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Björk, 57, reflects on life as a grandmother: 'The biggest surprise for me was how magnificent it is'
Björk is looking back on her lengthy music career, as well as her more recent pursuits: Becoming a grandmother.
The Icelandic singer, 57, opened up in a new interview with the UK's Times about how being a grandparent evolved into an unexpected delight.
“I’ve always been surrounded by kids,” said Björk, who had six younger half-siblings. But these days, her 36-year-old son, Sindri, is a father to a little boy.
“The biggest surprise for me was how magnificent it is, a bonus feature in life that they don’t really talk a lot about," she told the outlet. "It’s just as amazing as getting your own kids.”
In addition to Sindri, Björk has a 20-year-old daughter Isadora. Sindri and Isadora perform together under the name Doa. They even sing backing vocals on Björk's tenth studio album, Fossora, which came out in September. The inclusion of her children on the album came as a result of the three spending the lockdown period of COVID-19 together.
“I was seeing my kids much more than normal. They were part of it, so it would have been weird to, like, skip them," she shared.
However, it wasn't always that way. When the kids were younger, Björk says she was "quite protective of them." These days, she allows them to participate in her music, even though "they got trolled on Twitter or whatever, but we can handle it.”
Björk shared that she handled her children leaving the nest quite well.
“One minute they don’t need you and they look at you and roll their eyes and then two days later they need you to help them with their tax return," she said.
Isadora, who performs as an actor in addition to her singing career, has been open in the past about growing up as the child of famous parents. Her father, artist and film director Matthew Barney, took legal action against her mother in 2015, claiming he was not permitted enough time to see his daughter, the Evening Standard reported. While Isadora said she was pretty clueless at the time, she still found the split to be incredibly influential. As a result of the stress, she turned to therapy. It was a decision that ultimately was incredibly helpful.
“It’s a great tool to have and I’m a huge fan of it. There’s definitely been points in my life where I’ve needed it more than others, like with [my parents’] separation, and then just general, um happenings. But then it became a constant, staple thing," she told The Face magazine back in February.
Björk initially raised her children in New York, up until her split from Barney. However, she eventually made the decision to return to Iceland, in part because "the violence in the USA is on a scale I can’t even fathom.”
“And having a daughter that’s half-American in school [in New York], 40 minutes away from Sandy Hook...” she told Pitchfork in September. “When we are here, I absorb all of Iceland. If one person is killed in the north, we all hurt. It’s an island mentality. In the States, just being a simple islander, all the violence was just too much for me.”
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