Guðbrandur Vigfússon

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Pencil portrait of Guðbrandur Vigfússons by Sigurður Málari .

Guðbrandr Vigfússon , as he himself writes, also Anglicized as Gudbrand Vigfusson (born March 13, 1827 , † January 31, 1889 ) was one of the most important Scandinavian scholars of the 19th century.

Life

Guðbrandur Vigfússon was born in Breiðafjörður in Iceland and raised by his relative and foster mother Kristín Vigfússdóttir. His younger brother Sigurður later pioneered archeology in Iceland. Guðbrandur attended the Latin school in Bessastaðir and (after its relocation) in Reykjavík . In 1849 or 1850 he came to the University of Copenhagen as a bursar in the Regensen dormitory .

He then worked for fourteen years as a fellow at the Arnamagna Library until he knew, in his own words, "every scrap of old vellum and of Icelandic written paper" in the entire collection.

In 1857 he met Konrad Maurer in Copenhagen . The two men formed an intimate friendship that they cultivated all their lives; the same applies to the friendship with Theodor Möbius . He has visited both of them several times in Germany.

From 1861 to 1862 he was the editor of the cultural magazine Skírnir .

In 1866 Guðbrandur Vigfússon moved first to London, then on to Oxford , England, where he spent the rest of his life. From 1884 he held the position of reader for Scandinavian at Oxford University , a position created for him. In 1877 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from Uppsala University for the university jubilee , after he had become an honorary MA in 1871 without a formal university degree at Oxford. In 1885 he received the Danish Dannebrogorden . Since 1873 he was a corresponding member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences .

Guðbrandur died of cancer on January 31, 1889. He was buried on February 3, 1889 in St. Sepulcher's Cemetery, Oxford.

plant

Guðbrandur Vigfússon was an excellent literary expert. He mastered most of the European languages ​​and was familiar with their classical works. His memory was also excellent.

His first work Um tímatal í Íslendinga sögum í fornöld (written from October 1854 to April 1855) laid the foundation for the chronology of Iceland's early history. His subsequent editions of Icelandic classics (1858–1868), Biskupa sögur , Bárðar Saga , Fornsögur (with Theodor Möbius ), Eyrbyggja saga and Flateyjarbók (with Carl Richard Unger ) opened a new era in Icelandic research.

Beginning with his move to England, he worked for seven years (1866–1873) on the Oxford Icelandic-English Dictionary (published 1869–74), the best dictionary of ancient and modern Icelandic of its time, a monumental work (with still very useful grammatical tables!) from a single hand, what the introduction and title page do not provide and what has caused him great annoyance.

He then turned back to the Icelandic sagas in conjunction with the English lawyer and historian Frederick York Powell (1850-1904). His editions (1874–1885) included the Orkneyinga saga and the Hákonar saga , the large and complex collection of historical Icelandic sagas, the Sturlunga saga , and the Corpus Poeticum Boreale (1883), in which he edited all of Old Icelandic poetry. As an introduction to the Sturlunga saga , he wrote a complete and detailed history of classical Nordic literature and its sources ( prolegomena ). In his introduction to the Corpus , he laid the basis for a history of Eddic poetry and court poetry in the north. The CPB met with rejection everywhere in the professional world, because it is well thought out, but completely uncritical.

As an author in his mother tongue, he has received recognition for his travelogues from Norway and Germany .

Web links

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Jón Thorkelsson: Guðbrandur Vigfússon . In: Axel Kock, et al. (Ed.): Arkiv för nordisk filologi (ANF) . New episode, volume 2 (= band 6 of the complete edition). CWK Gleerups förlag, Lund 1890, p. 156–163 (multilingual, runeberg.org - obituary).
  2. ^ Heinrich von Brunn : Guðbrandur Vigfússon (obituary) . In: Meeting reports of the philosophical-philological and historical class of the KB Academy of Sciences in Munich . 1889, p. 302–304 ( badw.de [PDF; accessed May 7, 2017]).
Note: Icelanders are referred to by their first name or first and last name, but not just their surname. Further information can be found under Icelandic personal name .
personal data
SURNAME Guðbrandur Vigfússon
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vigfusson, Gudbrand
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Icelandic scholar
DATE OF BIRTH March 13, 1827
DATE OF DEATH January 31, 1889