Örlygur Hnefill Örlygsson

Örlygur Hnefill Örlygsson (born 23 October 1983), known professionally as Orly Orlyson, is an Icelandic entrepreneur, hotelier, founder of The Exploration Museum and President of the Norðurþing town council.

In 2018, Örlygur was selected by the United States Department of State and the German Marshall Fund to represent Iceland in the YTILI program. That same year, he was awarded by JCI as one of Ten Outstanding Young Persons in Iceland for his various entrepreneurial projects, most notably for founding The Exploration Museum, and for co-founding the Leif Erikson Awards.

From 2007 to 2009, Örlygur served as the parliamentary assistant to Einar Már Sigurðarson, member of Parliament for Northeast Constituency. From 2011 to 2016 he served as chairman of the Húsavík Chamber of Commerce and Tourism.

In May 2014, Örlygur was elected to the town council of Norðurþing municipality in northern Iceland. He served as chair of the Norðurþing Harbor Committee from 2015 to 2016 and as chairman of the regional Recycling and Waste Management Cooperative from 2014 to 2016. He has served as President of the town council since 2017.

In 2015, Örlygur led an expedition with Apollo astronauts Walter Cunningham, Rusty Schweikart and Harrison Schmitt, as well as the family of Neil Armstrong, to the new lava of Holuhraun, created by fissure eruptions in 2014 and 2015. He has led similar expeditions with Apollo astronauts Bill Anders and Charlie Duke to the areas near Askja, a caldera situated in a remote part of the central highlands of Iceland where the astronauts were trained in geology in 1965 and 1967, before the Lunar missions. His work with the Apollo astronauts has been featured by the BBC, National Geographic and The Guardian.

In 2015, he co-designed a monument with his father, commemorating the part of Iceland in the Apollo program. The monument contains the names of 32 Apollo astronauts that were sent to Iceland for training, and has two steel globes on top of two basalt columns, representing the Earth and the Moon. The monument was unveiled on July 15, 2015, by the grandchildren of Apollo 11 astronaut Neil Armstrong.

During a press conference at The Exploration Museum in November 2015, Örlygur announced the museum's plan to build a full size replica of the Apollo Lunar Module to unveil in 2019, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first manned flight of a Lunar Module on Apollo 9 and the first landing of a Lunar Module on the moon on Apollo 11.

Örlygur wrote and co-directed the 2019 documentary Cosmic Birth with Icelandic filmmaker and musician Rafnar Orri. For the film, they interviewed 6 Apollo astronauts about their personal experience of going to the moon, and Neil Armstrong's son Mark Armstrong about his father's Apollo 11 mission.

Örlygur is the son of Icelandic politician Valgerður Gunnarsdóttir, and the grandson of author and folklorist Jón Hnefill Aðalsteinsson.