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Björn Jónsson á Skarðsá
Björn Jónsson á Skarðsá (1574–1655) was a farmer and a member of the Icelandic Court of Legislature (Iceland), Court of Legislature, characterised by Philip Lavender as 'an important figure on the Icelandic intellectual scene of his day'.Philip Lavender,''Oedipus industrius ænigmatum islandicorum'': Björn Jónsson á Skarðsá's Riddle Commentary, ''Gripla'', 26 (2015), 229–73. He is best known as the author of Skarðsárannáll, a work in the annals, annalistic tradition that spans the period from 1400 to Björn's own day and draws on a combination of oral and written sources. Life Björn's father died when Björn was young, and for the twenty years from c. 1582 to 1602 he grew up in northern Iceland, at Reynistaður in Skagafjörður, in the care of one Sigurður Jónsson. There he must have received his education. From around 1602 he lived at Skarðsá, and in 1616 became a local ''lögréttumaður''. Björn seems to have had a poor relationship with his local bisho ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Court Of Legislature (Iceland)
The Court of Legislature ( , "law-right") was a legislature and high court established in Iceland in the year 930 during the period of the Icelandic Commonwealth. 930 – c. 965 It was an institution of Althing, the nation's legislative and judicial authority. There was no executive power in the country at the time. After the country had been divided into four quarters around 965, four courts called Quarter courts of Iceland, quarter courts were established for each of them at Althing and thus took over the judicial responsibilities of the Court of Legislature. c. 1262 – 1563 Approximately 1015 a high court called the Fifth Court was established to hear cases left unsettled by the quarter courts. When the Commonwealth came to an end and Icelanders submitted to the authority of the Norwegian king in 1262 the Court of Legislature regained its judicial functions, as the Fifth Court and quarter courts were abolished, and retained some legislative authority. The Court of Legislatur ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Egill SkallagrÃmsson
Egil SkallagrÃmsson ( ; Modern Icelandic: ; 904 995) was a Viking Age war poet, sorcerer, berserker, and farmer.Thorsson, 3 He is known mainly as the anti-hero of '' Egil's Saga''. ''Egil's Saga'' historically narrates a period from approximately 850 to 1000 AD and is believed to have been written between 1220 and 1240 AD. Life Egil was born in Iceland, to Skalla-GrÃmr Kveldúlfsson and Bera Yngvarsdóttir; he was the grandson of Kveld-Úlfr (whose name means 'evening wolf'). Another of his ancestors, Hallbjörn, was Norwegian- Sami. Skalla-GrÃmr was a respected chieftain, and mortal enemy of King Harald Fairhair of Norway. He migrated to Iceland, settling at Borg where his father Kveld-Úlfr's coffin landed after being ritualistically set adrift as Skalla-GrÃmr's boat approached Iceland. Skalla-GrÃmr and wife Bera had two daughters, Sæunn and Þórunn, and two sons, Þorolfr and Egil. Egil composed his first poem at three years old. He exhibited ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1655 Deaths
Events January–March * January 5 – Emperor Go-Sai ascends to the throne of Japan. * January 7 – Pope Innocent X, leader of the Roman Catholic Church and the Papal States, dies after more than 10 years of rule. * February 14 – The Mapuches launch coordinated attacks against the Spanish in Chile, beginning the Mapuche uprising of 1655. * February 16 – Dutch Grand Pensionary advisor Johan de Witt marries Wendela Bicker. * March 8 – John Casor becomes the first legally recognized slave in what will become the United States, as a court in Northampton County in the Colony of Virginia issues its decision in the Casor lawsuit, the first instance of a judicial determination in the Thirteen Colonies holding that a person who has committed no crime could be held in servitude for life. * March 25 – Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens. April–June * April 4 – Battle of Porto Farina, Tunis: E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
1574 Births
__NOTOC__ Year 1574 ( MDLXXIV) was a common year starting on Friday of the Julian calendar. Events January–March * January 22 – Mohammed II becomes the new Sultan of Morocco upon the death of his father, Abdallah al-Ghalib. * January 27 – At Agra, Bhagwant Das becomes the new Maharaja of the Kingdom of Amber in what is now India's state of Uttar Pradesh, upon the death of his grandfather, the Raja Bharmal. * January 29 – Off of the coast of the Netherlands, the Battle of the Scheldt is fought between the Spanish Fleet and a combined Dutch and English fleet of ships. The Spanish Navy loses 15 ships and 1,200 men are killed, wounded or captured. * February – The fifth War of Religion against the Huguenots begins in France. * March 2 – Swedish troops attack Wesenberg Castle in Estonia and lose at least 1,000 men in attempting to capture it from the Russian Army.Gary Dean Peterson, ''Warrior Kings of Sweden: The Rise of an Empire in the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Riddle-contest
Riddle-tales are traditional stories featuring riddle-contests. They frequently provide the context for the preservation of ancient riddles for posterity, and as such have both been studied as a narrative form in their own right, and for the riddles they contain. Such contests are a subset of wisdom contests more generally. The two major groups of these stories are: testing the wisdom of a king or other aristocrat; and testing the suitability of a suitor. Correspondingly, the Aarne–Thompson classification systems catalogue two main folktale-types including riddle-contests: AT 927, Outriddling the Judge, and AT 851, The Princess Who Can Not Solve the Riddle. Such stories invariably include answers to the riddles posed: 'the audience cannot be left dangling'. Background The earliest example of a wisdom contest between kings is the Sumerian epic ''Enmerkar and the Lord of Aratta'', from the first half of the second millennium BC, closely followed by the Egyptian ''The Quarrel of A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apollonius Of Tyre
