A brilliant sketch of Icelandic classic literature is given by Dr Gudbrandr Vigfusson in the Prolegomena to Sturlunga Saga (Oxford, 1879).
A famous Icelandic version was made for Prince Hakon early in the 13th century.
A great part of his fleet had been scattered and destroyed by storms. The most important event in his reign was the voluntary submission of the Icelandic commonwealth.
A later life by Arngrim, abbot of Thingore, written c. 1350, as evidence of his subject's sanctity, tells a good deal about Icelandic life, &c. The lives of Bishops Arni and Lawrence bring down our knowledge of Icelandic history into the 14th century.
A leading position among Icelandic lexicographers is occupied by Jon porkeisson, formerly head of the Latin school at Reykjavik, whose Supplement til islandske Ordbcbger, an Icelandic-Danish vocabulary (three separate collections), has hardly been equalled in learning and accuracy.
Among the innovations of this poet we may note a predilection for new metres, sometimes adopted from foreign languages, sometimes invented by himself, a thing practised rarely and generally with small success by the Icelandic poets.
Among the literary and scientific associations of Copenhagen may be mentioned the Danish Royal Society, founded in 1742, for the advancement of the sciences of mathematics, astronomy, natural philosophy, &c., by the publication of papers and essays; the Royal Antiquarian Society, founded in 1825, for diffusing a knowledge of Northern and Icelandic archaeology; the Society for the Promotion of Danish Literature, for the publication of works chiefly connected with the history of Danish literature; the Natural Philosophy Society; the Royal Agricultural Society; the Danish Church History Society; the Industrial Association, founded in 1838; the Royal Geographical Society, established in 1876; and several musical and other societies.
Amongst the learned societies are the Icelandic Literary Society (Bokmentafjelag), the society of the Friends of the People, and the Archaeological Society of Reykjavik.
Another luxury deal handled by Cavendish was the sale of jewelry chain Mappin & Webb to the highly acquisitive Icelandic investor Baugur.
As the only Icelandic abridgment of Norwegian history taken not from Snorri but sources now lost, it is of worth.
Basin or Carl et Elegast (preserved in Dutch and Icelandic), the Voyage de Charlemagne a Jerusalem and Le Couronnement Looys also belong to the heroic period.
Besides these we may mention Torfhildur Holm, one of the few women who have distinguished themselves in Icelandic literature.
Besides those sources, the Kings' Lives of Snorri and later authors contain a great deal of verse by Icelandic poets.
But the name (the Icelandic form of which is Bjolfr) is genuinely Scandinavian.
By his T inatal (written between October 1854 and April 1855) he laid the foundations for the chronology of Icelandic history, in a series of conclusions that have not been displaced (save by his own additions and corrections), and that justly earned the praise of Jacob Grimm.
Cerball's son Domnall (Dufnialr) was the founder of an Icelandic family, whilst the names Raudi and Baugr occur in the same family.
Dean fished his favorite Icelandic red caviar and cream boilies with crushed boilies and hemp in a pva bag.
Dunkirk annually despatches a fleet to the Icelandic codfisheries, and takes part in the herring and other fisheries.
Dunkirk, Gravelines, Boulogne and Paimpol send considerable fleets to the Icelandic cod-fisheries, and St Malo, Fcainp, Granville and Cancale to those of Newfoundland.
Flotta (372), east of Hoy, was the home for a long time of the Scandinavian compiler of the Codex Flotticensis, which furnished Thorrnodr Torfaeus (1636-1719), the Icelandic antiquary, with many of the facts for his History of Norway, more particularly with reference to the Norse occupation of Orkney.
For our knowledge of this subject we are indebted chiefly to Icelandic literary men of the 12th and 13th centuries, who gave accounts of many legends which had come down to them by oral tradition, besides committing to writing a number of ancient poems. Unfortunately Icelandic history is quite unique in this respect.
For over forty years Arni stuck to his task, rescuing every scrap he could lay hands on from the risks of the Icelandic climate and carelessness, and when he died only one good MSS.
Funeral Customs. - Icelandic writers of the 12th and 13th centuries distinguished between an earlier " age of burning " and a later " age of barrows," and the investigations of modern archaeologists have tended in general to confirm the distinction, though they have revealed also the burial-places of times antecedent to the age of burning.
