Iceland review - 2015, Page 45

ICELAND REVIEW 43
JOURNALISM
COMING HOME?
Many Icelanders who have spent time abroad
eventually return home, or so it is often said.
I ask Jón if he can envisage living in Iceland
again after all these years. “Iceland would
have been great—I love it here—but it adds a
day to either side of a trip. I need to travel as
fast as those coming from, for example, Paris,
and as I’m just half an hour from Geneva
airport, I’m often faster to the scene. I was
living in Spain before but Switzerland is good
to come back to from all the chaos. It’s stable
and quiet and you know that the ambulance
will arrive if needed.”
In 2012, Jón was awarded the Icelandic
Journalist Award for his coverage of the
Arab Spring in North Africa in 2011 and
has sometimes been referred to as ‘Iceland’s
only war reporter,’ a title he rejects. “It was
an honor. Unwarranted really as I’m hardly
an Icelandic journalist anymore,” he says.
“But they did not realize that covering
conflict is really the easiest journalism there
is. If you get the logistics right, stay clear
of all the unreliable numbers you hear and
just report what you see, then the news is
staring you in the face, whichever way you
turn your head.” *

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Opposite page clockwise from left:
With a young friend in Burkina Faso, 2013.
Filing a story for Icelandic National
Broadcaster RÚV in Aleppo, Syria, 2012.
In Aleppo, Syria, 2012.
Jón and son Daníel diving with turtles in Hawaii, 2015.