Iceland’s New President Is a Feminist, and a Friend of Björk
Seven-year-old Halla Tómasdóttir was confused on her mother’s birthday in 1975. Her mother and aunts weren’t in the kitchen as usual, instead directing their husbands and brothers to do the work. That was because women were taking the day off to demonstrate their value to society amid Iceland’s first national women’s strike.
More than four decades later, Ms. Tómasdóttir is the country’s new president, nurtured by the message she absorbed on that day.
“They told me they wanted to show the world that they matter,” Ms. Tómasdóttir said this week. “I think that was the day I decided I might like to matter.”
Ms. Tómasdóttir, a feminist finance expert for whom the singer Björk campaigned, clinched the presidency and officially took the reins on Thursday from Guðni Jóhannesson, who stepped down after two four-year terms.
Iceland, a Nordic island nation with a population of about 380,000, operates as a constitutional republic with a parliamentary twist. The president, who is not required to be affiliated with any political party, serves as the head of state but wields mostly ceremonial clout. The real executive muscle lies with the prime minister, typically the leader who can command Parliament’s majority.
Still, Ms. Tómasdóttir intends to make a difference.
“My goal is not to be a president with all the answers,” she said. “I want to be a president that asks the right questions.”
She said one of her first goals was to support initiatives that addressed health issues, such as depression among young people. Even though Iceland has often ranked among the happiest countries in the world in surveys, suicides among young people have raised concern, and the country ranked the highest among European nations for use of antidepressants in 2020, according to Euronews.
“I don’t think it’s OK to turn the other way when our young people are suffering,” she said.
Ms. Tómasdóttir said she drew inspiration from Iceland’s history, since it was the first country in the world to democratically elect a female president. She was 11 in 1980 when Vigdís Finnbogadóttir was elected.
Before she pursued leadership roles, Ms. Tómasdóttir studied at Auburn University in Montgomery, Ala., and Thunderbird School of Global Management in Phoenix, Ariz. She then spent nearly a decade working in human resources for Mars, a confectionary company, and Pepsi in the United States. But she felt unfulfilled in those corporate roles, so she returned to Iceland to teach.
“I wanted to have a greater purpose with what I did with my life,” she said.
Ms. Tómasdóttir helped create Reykjavík University, where she founded and led Auður, a women’s entrepreneurship and empowerment initiative named after a ninth-century female Viking settler known for her leadership and wisdom. Auður also means “good fortune,” and clearly came to signify something greater for her.
In 2005, Ms. Tómasdóttir gave birth to a girl whom she named Auður. In 2007, she was a co-founder of an investment firm, also called Auður, that aimed to incorporate values such as risk awareness, honesty and valuing emotional capital into finance. In 2010, she gave a celebrated TED Talk about surviving the financial crash of 2008 because of those values.
In 2016, Ms. Tómasdóttir decided to run for president as an independent candidate. Although she did not win, she garnered plenty of support for a political newcomer and was called “a living emoji of sincerity” in an article in The New Yorker.
Her unconventional background, as someone who came from outside the world of politics, was initially met with some skepticism.
“Some intellectuals in Iceland don’t like her because she does not have the academic or intellectual background as many of the previous presidents,” said Ólafur Þórður Hardarson, a professor of political science at the University of Iceland. “She has, in a way, an American style as a politician.”
She faced doubts on May 3, the day of a televised debate, she said, because she was recovering from a cold and “woke up without a voice.” She still got in front of the cameras.
That day, she said, she wore her most comfortable jacket, which happened to be pink, and a silk pink scarf, even though she wasn’t typically a “pink person.” Despite barely having her voice, she performed best among the 12 candidates, according to polls.
Her choice of clothing unexpectedly became the focus of criticism, leading her to express frustration after the debate about how there was too much focus on women’s appearance.
“When will we talk about what women have to say and not what they wear?” she said on Friday.
That message resonated with many of her supporters in Iceland, starting a “scarf revolution,” she said, in which supporters across demographics wore scarves in solidarity, including at her inauguration ceremony on Thursday.
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