He introduced foreign thoughts and metres, but at the same time revived the metres of the Icelandic classical poets.
He made several voyages to the White Sea and to places in northern Russia, and in 1621 entered the service of the Danish Icelandic Company, then in its prime.
He ranks below Ari in value and below Snorri in power; but no one else can_dispute his place in the first rank of Icelandic writers.
He speaks seven languages, including learning how to read and speak the Icelandic language fluently in one week.
He spoke English well and idiomatically, but with a strong Icelandic accent.
He was a man of fine appearance, with an eloquence and diplomatic gifts such as no others of his countrymen possessed, and his unselfish love of his country made itself felt in almost every branch of Icelandic life.
He was well read in German literature, Heine and Schiller being his favourites, and the study of the German masters and the old classical writers of Iceland opened his eyes to the corrupt state of Icelandic poetry and showed him the way to make it better.
He was, after his student course, appointed stipendiarius by the Arna-Magnaean trustees, and worked for fourteen years in the Arna-Magnaean Library till, as he said, he knew every scrap of old vellum and of Icelandic written paper in that whole collection.
Hence it is often difficult to decide whether a given rite or legend which is mentioned only in Icelandic literature was really peculiar to that country alone or to the North generally, or whether it was once the common property of all Teutonic peoples.
Hence the two traditions, the German and the Icelandic, of which the latter alone is preserved in something of its primitive form,' though primitive elements survive in the Nibelungenlied.
Here large herds of reindeer roam free and the sure-footed Icelandic horse is the only way of transportation.
His comrades adored him for his liberality, and the frequent visits of Icelandic skalder to his court testify to a love of poetry on his part, indeed one of his own strophes has come down to us.
His editions of Icelandic classics (1858-68), Biskopa Sogur, Bardar Saga, Forn Sbgur (with Mobius), Eyrbyggia Saga and Flateyar-bok (with Unger) opened a new era of Icelandic scholarship, and can only fitly be compared to the Rolls Series editions of chronicles by Dr Stubbs for the interest and value of their prefaces and texts.
His grammars of Old Frisian, Icelandic and AngloSaxon were unapproached in his own time, and are still admirable.
His later series of editions (1874-85) included Orkneyinga and Hdconar Saga, the great and complex mass of Icelandic historical sagas, known as Sturlunga, and the Corpus Poeticum Boreale, in which he edited the whole body of classic Scandinavian poetry.
His name soon became prominent in the learned world, and it may safely be said that most of his historical works and his editions of Icelandic classics have never been surpassed for acute criticism and minute painstaking.
His renown was, however, not acquired by his writings in that language, but by his Icelandic poems and short stories.
Hugh fished Icelandic Red baits to the back of the island from peg 74.
Iceland has always borne a high renown for song, but has never produced a poet of the highest order, the qualities which in other lands were most sought for and admired in poetry being in Iceland lavished on the saga, a prose epic, while Icelandic poetry is to be rated very high for the one quality which its authors have ever aimed at - melody of sound.
Icelandic glacial will be launching in the UK in August 2005 and will be distributed through premium retail outlets, hotels and restaurants.
Icelandic literary history says that Ari the Learned (born in 1067) was "the first man in this land who wrote in the Norse tongue history relating to times anciei and modern."
Icelandic literature consists mainly of the so-called "sagas," or prose narratives, and is rich in historical lore.
Icelandic singer Bjork has always been known for being avant-garde and taking risks, but when she wore a dress shaped like a swan to the 2001 Oscars it just looked silly.
In 1522 he succeeded Gottskalk in the see of Holar, but he was soon driven out by the other Icelandic bishop, Ogmund of Skalholt.
In 1833 he went to the university of Copenhagen and devoted himself to the study of Icelandic history and literature.
In 1847 a theological seminary was founded at Reykjavik, and there the majority of the Icelandic ministry are educated; some, however, are graduates of the university of Copenhagen.
In 1872 appeared Love is Enough, structurally the most elaborate of his poems for its combination of the epic and dramatic spirits; and in the autumn he began to translate the shorter Icelandic sagas, to which his enthusiasm had been directed by two inspiring journeys to Iceland..
In Scandinavian lands the change noted by Icelandic writers may be dated about the 5th and 6th centuries, though inhumation was certainly not altogether unknown before that time.
