Jón "Jónsi" Þór Birgisson
He brought his voice to stadiums. Now Jónsi channels that same instinct into something more intimate. The Sigur Rós frontman, born Jón Þór Birgisson in Iceland in 1975, discovered perfumery not through formal training but through years of obsessive experimentation. He learned by making, testing, and following his nose across the volcanic landscapes that still inform every creation. In 2018, he brought his three younger sisters into the project and launched Fischersund, the family fragrance house based in his former music studio in Reykjavik. The studio where he once recorded his haunting vocals now holds hundreds of scent materials, waiting. The transition makes sense when you hear him talk about fragrance. He describes it in musical terms: notes, layers, compositions that unfold. His approach treats scent as another form of expression, one that moves through time on skin. With Fischersund, Jónsi has built something rare: a creative outlet that feels as personal and sweeping as his music, made alongside the people who know him best.
The hits
Notable creations
The signature
How Jón composes
Jónsi's style resists easy categorization. He gravitates toward marine and atmospheric notes, earthy textures, and the cool mineral clarity that defines Icelandic landscapes. He favors materials with a raw, almost wild quality—cedar that smells like actual bark, salt that recalls ocean spray, vetiver with real depth and grit. His compositions often feature an unusual duality: they feel expansive and intimate at once, vast like open tundra but deeply personal in how they interact with skin. He works with contrast, pairing bright opening notes against a grounded base that reveals itself slowly. His approach to layering prioritizes evolution over immediate impact, allowing scents to shift and breathe throughout the day. At Fischersund, he collaborates selectively, working alongside perfumers like Dominique Ropion when a project demands additional depth. But his hand remains visible in every release: the preference for restraint over excess, the instinct for materials that feel genuine rather than synthetic, the understanding that the best fragrances leave something unsaid.
Philosophy
What drives Jón
For Jónsi, fragrance exists in the space between memory and sensation. He draws from the landscapes of his childhood, the elemental forces of Iceland—salt air off the coast, wet earth after rain, the cool mineral clarity of high altitude. Rather than chasing specific accords, he works from feeling, building compositions that feel like they breathe. He approaches each fragrance the way he approaches a song: not by following rules, but by trusting instinct. His philosophy centers on authenticity. He wants people to smell something real, something that transports rather than merely pleases. "Music and fragrance are both about emotion," he has said, pointing to the interconnection between the two. That belief shapes everything at Fischersund: the refusal to chase trends, the commitment to materials that feel alive, the patience to let each scent develop naturally on skin. Jónsi does not want fragrance to be background noise. He wants it to stop you in your tracks, the way a perfect song does.
The houses
Maisons Jón composes for
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