Apollonius of Tyre is the hero of a short ancient novel, popular in the Middle Ages. Existing in numerous forms in many languages, all are thought to derive from an ancient Greek version now lost. Plot summary In most versions, the eponymous hero is hunted and persecuted after he reveals Antiochus of Antioch's incestuous relationship with his daughter. After many travels and adventures, in which Apollonius loses both his wife and his daughter and thinks them both dead, he is eventually reunited with his family through unlikely circumstances or intercession by gods. In some English versions Apollonius is shipwrecked and becomes a tutor to a princess who falls in love with him, and the good king gradually discovers his daughter's wishes. The major themes are the punishment of inappropriate lust—the incestuous king invariably comes to a bad end—and the ultimate rewards of love and fidelity. Origins (Latin and Greek?) The story is first mentioned in Latin by Venantiu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
RÃmur
In Icelandic literature, a ''rÃma'' (, literally "a rhyme", pl. ''rÃmur'', ) is an epic poetry, epic poem written in any of the so-called ''rÃmnahættir'' (, "rÃmur meters"). They are rhymed, they alliterative verse, alliterate and consist of two to four lines per stanza. The plural, ''rÃmur'', is either used as an ordinary plural, denoting any two or more rÃmur, but is also used for more expansive works, containing more than one rÃma as a whole. Thus ''Ólafs rÃma Haraldssonar'' denotes an epic about Olav II of Norway, Ólafr Haraldsson in one rÃma, while ''Núma rÃmur'' are a multi-part epic on Numa Pompilius. Form ''RÃmur'', as the name suggests, rhyme, but like older Germanic alliterative verse, they also contain structural alliteration. ''RÃmur'' are stanzaic, and stanzas normally have four lines. There are hundreds of ''rÃma'' meters: Sveinbjörn Beinteinsson counts 450 variations in his ''Háttatal''. But they can be grouped in approximately ten ''families''. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Riddles Of Gestumblindi
A riddle is a statement, question, or phrase having a double or veiled meaning, put forth as a puzzle to be solved. Riddles are of two types: ''enigmas'', which are problems generally expressed in metaphorical or allegorical language that require ingenuity and careful thinking for their solution, and ''conundra'', which are questions relying for their effects on punning in either the question or the answer. Archer Taylor says that "we can probably say that riddling is a universal art" and cites riddles from hundreds of different cultures including Finnish, Hungarian, American Indian, Chinese, Russian, Dutch, and Filipino sources amongst many others. Many riddles and riddle-themes are internationally widespread. In the assessment of Elli Köngäs-Maranda (originally writing about Malaitian riddles, but with an insight that has been taken up more widely), whereas myths serve to encode and establish social norms, "riddles make a point of playing with conceptual boundaries and cros ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hǫfuðlausn (Egill)
''HÇ«fuðlausn'' ( ) or ''‘Head-ransom is a skaldic poem attributed to Egill Skalla-GrÃmsson in praise of king Eirik Bloodaxe. It is cited in Egils Saga (chapter 61), which claims that he created it in the span of one night. The events in the saga that lead up to the composition and recitation of the poem can be summarized in the following way. Egil falls into king Eirik's hands after being shipwrecked in Northumbria. Faced with the decision to either dishonorably flee and risk being exposed as a coward or to directly face his adversary and ask for reconciliation, Egil chooses the latter. The two men are enemies during the saga, which makes Egil's decision especially bold. Earlier in the saga Egil goes as far as to construct a Nithing pole, a sign of disrespect in medieval Scandinavian society. For this and other reasons King Eirik tells Egil not to expect any outcome other than death for his arrival in his court. This would be the end for Egil, however, one of his allies, who ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brynjólfur Sveinsson
Brynjólfur Sveinsson (14 September 1605 – 5 August 1675) served as the Lutheran Bishop of the see of Skálholt in Iceland. His main influence has been on modern knowledge of Old Norse literature. Brynjólfur is also known for his support of the career of the Icelandic poet and hymn writer HallgrÃmur Pétursson. Brynjólfur Sveinsson is currently pictured on the banknote. Brynjólfur was born in Önundarfjörður in the Westfjords of northwestern Iceland. He studied at the University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen (, KU) is a public university, public research university in Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia, after Uppsala University. ... from 1624 to 1629 and was Provost of Roskilde University from 1632 to 1638. In 1643, he named the collection of Old Norse mythological and heroic poems '' Edda''. Brynjólfur attributed the manuscript to Sæmundr fróði ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Þorlákur Skúlason
Þorlákur Skúlason (24 August 1597 – 4 January 1656) was bishop of Hólar from 1628 until his death in 1656. During his tenure, he oversaw publication of the second Icelandic translation of the full Bible. Early life Þorlákur was born in EirÃksstaðir in to the farmer Skúli Einarsson (d. 1612) and Steinunn Guðbrandsdóttir (b. 1571), the daughter of Guðbrandur Þorláksson (with Guðrún GÃsladóttir), bishop of Hólar. He grew up in Hólar with his grandfather and studied under the bishop to become a priest. In 1616, he departed Iceland for Denmark where he earned a degree at the University of Copenhagen. He returned to Hólar in 1619 to oversee the Hólar College, but in 1620 he resumed his studies in Copenhagen. After returning to Iceland in 1621, Þorlákur was installed as a priest in Hólar in 1624. One of his early tasks was to seek wood for a new cathedral. Bishop of Hólar After the death of Bishop Guðbrandur on 20 July 1627, Þorlákur was electe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
