Former Icelandic President celebrates 80 years birthday

Former President of Iceland Vigdis Finnbogadottir celebrated her 80th birthday on Thursday by holding a conference on Preserving the Future, Sustainability of Language, Culture and Nature. She receives the honorary title of doctor at the University of Iceland Faculty of Foreign Languages, Literature and Linguistics, according to report reaching here from Reykjavik.

Finnbogadottir was the world's first democratically elected female President, according to the report from Iceland Review Online.
The conference was held by the Vigdis Finnbogadottir Institute of Foreign Languages at the University of Iceland; the former president is a UNESCO Goodwill Ambassador for Languages, the report said.

A special birthday celebration will be held in the University of Iceland Cinema on the same day at the invitation of various institutions which Finnbogadottir has worked with in the past years, the report said.

And those who would like to participate in giving the former president a birthday present are welcome to support an international project which she has relentlessly worked on in the past years, establishing a World Language Center in Iceland, the report said.

This has been a new way of giving birthday present getting popular in Iceland and in Sweden.

By Xuefei Chen, People's Daily Online correspondent in Stockholm, [email protected]