The family of the university teacher Jón Rúnar Gunnarsson has given the National and University Library of Iceland a generous donation of books from his library. Jón studied in Czechoslovakia, Poland and Norway and took a mag. art. degree in Indo-European comparative linguistics and a cand. mag. degree in Ancient Greek and Latin. He was a lecturer in comparative linguistics at the University of Oslo for some years before he was appointed lecturer in general linguistics at the University of Iceland in 1975. He was the first teacher appointed to a full-time post in the subject and took part in building it up. He wrote many scholarly articles and worked as a translator, translating among other things the plays of Václav Havel from Czech. Jón worked, with others, on a new translation of the Bible, and the books the Library has received are connected with that work. They will be available in the Library and will strengthen its collections in Bible studies and translation. Jón died in October 2013.
