Gudni answered that he was fundamentally opposed to putting pineapple on top of a pizza. Then he went one step further, announcing that he would pass a ban on pineapple as a pizza topping if he had the power to pass laws on his own.
This prompted some debate among the normally placid Icelanders, and by debate, we meant a polite chuckle before returning to their hot springs bath and looking gorgeous. Still, Gudni—who enjoys a 97 percent approval rating from his citizens—responded to this non-controversy controversy in a Facebook post.
Seafood pizza?! Gee, way to be divisive, Mr. Gudni. (But still better than a president who loves grabbing pussy.)
The Icelandic president’s remarks have reverberated across the globe—all the way to Southern Ontario 2700 miles away. CBC Radio in Canada tracked down the purported inventor of Hawaiian pizza, an 83-year-old named Sam Panopoulos who claimed to have first combined ham, cheese and pineapple on a pizza in 1962. CBC was probably looking for a more combative response, but Panopoulos treated the incident with mostly amused indifference:
CBC Radio: If the president of Iceland got to try a slice of your pineapple pizza do you think you might be able to change his mind?
Sam Panopoulos: I don’t care what he does. He can say whatever he wants. He sells the fish over there, you know, that’s all he does. So he has to put the fish on the pizza.
