Guðrún Agnarsdóttir

Guðrún Agnarsdóttir was born in Reykjavík to Agnar Guðmundsson and Birna Petersen on 2 June 1941.[1]

In 1961 and 1968, she earned degrees from the University of Iceland.[1] In university, only five percent of the students were women.[2] For the next two years, she worked in hospitals, before receiving further education at Hammersmith Hospital and the Royal Postgraduate Medical School over the next eleven.[1] She received her Icelandic medical license in 1978, and her British medical license in 1981.[1]

She served in the Alþingi from 1983 to 1990; for the first four years, she was elected at the national level, and for the last three, she represented Reykjavík.[1] She was a member of the Women's List.[1] She worked on issues relating to rape, AIDS, and the medical sciences.[3]

In the 1996 Icelandic presidential election, Guðrún was a candidate as a member of the Women's List.[4] She said she ran to make Iceland "a model society ... where all individuals matter".[5] She was the only woman to run, and lost to Ólafur Ragnar Grimsson with around 25 percent of the vote.[6] She sent Ólafur congratulations, and he sent her thanks for her work during the campaign.[7] The Women's List doubled in representation in the Alþingi, from three to six members.[8]

Guðrún is a physician.[8] She met her husband, Helgi Þröstur Valdimarsson, in her early career as a doctor.[2] From 1988 to 1992, she was a member of the executive board of the cancer society of Iceland, and from 1992 to 2009, was its CEO;[9] she retired to spend time with her grandchildren and continue forest farming.[9]

In 2018, her husband died.[2] In 2021, Guðrún said that she no longer regretted losing the presidential election.[2]