The Bible collection was given when Þjóðarbókhlaða, the library building at Arngrímsgata 3, opened on 1 December 1994. The donor was Ragnar Þorsteinsson (1914–1999), a teacher, who had collected the Bible in its many languages for half a century. The collection has Bibles in 1,228 languages, among them the languages and dialects of many small language areas. The Bible is the most translated book of all, and through correspondence clubs and Bible societies all over the world Ragnar obtained copies of the Bible, or parts of it, in the languages concerned. He came into contact with an organisation of young linguists who travelled the world to learn languages and dialects of many kinds. They usually wrote down the Gospel of Mark, had their translations printed and sent them to Ragnar every year. He classified his Bibles himself by language family, and a detailed card catalogue accompanies the collection. It records the language group of each Bible and then its subgroup, as well as how many people are thought to speak the language and where it is spoken. Ragnar’s interest in Bibles was purely linguistic, not religious: he used them to compare languages and dialects.