Vigdís Finnbogadóttir
Icelandic politician, 4th President of Iceland
Vigdís Finnbogadóttir (Icelandic: [ˈvɪɣtis ˈfɪnpɔɣaˌtouʰtɪr̥] ; born 15 April 1930) is an Icelandic stateswoman and theatre director who served as the president of Iceland, from 1980 to 1996, the first woman to hold the position and the first in the world to be democratically elected president of a country. Having served for 16 years, she was also the longest-serving elected female head of state in history. Vigdís is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador and a member of the Club of Madrid.
Early life and career
Vigdís was born on 15 April 1930 in Reykjavík. Her father, Finnbogi Rútur Þorvaldsson, was a civil engineer, and her mother, Sigríður Eiríksdóttir, was a nurse who headed the national nurses' association. The following year, her younger brother Þorvaldur was born; he did not survive to adulthood, as he drowned in Hreðavatn. Vigdís enrolled at the University of Grenoble in 1949, later switching to the Sorbonne. She studied English and French literature, giving special emphasis to plays. She graduated in 1953.
Vigdís was married in 1954.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Vigdís Finnbogadóttir” is icelandic politician, 4th President of Iceland. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Vigdís, Finnbogadóttir and Icelandic, not as a finished interpretation.
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Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 25, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q189797. VIAF identifies the subject as 43170438. The Library of Congress control number is n81137459. 3 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1930, 1980, 1996 and 1949.
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This entry incorporates text from “Vigdís Finnbogadóttir” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.