Iceland’s ‘bike whisperer’: the vigilante who finds stolen bicycles – and helps thieves change

Anger was a strong driving factor for Leósson when he first started his investigative work, he says. Photograph: Sigga Ella/The Guardian

It all started in 2019, when Bjartmar Leósson started to see a rise in bike theft in Reykjavík. Rather than accepting that once a bicycle was stolen it had disappeared forever, the bus driver and self-confessed “bike nerd” decided to start tracking them down and returning them to their rightful owners.

Four years and, he estimates, hundreds of salvaged bikes later, the 44-year-old has developed a reputation in the Icelandic capital among cyclists and potential bike thieves. Known as the Reykjavík “bike whisperer”, people across his home city turn to him for help to find their missing bicycles, tools and even cars. Often, he says, bike thieves hand over bikes without being asked and some former bike thieves have started to help him.