Today marks 180 years since the National Library of Iceland established a manuscript collection. On this day in 1846, King Christian VIII of Denmark (1786–1848) granted funding to purchase the manuscript collection of widow Valgerður Jónsdóttir (1771–1856) for the National Library, a total of 393 volumes.

The origins of the museum can be traced back to the scholarly work and manuscript and document collection of Rev. Jón Halldórsson in Hítardalur (1665–1736), whose sons, Finnur Jónsson, Bishop of Skálholt (1704–1789) and Rev. Vigfús Jónsson (1706–1776), added to the collection, as did Jón's grandson, Hannes Finnsson, Bishop of Skálholt (1739–1796).

Hannes was married to Valgerði Jónsdóttir, but after his death she married Steingrímur Jónsson, later Bishop of Iceland (1769–1845). They looked after the collection, which was finally purchased for the National Library a year after his death. The collection then mainly contained manuscripts of a theological, historical and administrative nature, and was placed in the attic of the Cathedral, where the National Library was then housed.

 

The manuscript collection has grown and flourished ever since, and the manuscripts now number around 15,000 and the private archive collections around 2,000. The vast majority of the manuscripts are from later centuries (seventeenth, eighteenth and nineteenth centuries) and contain diverse material such as chivalric sagas, Icelandic sagas, hymns, poems, folk medicine and much more that bears witness to the strong manuscript culture of the period, which went hand in hand with the increased writing and reading skills of the people.

 

Today, the manuscript collection receives an average of one to two deliveries per week, mainly private archives. Visitors to the manuscript collection can find information about the collection on the website handrit.is, where they can also find images of thousands of manuscripts, and visit the reading room, which is open every weekday between 9 am and 5 pm.

To mark the anniversary, a small exhibition has been set up on the 1st floor of the National Library, where you can see manuscripts, letters, and books from people associated with the original manuscript collection in 1846.