In the autumn of 1999, Stoke was purchased by an Icelandic business consortium.
In the beginning of the 'eighties a new school arose - having its origin in the colony of Icelandic students at the University of Copenhagen.
In the end of the 9th century Iceland was colonized from Norway; and about 985 the intrepid viking, Eric the Red, discovered Greenland, and induced some of his Icelandic countrymen to settle on its inhospitable shores.
In the literatures of other Teutonic countries we have only occasional references to the religious rites of heathen times, and these are generally in no way comparable to the detailed accounts given in Icelandic writings.
In the North Sea north of the Dogger Bank, for instance, the disk is visible in calm weather to a depth of from io to 16 fathoms, but in rough weather only to 62 fathoms. Knipovitch occasionally observed great transparency in the cold waters of the Murman Sea, where he could see the disk in as much as 25 fathoms, and a similar phenomenon has often been reported from Icelandic waters.
Influenced by Jonas Hallgrimsson with regard to language and poetic diction, but keeping unbroken the traditions of Icelandic medieval poetry maintained by Sigur5r Breic fjorc6 (1798-1846), is another school of poets, very unlike the first.
It deals especially with law, and contains the pith and the moral of all early Icelandic history.
Its heroine Gudrun is the most famous of all Icelandic ladies.
Just as the change of law gave the death-blow to an already perishing commonwealth, so the rush of medieval influence, which followed the union with Norway, completed a process which had been in force since the end of the 11th century, when it overthrew the old Icelandic poetry in favour of the rimur.
Many of the Icelandic volcanoes during their periods of quiescence are covered with snow and ice.
Mike Taylor Typical Icelandic turf house spectacular steam geyser erupting Geographers take time out for a hot swim in the Blue Lagoon!
No Icelandic novelist has as yet equalled Jon Thoroddsen (1819-1868).
Of his numerous writings in Icelandic, Danish and German, the History of Icelandic Geography is a monumental work.
Other distinguished philologists are his successor as head of the Latin school, Bjorn Magnusson Olsen (Researches on Sturlunga, Ari the Wise, The Runes in the Old Icelandic Literature - the last two works in Danish); Finnur Jonsson, professor at the University of Copenhagen (History of the Old Norwegian and Icelandic Literature, in Danish, and excellent editions of many old Icelandic classical works); and Valtyr Guc?mundsson, lecturer at the University of Copenhagen (several works on the old architecture of Scandinavia) and editor of the influential Icelandic literary and political review, Eimre151n (" The Locomotive ").
Program includes madrigals, Gospel music, Icelandic folk music, and an opportunity to meet the singers afterward.
Recognizing the value of an intellectual centre, he made Reykjavik not only the political, but the spiritual capital of Iceland by removing all the chief institutions of learning to that city; he was the soul of many literary and political societies, and the chief editor of the Ny Felagsrit, which has done more than any other Icelandic periodical to promote the cause of civilization and progress in Iceland.
Results imply that much of the source of North Atlantic ridge basalts has been contaminated by lateral outflow of asthenosphere from the Icelandic plume.
See Felix Liebermann, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Halle, 1888-89); William Stubbs, Constitutional History of England; Richard Cleasby, Icelandic Dictionary; New English Dictionary; and William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum, vol.
See the Icelandic account of the elephant, also a decidedly Alexandrian fragment upon the 7.iapyos, founded upon 4 Macc. i.
Seven years of constant and severe toil (1866-73) were given to the Oxford Icelandic-English Dictionary, incomparably the best guide to classic Icelandic, and a monumental example of single-handed work.
Snorri Stur- and Tag- luson (1178-1241) the Icelandic author using this linga Saga.
Such are Konunga-tal, Hugsvinnsmal (a paraphrase of Cato's Distichs), Merlin's Prophecy (paraphrased from Geoffrey of Monmouth by Gunnlaug the monk), Jomsvikinga-drapa (by Bishop Ketil), and the Islendinga-drapa, which has preserved brief notices of several lost sagas concerning Icelandic worthies, with which Gudmundar-drapa, though of the 14th century, may be also placed.
Such is the account of the Saga of Eric the Red, supported by a number of briefer references in early Icelandic and other literature.
