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Björk, the Icelandic musician, claimed in an interview with Pitchfork that she relocated back to her home country due to her fears about gun violence in America. While discussing the creation of her tenth studio album, Fossora, the singer expressed concern for the safety of her own daughter, Isadora, citing the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012.
“The brutality in the United States is on a scale I can’t even understand,” Björk stated. “And having a half-American daughter in school [in New York], 40 minutes away from Sandy Hook…”
After the birth of her daughter with American artist Matthew Barney in 2002, Bjork relocated to New York on a part-time basis. She fled to Iceland at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When we’re here, I absorb all of Iceland.” If one person is killed in the north, we are all affected. “It’s an island mindset,” Bjork added. “In the States, just being a basic islander, all the brutality was simply too much for me.”
Bjork, whose new album is inspired by mushrooms, told Pitchfork that she spends much of her finest composing at a hut in her beautiful hometown.
The self-described “simple islander” is just one of several European musicians who have spoken out against America’s gun carnage in recent years. Ozzy Osbourne announced plans to return to England permanently in February 2023, calling American gun violence “crazy.” Following the massacre at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, British singer-songwriter Harry Styles donated $1 million to Everytown.
“Along with all of you, I have been absolutely devastated by the recent string of mass shootings in America, culminating at the latest in Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas,” Styles wrote in a statement on Instagram.