05.10.1977–?
Hugleikur Dagsson
Hugleikur Dagsson (b. 1977) began as a film critic on Icelandic radio and became known for black-humour comics, published as books and in The Reykjavik Grapevine. He wrote three stage plays, won “playwright of the year” for the first, and Penguin Books issued collections of his cartoons between 2006 and 2008.
Biography
His first comic was called “Love Us”. It came out in 2002, the same year the author graduated from the Iceland Academy of the Arts with a bachelor’s degree.
Þórarinn Hugleikur Dagsson was born on 5 October 1977 in Akureyri, in the north of Iceland. At home he is called Hulli. His father, Dagur Þorleifsson, was a journalist and writer, and his mother, Ingibjörg Hjartardóttir, is also a writer; the patronymic Dagsson comes from his father’s name. His second name, Hugleikur, occurs in Old Norse literature and can be translated as “play of the mind”.
Before the books and the stage there was the radio station Radíó X. There he hosted a popular programme in which he reviewed films, and a separate show called “Hugleikur”. At the same time he made drawings and videos: he is described as someone who works in various kinds of visual art. His best-known genre is satirical comics with black humour. The first three books, “Love Us” (2002), “Kill Us” (2003) and “Fuck Us” (2004), came out in 2005 as a single collection, “Forðist okkur” (“Avoid Us”). They were followed by “Save Us” (2005), “Confirm Us” (2006), “Follow Us” (2006), “Buy Us” (2007) and “Bury Us” (2008). In parallel he kept up a series about a one-eyed cat, Kisi: “Kisi, the One-Eyed Cat, and the Douchebags” (2006), then “the Secret” (2007) and the two parts of “the Situation” (2008 and 2009). The last of the cat books I have named, “the Mysteries of Eyjafjallajökull” (2010), was made together with Pétur Atli Antonsson. A separate story is “Garðarshólmi” (2008, with a sequel in 2009): the comic was printed on every page of the Icelandic telephone directory.
Outside Iceland he is known through Penguin Books. In 2006 the English translation of “Avoid Us” appeared as “Should You Be Laughing at This?”, in October 2007 the translation of “Save Us” as “Is This Supposed to Be Funny?”, and in 2008 a third book, “Is This Some Kind of Joke?” In Italy he is known mainly through the collection “Cazzo ridi?” from the publisher ISBN Edizioni. Among those who influenced his manner he names the cartoonists Johnny Ryan, Sam Henderson and Bill Watterson.
He wrote three plays for the theatre. “Forðist okkur” (“Avoid Us”, 2006) is based on his own book and tells of three dysfunctional families; for it he received the “playwright of the year” award. “Leg” (2007), a musical about teenage pregnancy in the near future of Iceland, has a title that means “uterus”. “Baðstofan” (2008) is a dark vision of eighteenth-century Iceland. Critics received all three productions enthusiastically.
Profile notes