Such men were Egil, the foe of Eirik Bloodaxe and the friend of lEthelstan; Kormak, the hot-headed champion; Eyvind, King Haakon's poet, called Skaldaspillir, because he copied in his dirge over that king the older and finer Eiriksmal; Gunnlaug, who sang at Æthelred's court, and fell at the hands of a brother bard, Hrafn; Hallfred, Olaf Tryggvason's poet, who lies in Iona by the side of Macbeth; Sighvat, Saint Olaf's henchman, most prolific of all his comrades; Thormod, Coalbrow's poet, who died singing after Sticklestad battle; Ref, Ottar the Black, Arnor the earls' poet, and, of those whose poetry was almost confined to Iceland, Gretti, Biorn the Hitdale champion, and the two model Icelandic masters, Einar Skulason and Markus the Lawman, both of the 12th century.
Such men were Egil, the foe of Eirik Bloodaxe and the friend of lEthelstan; Kormak, the hot-headed champion; Eyvind, King Haakon's poet, called Skaldaspillir, because he copied in his dirge over that king the older and finer Eiriksmal; Gunnlaug, who sang at Æthelred's court, and fell at the hands of a brother bard, Hrafn; Hallfred, Olaf Tryggvason's poet, who lies in Iona by the side of Macbeth; Sighvat, Saint Olaf's henchman, most prolific of all his comrades; Thormod, Coalbrow's poet, who died singing after Sticklestad battle; Ref, Ottar the Black, Arnor the earls' poet, and, of those whose poetry was almost confined to Iceland, Gretti, Biorn the Hitdale champion, and the two model Icelandic masters, Einar Skulason and Markus the Lawman, both of the 12th century.
Tephrochronology to study the response of Icelandic glaciers to climate change.
That it began at a very early period to enrich itself with Scandinavian words is shown by the use it still makes of forms belonging to a linguistic stage older even than that of Icelandic. Daben has subjected the vocabulary to a very interesting analysis for the purpose of discovering what stage of culture the people had reached before their contact with the Norse.
That the Icelandic Eddas contain the oldest versions of the legend, though divided and incomplete, is universally admitted.
The Alexander legend was the theme of poetry in all European languages; six or seven German poets dealt with the subject, and it may be read in French, English, Spanish, Danish, Swedish, Icelandic, Flemish and Bohemian.
The Annals are now almost the sole material for Icelandic history; they had begun earlier, but after 1331 they got fuller and richer, till they end in 1430.
The basis of this growth is partly the story-telling instinct innate in all men, which loves to heighten an effect, sharpen a point or increase a contrast - the instinct which breathes in Icelandic sagas like that of Burnt Njal; partly the instinct of idolization, if it may be so called, which leads to the perversion into impossible greatness of an approved character, and has created, in this instance, the legendary figures of Peter the Hermit and Godfrey of Bouillon (qq.v.); partly the religious impulse, which counted nothing wonderful in a holy war, and imported miraculous elements even into the sober pages of the Gesta.
The change in the phonesis of the language is well illustrated by the new metres as compared with the old Icelandic. drott-kvicedi in its varied forms. Most of the older rimur and diktur are as yet unprinted.
The complex work now known as Orkneyinga is made up of the Earls' Saga, lives of the first great earls, Turf-Einar, Thorfinn, &c.; the Life of St Magnus, founded partly on Abbot Robert's Latin life of him (c. 1150) an Orkney work, partly on Norse or Icelandic biographies; a Mirade-book of the same saint; the Lives of Earl Rognwald and Sveyn, the last of the vikings, and a few episodes such as the Burning of Bishop Adam.
The effects of the Reformation was deeply felt in Icelandic literature, both prose and verse.
The excesses of Icelandic poetry were specially seen in the so-called rimur, ballads of heroes, &c., which were fiercely attacked by Jonas Hallgrimsson, who at last succeeded in converting the educated to his view.
The fact that the Icelandic sagas concerning Vinland are not contemporaneous written records has caused them to be viewed by many with suspicion; hence such a significant allusion as that by Adam of Bremen is not to be overlooked.
The first generations of Icelandic poets resemble in many ways the later troubadours; the books of the kings and the sagas are full of their strange lives.
The forged Icelandic sagas appear as early as the 13th century.
