The exhibition Print Art and Passion Psalms was opened in the lobby of Hallgrímskirkja on Saturday, March 24. The exhibition is a collaborative project between the National Library of Iceland-University Library, the Árni Magnússon Institute of Icelandic Studies, and the Hallgrímskirkja Friends of the Arts Society, which is now celebrating its 30th year of operation.
The exhibition traces the publishing history of Hallgrímur Pétursson's (1614–1674) Passion Psalms, which have been printed 87 times. Their first edition was published in Hólar in Hjaltadalur in 1666 and they were last printed in Reykjavík in 2009. Hardly any other literary work has been printed as often in the Icelandic language. The hymns have also been translated into a number of other languages, including Danish, Faroese, English, Norwegian, Dutch, Italian and German. The Hallgrímur Psalms, as they have been called, are also preserved in many manuscripts.
In particular, images of title pages are shown, but also various interesting features of different editions and printings are pointed out, such as the typeface, the layout of the hymns, and the development of title page texts. Visitors will also have the opportunity to listen to some samples from the collection of the Árna Institute's Department of Folklore of folk singing of the Passion Psalms. – The exhibition runs until August.
- Exhibition design and text writing: Þórunn Sigurðardóttir
- Layout design: Ólafur Engilbertsson
- Supervision of audio samples: Rósa Þorsteinsdóttir
- English translation: Margaret Cormack
- Curator: Emilía Sigmarsdóttir
The exhibition can be downloaded here (PDF – 1.1 Mb).