Jón Ólafsson of Grunnavík (''Jón Ólafsson frá Grunnavík'', also known as ''Jón Grunnvíkingur'' or ''Grunnavíkur-Jón'', 1705–1779) was an Icelandic scholar. Originally from Grunnavík,

Westfjords The Westfjords or West Fjords ( is, Vestfirðir , ISO 3166-2:IS: IS-4) is a large peninsula in northwestern Iceland and an administrative district, the least populous administrative district. It lies on the Denmark Strait, facing the east coas ...

, northwestern

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

, he was active in

Copenhagen Copenhagen ( or .; da, København ) is the capital and most populous city of Denmark, with a proper population of around 815.000 in the last quarter of 2022; and some 1.370,000 in the urban area; and the wider Copenhagen metropolitan ar ...

, where he served as assistant to

Árni Magnússon Árni Magnússon (13 November 1663 – 7 January 1730) was a scholar and collector of manuscripts from Iceland who assembled the Arnamagnæan Manuscript Collection. Life Árni was born in 1663 at Kvennabrekka in Dalasýsla, in western Iceland ...

. He is the author of an Icelandic dictionary and a 1732 ''Runologia'', a treatise on

runology Runology is the study of the Runic alphabets, Runic inscriptions and their history. Runology forms a specialized branch of Germanic linguistics. History Runology was initiated by Johannes Bureus (1568–1652), who was very interested in the ling ...

. As in the fire of Copenhagen of 1728, the original manuscript of the ''

Heiðarvíga saga ''Heiðarvíga saga'' () or ''The Story of the Heath-Slayings'' is one of the Icelanders' sagas. It is badly preserved; 12 leaves of the only surviving manuscript were destroyed along with their only copy in the fire of Copenhagen in 1728. The co ...

'' was lost along with a recent copy made by Jón Grunnvíkingur, he wrote down a summary of the saga from memory, which is the only form in which the saga's contents survive today. The character of ''Jón Grindvicensis'' in Halldór Laxness's historical novel '' Iceland's Bell'' is based on Jón Grunnvíkingur.

References

* Jón Helgason, ''Jón Ólafsson frá Grunnavík'', Copenhagen (1926) * Magnússon, Fridrik and Gudrún Kvaran (eds.). ''Hræringur úr ritum Grunnavíkur-Jóns. Ordmennt og Gódvinir Grunnavíkur-Jóns''. Reykjavík (1994). * Ingólfsdóttir, G. and S. Sigmundsson (eds.). ''Vitjun sína vakta ber. Gódvinir Grunnavíkur-Jóns og Háskólaútgafan''. Reykjavík (1999).

External links

Words from Jón Ólafssons’s dictionary in manuscript

Jón Ólafsson's ''Runologia''
1705 births 1779 deaths Icelandic scholars Religious studies scholars Sagas of Icelanders 18th-century Icelandic people {{reli-studies-bio-stub