Jón Magnússon

Þórunn Sigurðardóttir (University of Iceland)

Ed. by Ármann Jakobsson, University of Iceland
The Literary Encyclopedia. Volume 1.3.4: Icelandic Writing and Culture.
Vol. editors: Ármann Jakobsson (University of Iceland), Nicole Kennedy (University of Newcastle), Sven Hakon Rossel (Universitat Wien), Herbert Rowland (Purdue University), Jakob Stougaard-Nielsen (University College London)

Dates

Born 1601
Died 1675

Places

Active in Iceland

Activities

Primary

Prose writer

Resources

Magnússon's Works

Save to Bookshelf

In a report on a strategy for the only printing press in Iceland, written around the middle of the eighteenth century, it is suggested, among other things, that poetry by the foremost poets of the previous century should be published. The author of the report, Jón Ólafsson from Grunnavík, lists three poets in this context: Hallgrímur Pétursson, Stefán Ólafsson, and Jón Magnússon of Laufás (AM 434 fol., 13v). In a literary history from around the same time, its author praises Jón Magnússon highly for his religious poems and claims that no other contemporary Icelandic poet was his equal with regard to both extent and diversity of poetical matters (Thorkillius 2022, 199–211). The opinions of eighteenth-century scholars on Jón Magnússon and his works are, however, not…

Please log in to consult the article in its entirety. If you are a member (student of staff) of a subscribing institution (see List), you should be able to access the LE on campus directly (without the need to log in), and off-campus either via the institutional log in we offer, or via your institution's remote access facilities, or by creating a personal user account with your institutional email address. If you are not a member of a subscribing institution, you will need to purchase a personal subscription. For more information on how to subscribe as an individual user, please see under Individual Subcriptions.

2270 words

Citation: Sigurðardóttir, Þórunn. "Jón Magnússon". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 19 May 2025 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=15025, accessed 22 May 2025.]