During the bishopric of Guðbrandur Þorláksson (1541-1627) in Hólar, there was a turning point in book printing and the publication of church literature, most notably the publication of the Bible in 1584 and the hymnal in 1589. Guðbrandur's book publishing was a solution to the problem that the Reformation brought with it, that all church work should be in the mother tongue, and thus followed the instructions for the performance of rituals that the Church Order of Christian III from 1537 stipulated.
The earlier hymnbooks by bishops Martein Einarsson in 1555 and Gísli Jónsson in 1558 were inadequate, with few hymns in translations that did not follow the language and poetic style well, but they nevertheless formed an important foundation for the new hymnody.
With the publication of A New Hymn Book in 1589, an urgent need was met, and it contains 343 hymns divided into six main sections.
One of the innovations that A New Hymnbook brought with it is that Icelanders first saw sheet music in print, as it contains lyrics for 106 psalms and mass hymns. Others were accompanied by song instructions, but in about 60 places there are no references to what should be sung. This was improved in the 2nd edition of 1619, where notes and song instructions were provided for all the psalms. In addition, Guðbrandur published a mass hymnbook, Graduale, in 1594, which was published with little change until the end of the 18th century. Minor changes were made in the reprinting of hymnbooks in the mid-18th century, but in those editions there were only notes for a few hymns.
The hymns in A New Hymnbook of 1589 thus shaped the church singing that remained virtually unchanged among the nation for nearly three hundred years.