Valur Gunnarsson

Valur Gunnarsson was born in Reykjavík on August 26th 1976. He grew up in Norway, Britain and Iceland, and spent his teenage summers in Saudi-Arabia and China. He graduated with an MA in creative writing from Queens University Belfast in 2003 and shortly thereafter took part in founding the Reykjavík-based English language newspaper Reykjavík Grapevine.

Valur has written for most of the newspapers published in Iceland and among others worked at Fréttablaðið, Fréttatíminn and DV. He was a local correspondent for Associated Press and The Guardian during the financial crash in Iceland. As a musician he has cut three albums: Reykjavík er köld: Leonard Cohen á íslensku (Reykjavík is Cold: Leonard Cohen in Icelandic, 1999), Seljum allt (Sell Everything, 2003) with the band Ríkið, and Vodka Songs (2008) with musician Gímaldin.

His book of poetry, A Fool for Believing (2004), was awarded a newcomer‘s prize at a poetry conference in Washington DC, and Valur collaborated in the making of another book of poetry, Iceland: Red, Green and Blue, published in Finland.

Valur‘s first novel, Konungur norðursins (The King in the North), was published in 2007 and his second, Síðasti elskhuginn (The Last Lover), in 2013. His latest novel is titled Örninn og fálkinn (The Eagle and the Falcon, 2017) and is an alternate-history novel in which the German forces occupy Iceland in 1940 instead of the British. Valur is now finishing his MA in history from the University of Iceland, where he studies chaos theory and possible alternate histories.

Valur lives in Reykjavík.