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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Icelanders collect for people in need in Norway
During the Second World War Icelanders collected a considerable amount of money for those in need because of the war. In all, about ISK 14.5 million was collected, about ISK 1 billion in today’s money by the consumer price index. About ISK 1.74 million was collected for Norway, which would now be worth over ISK…
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On Liberty by John Stuart Mill
The book On Liberty (Um frelsið in Icelandic), by John Stuart Mill (1806–1873), is one of the founding works of Western democratic thought; Mill was one of Britain’s most influential philosophers and economists. His book Principles of Political Economy (1848) succeeded The Wealth of Nations, by Adam Smith, as the most important textbook of economics,…
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The image of the Icelanders under threat
In 1607 the book Islandia by Dithmar Blefken, about Iceland and the Icelanders, was published in Leiden in Holland. The picture it painted was ugly, and many were shocked. Icelanders have long been sensitive about how foreigners see them. At the beginning of the 17th century Icelanders therefore had an “image problem”, and Arngrímur Jónsson…
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1 September 1930
Talking pictures shown for the first time in Iceland On 30 October 1909 the newspaper Ísafold reported that a “trial screening” had been held the evening before in a new cinema in Reykjavík, and that “a great many townspeople were invited, so that Bárubúð was packed … One landscape film was shown, from Palermo in…
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Jón Ólafsson Indíafari (the India traveller)
The most famous travel book Jón Ólafsson, called “Indíafari” (the India traveller) (4 November 1593 – 3 May 1679), was a farmer’s son from Svarthamar in Álftafjörður in the Westfjords. At the age of twenty-two he set off on a journey that lasted eleven years. Much later, at the age of 68, he wrote a…
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Ólafur Egilsson’s book on the Turkish Raid
The Turkish Raid of 1627 – a contemporary account by Rev. Ólafur Egilsson Arab pirates from Algiers came to Iceland in the summer of 1627; Algiers then belonged to the realm of the Turkish sultan. Four ships came to the country to seize goods and to take people into slavery. In all, the pirates captured…
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The proclamations of Jörundur hundadagakonungur (the Dog-Days King)
Jörundur the Dog-Days King prepares to found a republic in June 1809 Jörgen Jörgensen (1780–1841), who was called hundadagakonungur (the Dog-Days King), came to Iceland in June 1809. The English, led by Jörgen, arrested Governor Trampe on 25 June after a dispute between the English and the Danes over their agreement on trade by English…
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A key work of economics against the depression
In the wake of the Great Depression of the 1930s there was high unemployment in the West. Millions were out of work and poverty was severe. Governments in many places took action to create jobs, with the President of the United States, Franklin D. Roosevelt, leading the way. He introduced a new economic policy, the…
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Guidance for emigrants to America
At present Iceland is going through hard times and economic difficulties, and many fear an exodus from the country. Some want to move east across the ocean, others west. In the second half of the 19th century and into the early 20th, many people emigrated west across the ocean and settled in Canada and the…
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Drottning Lovísa, með brjóstskildi (Queen Louise, with breast shield)
Some time ago some unusual printed items came to light in the National Library when the Library’s conservator took in hand a kind of leather wallet thought to have come to the Library long ago as a wrapper round a manuscript. The manuscript had been removed at some point and given other protection, but this…