ICELAND was preparing yesterday for the appointment of Johanna Sigurdardottir as the country’s first female prime minister and the world’s first openly gay premier in the hope that she can lead the country out of financial meltdown.

Sigurdardottir, 66, is a former air stewardess who was divorced from the father of her two sons, a banker, and now lives with her British-educated girlfriend Jonina Leosdottir, a 54-year-old author, playwright and journalist. The couple signed a civil partnership agreement in 2002.

The prime minister, who was welfare minister in the ruling coalition that collapsed last week, faces unemployment that has risen from 1% before its banks collapsed in October to 10%, a crushing burden of national debt, the collapse of the Icelandic krona and a bitter debate over whether it should join the European Union.

Her Social Democratic Alliance party, which is pro-European, is forming a coalition with the mostly antiEuropean Left-Green movement before an election in May. The outcome will determine whether Iceland seeks fast-track membership of the European Union, which Brussels says could come by 2011.

The country’s media has played down her status as the first lesbian prime minister. The leading daily, Morgun-bladid, did not mention it.

“That the new prime minister is a lesbian is not seen as anything that warrants discussion here,” said Silja Bara Omarsdottir, a lecturer in political science at the University of Iceland.

Iceland’s gay rights legislation is among the most progressive in the world. Civil partnerships were introduced 13 years ago, granting the same range of protection and benefits as marriage. In 2006, same-sex couples were granted full rights to adopt and lesbians to undergo assisted conception.

Sigurdardottir, one of the country’s longest serving and most popular MPs, has never given an interview about her private life. She has six grandchildren, five boys and a girl, aged six.

She was 60 when she “married” Leosdottir, who studied linguistics and art history for a year at Essex University before taking an English degree in Iceland.

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