Hið íslenzka fornritafélag (), or The Old Icelandic Text Society is a

text publication society A text publication society is a learned society which publishes (either as its sole function, or as a principal function) scholarly editions of old works of historical or literary interest, or archival documents. In addition to full texts, a text p ...

. It is the standard publisher of Old Icelandic texts (such as the

Sagas of Icelanders The sagas of Icelanders (, ), also known as family sagas, are a subgenre, or text group, of Icelandic Saga, sagas. They are prose narratives primarily based on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the ninth, tenth, and earl ...

Kings' sagas Kings' sagas (, , ) are Old Norse sagas which principally tell of the lives of semi-legendary and legendary (mythological, fictional) Nordic kings, also known as saga kings. They were composed during the twelfth through the fourteenth centuries, ...

and

bishops' saga The bishops' saga (Old Norse and modern Icelandic ''biskupasaga'', modern Icelandic plural ''biskupasögur'', Old Norse plural ''biskupasǫgur'') is a genre of medieval Icelandic sagas, mostly thirteenth- and earlier fourteenth-century prose histo ...

s) with thorough introductions and comprehensive notes. The Society was founded in 1928 by Jón Ásbjörnsson and launched its text series of medieval Icelandic literature known as ''Íslenzk fornrit'' in 1933. The series was founded as an

Icelandic language Icelandic ( ; , ) is a North Germanic languages, North Germanic language from the Indo-European languages, Indo-European language family spoken by about 314,000 people, the vast majority of whom live in Iceland, where it is the national languag ...

edition along the lines of the

German language German (, ) is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family, mainly spoken in Western Europe, Western and Central Europe. It is the majority and Official language, official (or co-official) language in Germany, Austria, Switze ...

series ''Altnordische Saga-Bibliothek'' (published 1892–1929). The Society's publications are distributed by the Icelandic Literary Society (''Hið íslenska bókmenntafélag''). The president of the company (2019) is Halldór Blöndal.

References

External links

*
Íslenzk fornrit series catalogue in English
(PDF; 847 kB) (includes a detailed history of the society, 1928–2018) {{DEFAULTSORT:Islenzk Fornrit Academic publishing companies Sagas of Icelanders 1928 establishments in Iceland Text publication societies