Diplomatic Spouses | Culture | WD
Jon of All Trades Husband of Icelandic Ambassador Becomes Career Chameleon for His Wife •
BY GAIL SCOTT
J
on Oskar Solnes can certainly be described as a jack of all trades. He has been a television sportscaster; foreign news editor; press and information officer; a bank research editor; a chief of staff for a peacekeeping monitoring mission in Sri Lanka; a humanitarian aid manager for landmine victims in northern Iraq and Bosnia and Herzegovina; permanent delegate for a confederation of Icelandic employers analyzing EU socioeconomic and financial regulation; senior advisor for media analysis at two of NATO’s highest organizations; a consultant; and a two-time author. But perhaps his most important role has been as a supportive husband to his wife Bergdís Ellertsdóttir, Iceland’s recently appointed ambassador to the U.S. “I’ve tried to be flexible, to help myself and find my own way,” Solnes, 57, told us. “When my wife was first sent abroad to Bonn, I thought I’ll try it, so I gave up my broadcasting job, which I loved,” he said of adjusting his career to accommodate his wife’s and the needs of their growing family. That included taking on another job: stayat-home dad — or, as he calls it, “Mr. Mom.” “Our first daughter was only one and a half then [in Bonn] and I thought I could help. Our second daughter came shortly thereafter. There was a period in Bonn when I took the baby down to the embassy two or three times a day so my wife could breastfeed her,” Solnes recalled. The couple also eventually had two boys. In between his parenting duties, Solnes earned a master’s in management and finance from Boston University (in association with the Free University of Brussels) and a master’s-level diploma in financial strategy from the University of Oxford. Today, the girls, Salvö and Katla, are in their 20s while the boys, Hjalti and Sturla, are teenagers. “We had two girls first and then, 10 years later, two boys. I found that bringing up girls was totally different than bringing up boys. One thing that is especially nice about the boys is that we have more sports in common. I am a skier and so are they, but I wonder this winter if they’re going to out-ski me at Snowshoe,” he said, referring to the popular ski mountain resort town in West Virginia. Solnes had been a well-known TV sportscaster in Iceland covering international events as the Seoul Summer Olympics in 1988 and the 1990 FIFA World Cup in Italy for Icelandic National Broadcasting Service (known as RÚV). Then he became the network’s foreign news editor, traveling abroad to cover major conflict areas as the former Yugoslavia and Somalia. Next, he became a research editor for a major Icelandic bank, writing English language information bulletins for international subscribers and investors. “But I didn’t like the bank that much…. It wasn’t exciting. All anyone talked about, thought about, was money,” he said. “This was before the economic crash.” The subject of money was then on everyone’s minds in 2008, when Iceland experienced a crippling financial crisis in which three of the country’s major privately owned banks defaulted, leading to a severe economic depression that lasted for several years. Since then, however, the country has managed an impressive recovery, with steady economic growth fueled in part by a major increase in tourism. In fact, part of Iceland’s economic prosperity owes to its progressive social policies on gender equality, which has led to greater participation of women in the workforce — including the political sphere, with women comprising half of parliament. The Icelandic ambassador’s own diverse diplomatic career is emblematic of how advanced this nation of just over 350,000 people is when it comes to women’s rights. Among her various postings, Ellertsdóttir has served as ambassador to the European Union and to the United Nations; foreign affairs advisor to the
Jon Oskar Solnes, a well-known television sportscaster in Iceland, adjusted his career when his wife began being posted abroad, working at various points of his life for a peacekeeping monitoring mission in Sri Lanka and as a humanitarian aid manager for landmine victims in northern Iraq and Bosnia and Herzegovina.
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It’s a shock to the system to come from a dangerous yet exciting environment where you hope you’re making a difference in comparison to being Mr. Mom, where you’re hoping to make an even bigger difference. JON OSKAR SOLNES
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sportscaster, editor, humanitarian aid worker, chief of staff, spokesperson, author and consultant
prime minister; chief negotiator for the Iceland-China Free Trade Agreement; and deputy director of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Political Department dealing with security issues, NATO and bilateral relations with the U.S., Canada and Russia. While Solnes’s various career moves have also given him a range of experiences, he’s frank about the sacrifices he’s had to make to follow his wife. “I took a great risk in resigning from the television job I loved. I went from being known all over Iceland to hardly ever being known and only recognized as the husband of my wife,” he said. A couple of times in their 25-year marriage, however, he did leave the family home because he was recruited to work in conflict areas and warzones, although not for extended tours. “I think I wanted to challenge myself again,” Solnes said. So he accepted an invitation to become communications director and chief spokesperson for the European Union’s Police Mission in Sarajevo, where he was directly in charge of 16 staffers from some of the 30 contributing countries helping to oversee the security situation in Bosnia and Herzegovina and restructure the police forces. “The war was over, leaving scarred and burnt buildings all over the city, but Sarajevo would maybe not be called a real hardship post,” he said. “We had a small, private and wonderful Christmas there with my wife and two daughters.” SEE S POUS ES • PAGE 27 MARCH 2020 | THE WASHINGTON DIPLOMAT | 25
