At the end of January the Manuscript Collection received a booklet in the hand of Elka Björnsdóttir (1881–1924) entitled “Ýmislegt ljóðmæli.” (Various poems). In the booklet Elka copied various poems she found interesting. At the back is her account of the poems and how they came about; she says she wrote in it on Sundays “when I could, and I was then sometimes not in the mood to write, and that I wrote so densely and small was because I had little paper but wanted to write as much as I could on these sheets.” Elka compiled the booklet in 1897, when she was sixteen. For most of her life Elka worked as a labourer in Reykjavík. She kept diaries in 1915–1920, which are kept in the Manuscript Collection and have recently been published in the series Sýnisbók íslenskrar alþýðumenningar (Anthology of Icelandic Popular Culture). The diaries give a clear picture of life in Reykjavík at that time, as well as of Elka’s inner world. The booklet has been given the shelfmark Lbs 4756 8vo.
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