Ragnar Þorsteinsson’s Bible Collection

The Bible collection was donated when the National Library Building was opened on December 1, 1994. The collection was donated by Ragnar Þorsteinsson (1914-1989), a teacher who had collected Bibles in different languages during more than half a century. The Bible collection includes Bibles in 1228 languages, including languages and dialects from many, small language areas. The Bible is the book that has been most frequently translated and through literary clubs and Biblical societies from around the world, Ragnar acquired copies of the Bible or a part of it in these languages. He also was in contact with a society of young linguists who travelled around the world to learn languages and dialects of different origins. Most frequently they wrote down Mark's Gospel, had their translations printed and sent them annually to Ragnar. He himself classified the Bibles according to the language family and a detailed register accompanied his Bible collection. The register includes the language family of each Bible and its subgroup, how many people are estimated to use that language and where it is spoken. Ragnar´s interest in Bibles was solely linguistical rather than religious. He used the Bibles for comparison between languages and dialects.