The Icelandic colony was an interesting forerunner of the American republic, having a prosperous population living under a republican government, and maintaining an independent national spirit for nearly four centuries.
The Icelandic fauna is of a sub-Arctic type.
The Icelandic gunboat is risking getting a stem packed with ice in a very tender spot from the trawler steaming at high speed.
The Icelandic sagas also comprise much verse which is partly genuine, partly the work of the 12th and 13th century editors.
The Icelandic, in a Copenhagen MS. of the 13th century, was printed by Professor Th.
The importance of the information, meagre as it is, lies in the fact that Adam received from the lips of kinsmen of the explorers (as the Danes in a sense were) certain characteristic facts (the finding of grapes and unsown grain) that support the general reliability of the Icelandic sagas which tell of the Vinland voyages (in which these same facts are prominent), but which were not put into writing by the Norsemen until later - just how much later it is not possible to determine.
The introduction of the danz, ballads (or fornkvicedi, as they are now called) for singing, with a burden, usually relating to a love-tale, which were immensely popular with the people and performed by whole companies at weddings, yule feasts and the like, had relegated the regular Icelandic poetry to more serious events or to the more cultivated of the chiefs.
The James Barrie was a 666 ton Icelandic trawler at 45 meters.
The life of Gudmund (Gudmundar Saga Goda), as priest, recounts the early life of this Icelandic Becket till his election as bishop (1160-1202); his after career must be sought out in Islendinga.
The most successful of Icelandic dramatists as yet is IndriOi Einarsson, whose plays, chiefly historical, in spite of excessive rhetoric, are very interesting and possess a true dramatic spirit.
The name of Hallgrim Petursson, whose Passion-hymns, " the flower of all Icelandic poetry," have been the most popular composition in the language, is foremost of all writers since the second change of faith.
The name, of which the Tene, Tayne and Thane are older forms. is derived from the Icelandic thing, " assembly" or "court."
The other saga, which by chance came to be looked upon as the chief repository of facts concerning the Vinland voyages, is found in a large Icelandic work known as the Flatey Book, as it was once owned by a man who lived on Flat Island (Flatey), on the north-western coast of Iceland.
The poet Aarestrup (in 1848) declared that Blicher had raised the Danish language to the dignity of Icelandic. Blicher is a stern realist, in many points akin to Crabbe, and takes a singular position among the romantic idealists of the period, being like them, however, in the love of precise and choice language, and hatred of the mere commonplaces of imaginative writing.
The real strength of ancient Icelandic literature is shown in its most indigenous growth, the " Saga " (see also Saga).
The saga of Thorgils Skardi (1252-1261) seems to have been the first of his works on Icelandic contemporary history; it deals with the life of his own nephew, especially his career in Iceland from 1252 to 1258.
The stories which contain the last lees of the old mythology and pre-history seem to be also non-Icelandic, but amplified by Icelandic editors, who probably got the plots from the Western Islands.
The Swedish princes Eadgils, son of Ohthere, and Onela, who are mentioned in Beowulf, are in the Icelandic Heimskringla called Adils son of Ottarr, and Ali; the correspondence of the names, according to the phonetic laws of Old English and Old Norse, being strictly normal.
The synonym "gray," given by Willughby and Ray, is doubtless derived from the general colour of the species, and has its analogue in the Icelandic Grdond, applied almost indifferently, or with some distinguishing epithet, to the female of any of the freshwater ducks, and especially to both sexes of the present, in which, as stated in the text, there is comparatively little conspicuous difference of plumage in drake and duck.
The tidal currents, or races, or roost (as some of them are called locally, from the Icelandic) off many of the isles run with enormous velocity, and whirlpools are of frequent occurrence, and strong enough at times to prove a source of danger to small craft.
The town possesses a statue to Thorvaldsen, the famous sculptor, who was of Icelandic descent.
The unit of Icelandic politics was the homestead with its franklin-owner (buendi) its primal organization the hundredmoot (thing), its tie the gooorc5(godar) or chieftainship. The chief who had led a band of kinsmen and dependants to the new land, taken a " claim " there, and parcelled it out among them, naturally became their leader, presiding as priest at the temple feasts and sacrifices of heathen times, acting as speaker of their moot, and as their representative towards the neighbouring chiefs.
