The wealthy American Willard Fiske (1831–1904) took a keen interest in everything to do with Iceland. He visited Iceland in 1879 and taught Icelandic as professor of Nordic studies at Cornell University in Ithaca. He collected all the printed Icelandic material he could lay his hands on and later bequeathed it to Cornell University; it is said to be the second-largest collection of Icelandic works outside Iceland. Fiske, a great chess enthusiast, also collected every available book and periodical on chess. He was taken with Icelanders’ interest in the game, especially among the people of Grímsey, and decided to give his chess collection to the National Library of Iceland (now the National and University Library of Iceland). It runs to about 1,200 volumes, some of them very rare. Much of the collection is finely bound.