After graduating from the Commercial College of Iceland in 1968, Gunnarsson worked from 1965 to 1971 for Ásbjörn Ólafsson ehf, and was a driver with the Reykjavík medical emergency services from 1972 to 1978.
[6] Gunnarsson received the Icelandic Literary Prize for his novel, Öxin og jörðin[7] (The Ax and the Earth), in 2003[8] Ólafur's work has been translated into other languages.
"[6] Valerie Hemingway calls Gunnarsson "a masterful storyteller", and says that his tales "depict family intrigue with a skill, depth, and haunting quality that grasps the reader's attention and holds it tight.
"[17] In the Times Literary Supplement, critic Paul Binding noted an echo of the Japanese writer, Shusaku Endo, "who can also combine a scrupulous naturalism with a sense of metaphysical forces at work."
"[18] Gisa Funk, in Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, wrote that "of all the contemporary Icelandic authors that German readers have had an opportunity to read in translation, Olafur Gunnarsson is the one who most obviously picked up the torch from his great colleague and predecessor Halldor Laxness.