The word " Viking," in the sense in which it is used to-day, is derived from the Icelandic (Old Norse) Vikingr (m.), signifying simply a sea-rover or pirate.
Their influence brought the Icelandic literature into new roads, and it is interesting to see how the tough Icelandic element gradually assimilates the foreign.
Theological literature is very popular, and many works on this subject, chiefly translations, will be found in the lists of Icelandic bibliographers.
There are similar alternative possibilities with regard to the explanation of the striking resemblances which certain incidents of the adventures with Grendel and the dragon bear to incidents in the narratives of Saxo and the Icelandic sagas.
There is also in Icelandic the allied word viking (f.), a predatory voyage.
There is at least some precedent for this, in the idea of the " god friend " as found in the Icelandic sagas.
These biographies are more literary and medieval and less poetic than the Icelandic sagas and king's lives; their simplicity, truth, realism and purity of style are the same.
These were increased in 1815 by the Brunswick, Bremen, Schleswig-Holstein, Strassburg and Eichsf eld (Saxony) Bible Societies, and the Icelandic Bible Society.
This charming little book is, with the much later collections of laws, our sole authority for the Icelandic constitution of the commonwealth, but, " much as it tells, the lost Liber would have been of still greater importance."
This collection of sagas, completed in about 1380, is "the most extensive and most perfect of Icelandic manuscripts," and was sent to Denmark in 1662 as a gift to the king.
This passage offers important corroboration of the Icelandic accounts of the Vinland voyages, and is, furthermore, interesting "as the only undoubted reference to Vinland in a medieval book written beyond the limits of the Scandinavian world" (Fiske).
This school is very dissimilar from the half-romantic school of Jonas Hallgrimsson; it is nearer the national Icelandic school represented by Pall Olafsson and porsteinn Erlingsson, but differs from those writers by introducing foreign elements hitherto unknown in Icelandic literature, and - especially in the case of the prose-writers - by imitating closely the style and manner of some of the great Norwegian novelists.
Thorfinn belonged to a leading Icelandic family and had great success in trading voyages.
Through the dream the living was put into communication with the dead, which sometimes embodied itself in peculiar and pathetic literary forms, such as the Icelandic dream-verses imparted by the spirits of those who had been lost at sea or overwhelmed by the snow; and a whole series of steps leads up from necromancy to prophecy and oracle, .?
To the north also belong the sagas of Gretti the Strong (Ioio-1031), the life and death of the most famous of Icelandic outlaws, the real story of whose career is mixed up with the mythical adventures of Beowulf, here put down to Gretti, and with late romantic episodes and fabulous folk-tales (Dr Vigfusson would ascribe the best parts of this saga to Sturla; its last editor, whose additions would be better away, must have touched it up about 1300), and the stories of the Ljosvetningasaga (1009-1060).
To these generalizations there are few exceptions, though Icelandic literature includes a group of poems which possess qualities of high imagination, deep pathos, fresh love of nature, passionate dramatic power, and noble simplicity of language which Icelandic poetry lacks.
To this the Danish government was vehemently opposed; it convoked an Icelandic National Assembly in 1851, and brought before that body a bill granting Iceland small local liberties, but practically incorporating Iceland in Denmark.
Under the auspices of Archbishop Absalon the monks of Sorb began to compile the annals of Denmark, and at the end of the 12th century Svend Aagesen, a cleric of Lund, compiled from Icelandic sources and oral tradition his Compendiosa historic regum Daniae.
Vigfusson, Gudbrandr (1828-1889), the foremost Scandinavian scholar of the 19th century, was born of a good and old Icelandic family in Breibafjord in 1828.
When, owing to disputes between Icelandic and Norwegian merchants, Skuli thought of a military expedition to Iceland, Snorri promised to make the inhabitants submit to Haakon of their own free will.
While shrewdness, plain straightforwardness, and a certain stern way of looking at life are common to both, the Icelandic school adds a complexity of structure and ornament, an elaborate mythological and enigmatical phraseology, and a regularity of rhyme, assonance, luxuriance, quantity and syllabification, which it caught from the Latin and Celtic poets, and adapted with exquisite ingenuity to its own main object, that of securing the greatest possible beauty of sound.
Worn out by internal strife fostered by Haakon's emissaries, the Icelandic chiefs acknowledged the Norwegian king as overlord in 1262.