62 



DR. JON STEFANSSON, PH.D.^ ON ICELAND : 



sixteenth century, and was resisted by the Bishop of Holar, 

 Jon Arason, a well-known poet and popular leader. At last he 

 was taken prisoner in a battle and publicly executed, with his 

 two sons, in 1550. Thus the Eeformation was forced by the 

 Crown on an unwilling people. The New Testament m 

 Icelandic was printed in Denmark in 1540, but the first Bible 

 in Icelandic came out at Holar in 1584. The woodcuts and 

 some of the fomit of type of this fine work were made by Bishop 

 (jrudbrand Thorlaksson with his own hands. The translation of 

 the Old Testament was also made by him. 



The printing press woke the national spirit. Arngrimur 

 Jonsson at the end of the sixteenth century rediscovered the 

 treasures of the past and brought them to tlie knowledge of 

 Europe, in his Latin writings. His Brevis Commentarius in 

 1593, and his Crymogaea in 1609, were known and partly 

 translated all over Europe. It w^as the beginning of the 

 Itenaissance of Old Icelandic literature. The learned Tliormod 

 Torfaens (1636-1719), an Icelander who v/as the historiographer 

 of the King of Denmark, continued Arngrim's work. The 

 Icelandic antiquarian, Arni Magnusson (died 1730) diligently 

 rescued every scrap of old manuscript to be found in Iceland, 

 and founded the magnificent Arna-Magnaean collection in 

 Copenhagen, devoting all his life and money to it. It is due 

 to him more than to any single man that the old literature of 

 Iceland has been preserved. 



The Hanseatic trade was succeeded by a Danish monopoly of 

 trade which completed the economic ruin of Iceland. Algerine 

 pirates appeared off the coast and carried off hundreds of people 

 into slavery, in 1627. Small-pox carried off one-third of the 

 population in 1707, a famine raged in 1759, and the volcanic 

 eruptions of 1765 and 1783 laid waste large tracts of the 

 island. Nature seemed in league with man to render Iceland 

 uninhabitable. 



During the war between England and Denmark, 1807-14, 

 English privateers prevented Danish ships from reaching 

 Iceland, and a famine would have broken out if Sir Joseph 

 ]]anks — who had visited Iceland in 1772 — had not, by an Order 

 in Council, got Iceland specially exempted from the war. 



The national movements in Europe in the lirst half of the 

 nineteenth century reached the shores of Iceland, and a band 

 of patriots began a political struggle to win back the old freedom. 

 On March 8, 1843, a deliberative Council was established in 

 Iceland, and when ])enmark had got her own free Constitution, 

 a National Assem])ly, a Conditiiante, met, in July, 1851, at 



