The Interval Institute works with organizations and their leadership teams on decisions made under real pressure — mediation, working agreements, and facilitator training. On site across the Nordics and Baltic states, with wider reach on site across the rest of the EEA, and online worldwide. Founded by Finnur Þ. Gunnþórsson.

On the founder

I've spent much of my working life inside institutions and groups at the point where pressure is highest — a national economy in collapse, a political party growing faster than its own structure could hold, executives negotiating what an organization actually means by the words it uses, and unemployed people after 50 rebuilding a sense of identity and possibility. Twenty years later, it's still the same question, approached through different doors: what happens to judgment under real pressure, and what it takes to keep it from being replaced by the appearance of judgment instead.

What has shaped the work

MSc in Economics and Business Administration, concentration in International Marketing and Management, Copenhagen Business School (2005), with a thesis on CSR reporting and corporate branding, co-authored with Markus W. Berg. BSc in International Business, also at Copenhagen Business School. An exchange semester at Estonian Business School, Tallinn, and a Postgraduate Certificate in International Business from ESC Grenoble, including coursework in negotiation. A postgraduate certificate in diplomacy and international affairs, specializing in social mediation and conflict analytics, through EUCLID, with the World Mediation Organization. Licensed securities broker, Iceland.

For eleven years I was Assistant Director at an adult education center in Hafnarfjörður, running motivational and group-development programs for adults — work that expanded sharply after 2008, one of the more severe financial collapses relative to population size anywhere in the modern record.

From 2014 to 2016 I chaired the executive committee of the Icelandic Pirate Party, building its internal structure through a period when national polling grew from single digits to the high 30s — and above 40% in some polls — before the party took 14.5% of the vote in the 2016 election. I left that year over how the leadership was conducting itself.

In 2017 I moderated a session on democratic involvement at A Congress on Iceland's Democracy, UC Berkeley School of Law, built around a paper of my own, drawn from experience rather than formal research. Between 2017 and 2020 I published seven articles in WMO Conflict Insight (ISSN 2628-6998), one with a DOI via SSRN, alongside an opinion piece for the Icelandic outlet Kjarninn. My work during the 2016 election was covered internationally, including in Libération and the Los Angeles Times. While leading the party's executive committee, I was also interviewed for two documentaries: The Price of Fairness (dir. Alex Gabbay, 2017), a broader film on inequality and culture across Norway, Costa Rica, Iceland and the US; and The People's Spring (dir. Ryslaine Boumahdi), on civic tech and democracy movements.

In 2021 I served on the facilitator team for the PaCE Local Democracy Lab in Reykjavík, an EU Horizon 2020 project on populism and civic engagement (grant agreement No 822337), delivered with the City of Reykjavík, Democratic Society (Brussels), and Citizens Foundation.

My first book, The Weightless Oracle, was published in 2026.

Teachers and influences

There are too many to mention that I am greatly indebted to.

I have studied coaching and several other applied methods, but the deepest influence on my work has come from long-term exposure to group processes and to thoughtful teachers.

My aikido teachers and training partners with whom I studied until 2006.

I also had the privilege of attending two week-long retreats with the Consciousness Research and Training Program (CRTP), taught by Michael Bova, Kathy Stillson, and Caroline Katz.

The CRTP was founded by Lawrence LeShan, whose clarity, human warmth, and practical approach left a lasting imprint on how I think about learning and the moment-to-moment meeting with experience. So did the teaching of Þorvaldur Þorsteinsson, the Icelandic artist and playwright, and the great motivation of my childhood sports teacher Úlfar Daníelsson. Archbishop Ittycheria Abraham helped me with the mystical dimensions of Christianity. There are more to mention as always which shows how each human is embedded.

Archbishop Desmond Tutu famously said, “A person is a person through other persons. You can’t be human in isolation; you are human only in relationships.” And “my humanity is bound up in yours, for we can only be human together.”

Meaning: My sense of being human - my dignity, identity, compassion and ability to live fully - is deeply connected to yours.