Jón Árnason (author)

Jón Árnason (born 17 August 1819 in Hof, died 4 September 1888 in Reykjavík) was an Icelandic writer, librarian, and museum director who made the first collection of Icelandic folktales.

Jón Árnason was educated at the Latin School in Bessastaðir.

From 1848 to 1887, he was the first librarian at what became the National Library of Iceland in Reykjavík; in 1881 its name was changed from Íslands stiftisbókasafn (Foundation library of Iceland) and his title became Landsbókavörður Íslands (National Librarian of Iceland). Meanwhile he also served as the first librarian of the Iceland branch of the Icelandic Literary Society.

He was also the first curator of the Forngripasafns Íslands (Icelandic Antiquities Collection), which became the National Museum of Iceland, when it was founded in 1863. For a long time he ran both the museum and the library.

In addition, he supplemented his small salary by working as secretary to the Bishop and as a teacher and custodian of the library at the Latin School, which had moved to Reykjavík. In 1877, when he was put forward as one of 2 Icelandic representatives to the centennial celebration of Uppsala University, the government in Copenhagen objected to a "porter" representing Iceland because he was "janitor of the Iceland High School", as Guðbrandur Vigfússon anonymously worded it in an obituary.

Inspired by the brothers Grimm's Kinder- und Hausmärchen (Grimm's Fairy Tales), Jón began to collect and record folktales, together with Magnús Grímsson, a friend who was a schoolmaster and later a clergyman. Their first collection, Íslenzk Æfintýri (Icelandic Folktales) appeared in 1852, but attracted little notice. The two only resumed collecting after Konrad Maurer, the German legal historian and scholar of Icelandic literature, toured the country in 1858 and encouraged them. After Magnús Grímsson died in 1860, Jón Árnason finished the collection on his own. It was published in 2 volumes in 1862 and 1864 in Leipzig with Maurer's help, as Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri (Icelandic Folktales and Legends), comprising over 1300 pages. In 1954–61 it was reissued in Reykjavík in 6 volumes.

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