The exhibition Prentlist og Passíusálmar (Printing and the Passion Hymns) opened in the entrance hall of Hallgrímskirkja on Saturday 24 March. The exhibition is a joint project of the National and University Library of Iceland, the Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies and Listvinafélag Hallgrímskirkju (the Hallgrímskirkja Friends of the Arts Society), which is now celebrating its 30th season.
The exhibition gives an overview of the publishing history of the Passion Hymns of Hallgrímur Pétursson (1614–1674), which have been printed 87 times. The first edition appeared at Hólar in Hjaltadalur in 1666, and they were last printed in Reykjavík in 2009. Hardly any other literary work has been printed so often in Icelandic. The hymns have also been translated into many other languages, among them Danish, Faroese, English, Norwegian, Dutch, Italian and German. Hallgrímssálmar (Hallgrímur’s hymns), as they have been called, are also preserved in many manuscripts.
The exhibition mainly shows pictures of title pages, but also points out various interesting features of the different editions and printings, such as the typeface, the layout of the hymns and the development of the title-page text. Visitors can also listen to some samples from the folklore archive of the Árni Magnússon Institute of ordinary people singing the Passion Hymns. – The exhibition runs until August.
- Exhibition design and texts: Þórunn Sigurðardóttir
- Graphic design: Ólafur Engilbertsson
- Sound samples: Rósa Þorsteinsdóttir
- English translation: Margaret Cormack
- Curator: Emilía Sigmarsdóttir
You can download the exhibition here (PDF – 1.1 MB).