Ragnar Jónasson

Ragnar Jónasson (born 20 July 1976) is an Icelandic author of crime fiction, best known for the Dark Iceland series featuring police officer Ari Þór Arason, set in the northern town of Siglufjörður, and the Hulda trilogy featuring Reykjavík detective Hulda Hermannsdóttir. His books have sold several million copies and been published in around 40 countries. In 2022 he co-wrote the novel Reykjavík with Katrín Jakobsdóttir, then the Prime Minister of Iceland, followed by a sequel, Franski spítalinn, in 2025. He is a co-founder of the Reykjavík literary festival Iceland Noir.

Early life and career Jónasson was born in Reykjavík on 20 July 1976.

A reader of Agatha Christie from childhood, Jónasson began translating her work into Icelandic as a teenager, at seventeen, and has translated fourteen of her novels; the immersion in Christie's plotting is frequently cited as a formative influence on his own writing. His short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, the first by an Icelandic author in that publication. Trained as a lawyer, he has taught copyright law at Reykjavík University and worked in investment banking; he previously worked in radio and television, including as a news reporter for the Icelandic national broadcaster RÚV.

Writing career

Dark Iceland series Jónasson's debut novel, Fölsk nóta, was published in Iceland in 2009. He followed it with Snjóblinda (2010), the first of the Dark Iceland series, set in Siglufjörður and featuring the young policeman Ari Þór Arason. His international breakthrough came after he was taken on by the literary agency that had represented Henning Mankell, which sold the series widely abroad. The English translation, Snowblind (2015), reached number one in the Amazon Kindle chart in the United Kingdom, was described by The New York Times as a "classically crafted whodunit", and was named by The Independent among the best crime novels of 2015. Nightblind won the 2016 Dead Good Reader Award for Most Captivating Crime in Translation.

Hulda series and standalones The Hulda trilogy – The Darkness (Dimma), The Island (Drungi) and The Mist (Mistur) – features Hulda Hermannsdóttir, a Reykjavík detective on the verge of retirement, and is told in reverse chronological order. Drungi was nominated for the Icelandic crime fiction award Blóðdropinn in 2016. His later standalone novels include The Girl Who Died (Þorpið), Outside (Úti) and Death at the Sanatorium. In October 2025 he published Emilía, a ghost-story novella and a departure from his crime fiction. Among his Christie translations are Death on the Nile, which had not previously been published in Icelandic. The mystery, set around the disappearance of a teenage girl in 1956 and a journalist's investigation during Reykjavík's bicentenary in 1986, became the best-selling book of the year 2022 in Iceland and was nominated for Blóðdropinn. It was published in English in 2023 by Minotaur Books as Reykjavík: A Crime Story and was named among the best crime novels of 2023 by The New York Times and Kirkus Reviews.

In 2025 the pair published a second novel, Franski spítalinn (The French Hospital), a sequel to Reykjavík set in East Iceland in February 1989, in which a man is found dead in the historic French Hospital in Fáskrúðsfjörður and a Morgunblaðið journalist investigates. He set up the first overseas chapter of the British Crime Writers' Association in Reykjavík. As of 2025 he is vice-chair of the Writers' Union of Iceland and sits on the board of the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, alongside his work as a lawyer in the investment division of Arion Bank.