My name is Kristján Rúnarsson. I was born on November 28, 1987 in Reykjavík, Iceland, where I currently live. I have lived in Iceland most of my life, but I partly grew up in the United States (Madison, Wisconsin and Chapel Hill, North Carolina), and more recently I lived in Utrecht in the Netherlands, where I obtained a B.Mus. degree with a major in clarinet performance at the Utrecht Conservatory in 2013. I have a BA degree in linguistics (2015) and a master’s degree in language technology (2017) from the University of Iceland.
KRún is a short form of my name originally conceived as a signature for paintings I made when I was staying with my grandfather, Vilhjálmur Einarsson, a former athlete and headmaster with a love of fine arts, upon whose painter's signature, VEin, I based mine.
My real name, Kristján, is the Icelandic version of the Latin name Christianus (from which Christian in English is derived), from the Greek Χριστός (Khristós, “the anointed”), the title of Jesus as translated into Greek from the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (māšîaḥ, whence Messiah in English), Greek being in Jesus’ time a widespread lingua franca and the language of the New Testament as transmitted to us.
I have played the clarinet since I was 8 years old, and in my teenage years I also started playing piano at 14, the trombone at 16, and the oboe since at 17. Since then, I have done a year of classical singing and a four year bachelor in clarinet at the Utrecht Conservatory. I first started studying clarinet with my local school band, and have been a member of the Reykjavik City Band since my early teen years.
I speak both Icelandic and English fluently, having grown up in both Iceland and the United States, feeling them both to be native languages. It is doubtful whether English can technically be considered a native language of mine, but I have used it heavily from an early age and feel strongly connected to it. I learned Danish in school, as it is a compulsory subject in Iceland and Swedish because my mother grew up in Sweden and some of her family still live there. I also had both French and German at various times during my compulsory education. I also studied Japanese at university and also took courses in Latin, Gothic and Hittite. I have informally studied several other languages, and am always interested in learning more. I am also very interested in different writing systems, writing styles and typography.
I have been interested in computers from an early age and have been an Apple enthusiast as long as I can remember. I played around with early Macs as a kid and my parents and grandparents had Macs at home and work. In 2010 I started working summer jobs at the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, where I have been involved with several LT-related projects. In 2013, I started taking computer science courses alongside my linguistics studies and have since joined the LT master’s program at the University of Iceland and Reykjavik University.
My favorite book genre is fantasy. I am a big fan of the Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, and A Song of Ice and Fire book series and also of the films and the TV series Game of Thrones. I also especially like the Chronicles of Narnia (which I read as a kid) and the Old Kingdom series by Garth Nix and the Percy Jackson and Kane series by Rick Riordan (both of which I probably would have read as a kid if I’d had the chance).
Shogi (Japanese chess) is another hobby of mine. I am also interested in other variants of the game, particularly chu shogi (“middle-sized shogi”).
Use “in other languages” on the right to see my user pages on Wikipedia in other languages. Most of my userpages on Wikipedia and on other Wikimedia projects can also be accessed from the following table:
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