The Best Party (BP) is Iceland’s Rhinoceros Party. Its members include a who’s who of Iceland’s punk rock scene. Last week its leader, Jon Gnarr, became mayor of Reykjavik. Since he won only six of the fifteen council seats, he needed a coalition partner. He ruled out any party whose members had not seen all five seasons of The Wire. The Social Democrats managed to qualify, barely, because some of them had to bone up by watching the series on DVDs.
Jon Gnarr’s plans include turning Reykjavik, which has more than a third of Iceland’s 320,000 people, into a hub for electric cars. It has a plentiful supply of biothermal energy.
In an interview with The New York Times, he said his idea for the Best Party was born of the profound distress and moral confusion after the banking collapse, when Icelanders fiercely debated their obligation to repay ruined British and Dutch depositors.
Practically speaking, Jon Gnarr said he had no qualms. “Why should I repay money I never spent?” he asked, a common sentiment in Iceland. But on a deeper level, he had misgivings.
“I consider myself a very moral person,” he said. “Suddenly, I felt like a character in a Beckett play, where you have moral obligations towards something you have no possibility of understanding. It was like Waiting for Godot – I was in limbo.”
Jon Gnarr, born forty-three years ago in Reykjavik as Jon Gunnar Kristinsson to a policeman and a kitchen worker, was not a model child. At 11, he decided school was useless to his future as a circus clown or pirate and refused to learn any more. At 13, he stopped going to class and joined Reykjavik’s punk scene. At 14, he was sent to a boarding school for troubled teenagers and stayed until he was 16, when he left school for good.
“A lot of us are singers,” said Ottarr Proppe, the third-ranking member of the Best Party, who was with the cult rock band HAM and the punk band Rass. Ottarr Proppe now sits on the city’s executive board, where he will be deciding matters like how much money to allocate for roads. “Making a video was easy,” he said.
At a recent budget meeting, Otarr Proppe, who has a wild red beard, ran his hand through his bleached-blond hair as he studied the fiscal report from behind tinted, gold-rimmed glasses. His old band mate S. Bjorn Blondal quizzed the city’s comptroller, Heida Helgadottir, who ran the campaign and is now assistant to the mayor. She wore a diaphanous minidress and typed notes.
Jon Gnarr, who comes across as thoughtful and reserved, did not speak often. When he did he had the whole room, including the strait-laced Social Democrats, in stitches. Still, he is not just playing a comic; friends describe his move to politics as a spiritual awakening. He agreed.
“Of all the projects I’ve been involved with, this one has given me the most satisfaction and the greatest sense of contentment.”
Jon Gnarr is now the fourth mayor in four years. He intends to compete a full four-year term.
He is not the world’s first mayor to cause a laugh.
No doubt you are thinking of Camillien Houde.
In that case, maybe more of a sneer than a laugh.
The first head of state who visited Germany and Frankfurt after WWI was King Amman Ullah of Afghanistan. When he ruled there was peace in the land. He probably was Pashtun and spoke Urdu. His dynasty should be restored. In those days Tajiks and whatever were not known to us. I remember seeing his motorcade, one of my childhood memories. Who are the royal princes there ?
Mohammed Zahir Shah (15 October 1914 – 23 July 2007) was the last King (Shah) of Afghanistan, reigning for four decades, from 1933 until he was ousted by a coup in 1973.
He had six sons and one daughter.
I thought Rejkjavik would be too cold to be funny.
Eyjafjallajökul is funny all year round.
A camelien for your thoughts herr meister koch
How totally delightful to hear from you, Jamie!