with candy (droooool).

- I'm on a one week candy probation (sigh).

- There are five Icelandic channels. The rest are American/English/Scandinavian.

http://visualrian.com/images/item/393538

- Every year we think we’ll win the Eurovision Song Contest. Every year we lose.

- Every man denies watching Eurovision, but 90% of them watch it.

- Most Icelanders have blood type O, and blood research suggests that most men back in the settler days (years 874 and up) were Norse, and most women Celtic. That also suggests that the women were slaves from Viking plunders.

The brisk trade in European slaves (Artist unknown)

- Talking of slaves, Icelanders were allowed to kill Turks on Icelandic ground until some years ago. In 1627 300 “Turks” (pirates from Morocco) kidnapped nearly 250 Icelanders, most from Vestmanneyjar (Westman Islands), and only a fraction of those were bought back years later.

- 15 people were kidnapped from my hometown, only one returned.

- Today, Icelanders are 320,000. Back in 1627 they were less than 50,000, so 250 Icelanders was a big chunk.

- Most Icelanders have blue eyes, and most children white hair. When the kids grow up their hair usually goes dark. I’ve also seen a lot of green and some amber (yellow) eyes. There are a lot of people in Westman Islands who have brown eyes and dark complexion (guess why).

- There are five universities for our 320,000 people.

- Most houses are heated by geothermal energy.

Sjósund - Jökulsárlón 2006 048 (Heimir)

- Swimming in the freezing sea is a sport and considered extremely healthy.

- I wouldn't be caught dead in an Icelandic sea. It's dark, bottomless, and has whales.

- There is only one beach in Iceland, and it's man-made (imported sand!). Most other shores aren't reclining, they just drop to being deep right away.

http://www.apartmenttherapy.com/ny/look/look-colorful-roofs-in-iceland-010036

- We have very colorful roofs.

- We speak Icelandic (for those who didn't know). It's ancient Norse.

- There are no trains in Iceland.

- We got Toys'R US in 2007.

- There's no Starbucks here - don't know why, Icelanders are heavy coffee drinkers.

- I don't drink coffee, never have.

Fun Facts about Iceland

http://morris108.wordpress.com/2008/11/03/

Since I’m still working on my agency list, which is sneaky, time-consuming work, I thought I’d mention a few little facts about Iceland. They’re not all scientifically proven; this is just stuff from my head.

- If you walk through a field of tall grass, it is very unlikely that a bug will stick on you.

Garin Hay at MySpace

- Up until recently, Iceland only had very small spiders. A contractor I know of imported machinery and with them came rather large spiders with red and yellow bellies (eugh!). The contractor couldn’t be bothered to have them exterminated and so they’ve spread (thanks a lot).

- I have never seen a cockroach in Iceland. I’ve heard that there are some back at the old American base, and that they were discovered after the Americans left (thanks a lot).

- There are no ants in Iceland.

- When the American soldiers and their families left, they also left behind a lot of useful stuff, including playgrounds and gym equipment (thanks a lot!).

- There are not many rats in Iceland. In fact, I’ve never seen one with my own eyes. If I saw one, I’d probably think it was a big mouse.

Budget Baby: 10 More Ways to Live Green for Less by Rachael Brownell

- The largest wild animals (not including the very occasional polar bears that float on blocks of ice from Greenland/North Pole) are reindeers, but foxes are the second largest.

- Yes, I’ve seen a live polar bear. Not a wild one though. I’ve also seen live Orcas. The Orca was scarier.

http://myanimalblog.wordpress.com/2008/03/09/orca/

- “Orka” is an Icelandic word for “energy”.

- Our clocks have 24 hours, meaning that we always write (and often say) 15.32 etc. Americans call it "military time"; we just call it "time".

http://images.channels.nl/images/hotel/org/736/736470.jpg

- The northern lights (Aurora Boreales) are so common that I don’t really think of them as anything magnificent. I just think they're "cool". I grew up seeing the green lights, and I, with my wild imagination, could see little human figures walking upwards in a row. They peak every eleven years, and I’ve twice been awed by purple, red, orange, and pink lights dancing wildly in the sky (I’m not being poetic here, they were literally dancing). The lights in the pictures, by the way, are very cool.

- There is daylight 24 hours in June. That’s when Icelanders are very gleeful and chipper. That’s also when Icelanders go camping and drink a lot. I don’t drink alcohol and I haven’t - ever. No special reason, I just don’t want to.

- I know one other person who has never tasted alcohol in his life, and he happens to be my cousin.

http://www.randburg.com/is/spaksmannsspjarir/

- People always dress up before heading to the pubs/nightclubs.

- There is maximum 3 hours of daylight in December, when it is darkest. That’s when way too many Icelanders are depressed. We go to work in darkness and come home in darkness – but then we have Christmas to cheer us up.

- There was winter celebration in Iceland way before people were forced to take up Christianity here. The purpose was to cheer people up the gloom of darkness.

- People also dress up for clubbing in the winter - girls don't let the cold bother them and if short dresses/skirts and tank tops are in, they wear it.

"Dreki í nýju ullarpeysunni sinni"

- After the 2008 economic catastrophe, new and innovative businesses have been popping up everywhere. Every woman, it seems, was suddenly interested in knitting (including me), and former career women published a number of knitting books. More Icelandic knitting books have been published in the last two years than the last decade, and probably a decade before that, too.

Cartoon at 2.bp.blogspot.com

I'll post more of these later when I have no news of my writing. I've compiled a list of 42 agents so far and I have some more to go. I didn't list the snail-mail ones and the one-man agencies, but I bookmarked them and I'll list them down later. This doesn't mean that I'm less interested in them, I just decided to work in this organised order: list big/medium agencies (tons), list snail-mail agencies (a handful), and then list one-man/woman agencies (a few more than the snail-mailers). I intend to query everyone.

Just for the record, it has taken me two whole days to list down the medium/big agencies and choose the right agent from each one. This is a lot more work than I thought it would be, and it'll be a lot of work to personalize every query (read the query guidelines from everyone and make sure everything's spiffy). I think I'll send the queries out in batches, maybe 5-6 at a time.

Task for the day: clean the apartment and continue listing agencies.