Þórunn Sveinbjarnardóttir Þ is the letter thorn, which in Icelandic represents a

voiceless dental fricative The voiceless dental non-sibilant fricative is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is familiar to most English speakers as the 'th' in ''think''. Though rather rare as a phoneme among the world's languages, it is encount ...

, as in the English word "thick." (born 22 November 1965) is an

Iceland Iceland is a Nordic countries, Nordic island country between the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic and Arctic Oceans, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge between North America and Europe. It is culturally and politically linked with Europe and is the regi ...

ic politician who has served as Speaker of the Althing since 2025. A graduate of the

University of Iceland The University of Iceland ( ) is a public research university in Reykjavík, Iceland, and the country's oldest and largest institution of higher education. Founded in 1911, it has grown steadily from a small civil servants' school to a modern co ...

and the

Bologna Center The SAIS Europe, located in Bologna, Italy, is the European campus of the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) under Johns Hopkins University. SAIS Europe's degree programs emphasize international economics, international relations, Eu ...

of the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies, she was Iceland's Minister for the Environment from 24 May 2007 to 1 February 2009. She was member of the

Althing The (; ), anglicised as Althingi or Althing, is the Parliamentary sovereignty, supreme Parliament, national parliament of Iceland. It is the oldest surviving parliament in the world. The Althing was founded in 930 at ('Thing (assembly), thing ...

(Iceland's parliament) from 1999 to 2011, first elected as a member of Women's List, then the

Social Democratic Alliance The Social Democratic Alliance (, ) is a Social democracy, social democratic List of political parties in Iceland, political party in Iceland. The party is positioned on the Centre-left politics, centre-left of the political spectrum and their ...

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