Hello.
I’m Valgeir, an award-winning person who is still alive, and not trying to sell you anything.
I made this website to make you think I’m a really Busy & Important™ internet person.
It’s also supposed to make you think that I’m a friendly, relaxed and approachable guy.
And it’s working, right now.
You can feel it. Just close your eyes, and let it wash over you.
Am I right?
Because, you see, it’s really all about a little something I invented, called “personal branding.”
My attitude towards honest, nine-to-five work is well documented.
I diligently spend up to eight four hours a day making Business Poetry.
Business Poetry is a special kind of poetry the main purpose of which is to help corporations convince people to do things.
Things like push buttons, download apps, renew subscriptions, travel to far away places in flying machines, run marathons even though it’s bad for their knees, invest in something, vote for someone, buy something or think something.
Business Poetry is also useful for companies who for various reasons urgently need to find new names for themselves and/or their products.
I’m reasonably good at what I do. Just ask my fictional wife, or the various people I’ve worked with over the years, if you can find them.
Very funny.
Once I pretended to be an island, in a project that The Hairpin called a “Iceland’s calculatedly modest PR rabbit hole,” and showed up in New York Magazine’s Approval Matrix. That was fun.
A guy who works at the New York Times once called me an “Icelandic maniac.”
For the past few years I have mostly been working with my good* friends** at Ueno, on projects for corporate entities such as Reuters, Waze, Visa, Facebook, and Ueno.
Is there an echo in here?
My views on awards are not a secret.
That has not stopped people from giving some of them to me.
What else?
I’m from Reykjavík, but I’ve spent the last 14 years living and working in Berlin, Copenhagen, Frankfurt, London, Paris, Prague, Rome and San Francisco.
Right now I’m living in Venice, like a character in an early 20th century novella.
If you ask me why I speak such good English, French, German and Danish, I will tell you that it helps being brought up by a series of European nannies, courtesy of your philandering anglophile father.
To increase my social standing and cultural capital, I occasionally engage in witty repartee with my “pals” on Twitter. A message there is probably the best way to reach me.
Oh, and my name once appeared next to Elton John’s in The New Yorker. It’s a long story.
I should probably rewrite this whole website.
Why am I telling you all this?
Am I trying to impress you?
That depends.
Is it working?