Every month the National and University Library of Iceland picks one item from its collections and tells its story: a manuscript, photograph, map, poster or letter that has lain untouched for decades. Some of the items are well known; others have never been shown in public.
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Colic exorcism – Lbs fragm. 14
Kveisublaðið [the Colic leaf] is probably the only one of its kind to have been preserved in Iceland. The leaf is a vellum strip with a text or a prayer against colic or arthritis. This kind of prayer leaves are considered to have been fairly common, but they were confiscated in the witch hunt in…
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Reduced map of the North Sea
Zusammengezogene Karte des Nordmeeres – Carte reduite de la mer du nord This map by the french cartographer Jacques Nicolas Bellin appeared originally in an account by the French explorer Yves-Joseph de Kerguélen-Trémarec of his travels in the Northern part of the Atlantic Ocean 1767-1768. Copies of the map appeared in many books, for example…
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Eyvindur of the Mountains
An original manuscript of the play Fjalla-Eyvindur (Eyvindur of the Mountains) by Jóhann Sigurjónsson is kept in the Manuscript Department of The National and University Library of Iceland. The manuscript is written in Denmark in 1909-1911, both in Icelandic and Danish, and was published first in Danish in the autumn of 1911 as Bjærg-Ejvind og…
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Passion Hymns. JS 337 4to.
This year 400 years have passed since the priest and poet Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614-1674) was born. This famous and much loved work by Hallgrímur is a collection of 50 devotional poetic texts. In them Hallgrímur explores the Passion of Christ, from the point at which Christ enters the Garden of Gethsemane until the crucifixion and…
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Brynjólfur Sveinsson biskup
a novel from the 17th century by Torfhildur Þorsteinsdóttir Hólm Torfhildur Þorsteinsdóttir Hólm (1845-1918) was the first Icelandic author to make a living out of writing, the first Icelandic author to write historical novels, and the first Icelandic woman to become a novelist. Her first full-length historical novel, published in 1882, dealt with the life…
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Letters from Nína Tryggvadóttir to Erlendur in Unuhús
In a collection of letters of Erlendur Guðmundsson (1892-1947), always associated with Unuhús, which was opened formally in the National and University Library early in 2000, there are about 30 private letters from the artist Nína Tryggvadóttir (1913-1968), many of which are beautifully decorated and amusingly written. The letters are from a three-year period, 1943-1946,…
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CRYMOGAEA SIVE RERUM ISLANDICARVM
This book was the first historical description of Iceland since Ari fróði’s Íslendingabók (1122-1133) and the first comprehensive book about Iceland’s history. The author, Arngrímur Jónsson, describes the political and cultural history of Iceland, provides an account of recent events, and offers descriptions of the lives of its inhabitants, religion and language. Arngrímur’s Crymogaea is…
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The Christmas stamps of the Thorvaldsen Society
The Thorvaldsen Society was the first women’s society in Reykjavik, founded on the 19th of November 1875.– Young women had been given the task to decorate the Austurvöllur square when the statue of Bertel Thorvaldsen was erected there. They enjoyed the work so much that they decided to continue their meetings and do some good…
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Morgunblaðið
Morgunblaðið was first published on the 2nd of November 1913 and thus celebrates its centennial this year. The paper stores extensive material on events as they happened and the history of the Icelandic nation. It has been accessible in the National Library, now the unified National and University Library, from the beginning. Until 1980 it…
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Arabian Nights in Icelandic
Steingrímur Thorsteinsson (1831–1913) was an Icelandic poet and writer. He translated many works of literature into Icelandic, including One Thousand and One Nights, a collection of West and South Asian stories and folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the Arabian Nights, from the first…
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Women‘s Reading Society
was founded in Reykjavík on Sept. 18 in 1911 by members of the Women‘s Rights Organization which had run a women‘s reading room for two years. The model was found in the women‘s reading rooms operated in many European cities, including Copenhagen, by women‘s societies. Mánaðarritið (Monthly Review) started in 1912 as a handwritten book…
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Sölvi Helgason’s essay and drawings
The manuscript Lbs 937 8vo contains fragments of an essay and drawings by the well-known vagrant Sölvi Helgason. Sölvi was born on 16 August 1820 in Skagafjörður. As a child he was placed on various farms, and at about 16 he took to the roads as a vagrant. In 1843 he was arrested for carrying…