First Lady in a strange land

The first time I met Eliza Reid, my wife and I had just checked into a Reykjavik hotel, where the opening dinner of the Iceland Writers Retreat was about to soon begin. We were finishing up in the lobby, with minutes to spare before the start of the welcome dinner. After a long and exhausting flight, followed by a bus ride to the city center, all I could think of was how much I needed a shower, and also how close we were cutting it (not my fault, the flight schedule was just like that). And that’s when she appeared: “I know this one!” she said joyfully, walking up to me with a warm smile, her hand outstretched. We shook hands, and I awkwardly managed to mumble a few thanks-for-having-us style words, but really all I could think in that moment was: “I wish I’d had a chance to take a shower and maybe change into a fresh shirt before approaching her.” And just like that, I was welcomed into Iceland by the nation’s First Lady -- the spouse of the Head of State -- who in this context was also the co-founder and co-organizer of the writer’s conference I was attending as an Alumni Award winner. They say first impressions last, and as an awardee, I had really wanted to make a good one. Did I make a good first impression? -- I wondered as we pulled our luggage up to our rooms.

I have just finished reading Eliza Reid’s new memoir The First Lady Next Door, which is her third book overall, and her second piece of non-fiction which touches on her life and role in her adopted country of Iceland. The book is an absolute joy, and I laughed out loud at many different pages. As much as I loved her debut Secrets of the Sprakkar, which was a more journalistic analysis of gender equality in Iceland, this one goes further into Reid’s own personality and unexpected journey. Reid’s voice is candid, friendly, honest: there is not a shred of pretense in her tone or account of events, no matter how surreal they seem to us. She is a regular Canadian-born human, raised in a hobby farm in Ontario who studied abroad in the UK, who suddenly finds herself attending Queen Elizabeth’s funeral, being received at the White House by Jill Biden (where Joe Biden shows up and calls Reid’s mom), and on a carriage ride in Copenhagen filled with European royals where she is in urgent need of a wardrobe adjustment. We see her talking to former Finnish president and Nobel laureate Martti Ahtisaari, who tells her about his (work) trips to Africa, and Reid, unaware of the man’s identity at this point, and the context, responds with talking about her own adventure travels to the continent. Recalling this exchange, she writes: “Whether he had judged me for committing a small-talk faux pas or was refreshed by my innocent enthusiasm for a new topic of conversation, I would never know.” Her self-deprecating humor is present in every page, and this is like a balm on the soul for anyone who has ever looked back at an interaction and felt a little cringe.

When I think of Reid in all her everyday charm, my mind often goes back to that first encounter, where I wondered what kind of first impression I had made. Reading this book, thinking about that same encounter, I kept wondering this time instead about the impression that she had made. Here was a First Lady making sure everybody felt included, that everyone -- from hotel staff, to conference participant, to VIP author – was treated equally and with dignity. This is the ethical compass that drives her, and this overall, humble sense of self is something that she never lost, even when one fine day her husband Gudni Johannesson found himself elected president of Iceland, and Eliza Reid became First Lady of a country where she was still gaining fluency in the language.

There is no manual on how to become a First Lady, Reid reminds us. It is not a paid job, or an office with legally codified responsibilities. At the same time, as the spouse of the head of state, she is always in the public eye. She is subject to expectations at various state visits, and scrutiny from the media. It is a high-level position which is also not one. Most importantly, it was a role Reid never quite asked for. Her husband Gudni was a historian, a booksmart academic with vast knowledge on Icelandic affairs, but not someone with explicit political ambitions. After a sudden wave of popularity following a few TV appearances, Johannesson decided to run for president, and won comfortably. At the end of his presidency, his approval rating was at a staggering 80%. Throughout his presidency, Reid stood by his side as a supportive First Lady, mostly at regular receptions at the Icelandic presidential residence, known as the Bessastadir. In one of the book’s most emotionally honest sequences, Reid describes how people invited to the Bessastadir would often meet the president and shake his hand with great enthusiasm, and how many would then move on, not even noticing the First Lady with her outstretched hand. This was a reminder to Reid that the public will always see this whole thing as the president’s show, hers was a supporting role. Reid neither asks for sympathy for these little snubs nor does she play her VVIP card and demand more respect. She simply lays out the awkward truth of the situation: a First Lady is never the star when the president is around. (Hit with second-hand guilt while reading this book in bed, I asked my wife to remind me if I had shaken her hand. Yes I did, she assured me, several times.)

But this memoir, ultimately, is not really about being married to the president, but Eliza Reid finding her own role and her own voice. “I am not my husband’s handbag,” she once wrote in an op-ed piece that went viral. Reid has, every step of the way, carved out her own role and stayed true to her own views. Many things happen to her, post-election, that are nothing short of a fairy tale. Moving into the gorgeous presidential house near Reykjavik, high profile state visits to foreign countries, hosting royalty in her own home – she did it all. But through it all, she exercised her voice independently, kept up her own work in writing, and ran the Iceland Writers Retreat – which is an absolute gem of a writing retreat now in its twelfth year. She is deeply concerned about sustainability, and has worn upcycled clothing to royal visits. But given the privileges and access of First Lady, instead of simply turning away from the role, Reid asked herself: how can I use this privilege in the right way? “Only a handful of people in the world will ever experience being married to a head of state, but everyone at some point in life lands where they never expected to, in a place where they struggle to seize an opportunity […] while staying true to themselves,” she writes.

After reading this book, there’s a good chance that you will want to just walk up to Reid and ask her to be your friend. Would the First Lady next door want to get a cup of coffee? Would she be interested in some tea (verbal) over some high tea (herbal)? And knowing Eliza -- first name now! -- there’s a good chance she would be up for it.

Abak Hussain is a writer and journalist. He is a winner of the Iceland Writers Retreat Alumni Award.