Jónas Hallgrímsson
Jónas Hallgrímsson (born November 16, 1807 in Hraun im Öxnadalur , today Hörgársveit municipality , † May 26, 1845 in Copenhagen ) was an Icelandic poet and scientist who is revered as a national hero in Iceland .
Life and career
His parents were the chaplain Hallgrímur Þorsteinsson in Bægisá in Hörgárdalur in the district of Eyjafarðarsýsla and his wife Rannveig Jónasdóttir. He spent his childhood on the Steinstaðir farm.
At the age of 16 he went to the Latin school in Bessastaðir , which he left in 1829. He then worked for years in the governor's office in Reykjavík . In 1832 he passed the entrance exam for the University of Copenhagen . He began to study law , which he soon gave up. Then he studied literature and zoology .
He soon made contact with the rest of the Icelandic students in Copenhagen and joined the National Progress Movement. He co-founded the annual Fjölnir , the organ for the patriotic awakening movement, and opened the first year with a program poem "Iceland", which identified him as a poet of the first order: Enthusiastic enthusiasm for the past, atmospheric description of nature and painful sadness about the decline in the The present melted here into a radiant, romantic praise of the fatherland as it was and how it should be again. In the other articles in the following years he strove to inspire his compatriots for aesthetics and science. With Konráð Gíslason he took over the editing of the Skírnir magazine for a year in 1836 .
In 1837, with government support, he undertook a scientific research trip through Iceland with a special focus on geology and zoology. There should be preparatory work for a scientific description of the country. On one of his expeditions he got lost, was surprised by bad weather with sleet and contracted pneumonia that no longer healed. After his return he went to the Academy of Sorø for a year for evaluation , but then went back to Copenhagen, where he died on May 26, 1845 of a fall on the stairs with a complicated broken leg.
His energy did not match his talents. Alcohol and the pneumonia he had brought with him from his trip to Iceland weakened his creativity. That is why his description of Iceland made slow progress and had not progressed very far when he died. Only his essay De islandske Vulkaners Historie (The history of the Icelandic volcanoes) was significant . The manuscript was used by some later researchers.
Meaning and work
Jónas Hallgrímsson was the most important poet of Icelandic Romanticism . His poetry is still very popular, many of his poems have since been set to music and are considered traditional Icelandic songs, such as Heiðlóarkvæði , Ég bið aðheilsa and Álfareiðin .
He was an admirer of the German poet and writer Heinrich Heine and translated several of his songs into Icelandic. Heine also had an influence on his poetry, both in form and in the steep changes in mood. He was also the first to write Icelandic reviews, such as his scathing criticism of S. Breiðfjörðs "Rímur" in "Fjölnir", as well as the entire Rímur poetry for him and his circle as evidence of the mindless barbarism of decline. Few poems were published during his lifetime, especially in Fjolnir . After his death in 1847 the unpublished poems in the poetry book "Ljóðmæli" were published. Another edition appeared in 1883, which also contained his prose writings. His zoological work and a short biography was published with a French translation by LO Gaillard: Jónas Hallgrímsson ses travaux zoologiques . Copenhagen 1890.
His early death was felt to be a severe blow to Icelandic literary culture.
The life and work of the Icelandic poet and naturalist Eggert Ólafsson , to whom he dedicated a song ( Hulduljóð ), influenced Jónas Hallgrímsson. He saw him as the most important man in Iceland in the last centuries.
Halldór Laxness caricatures Jónas Hallgrímsson's role as “the nation's favorite son” in his novel Atomic Station .
His portrait is printed on the 10,000 Kronur banknote .
Works (selection)
- Heiðlóarkvæði
- Ég bið að heilsa
- Álfareiðin
- Hulduljóð , in which Jónas Hallgrímsson worships the poet and naturalist Eggert Ólafsson
literature
- Kr. Kaalund: Article “Hallgrímsson, Jónas”. In: Dansk biografisk lexikon . Copenhagen 1887-1805. Vol. 6. pp. 514-517.
- Dick Ringler: Bard of Iceland. Jónas Hallgrímsson, Poet and Scientist. , University of Wisconsin Press; 2002.
- Jón R. Hjálmarsson: Með þjóðskjáldum við þjóðveginn. Reykjavík 2004, 111-115
See also
Web links
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Jónas Hallgrímsson |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Hallgrímsson, Jónas |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Icelandic poet and scientist |
| DATE OF BIRTH | November 16, 1807 |
| PLACE OF BIRTH | Hraun, Öxnadalur, today Hörgársveit |
| DATE OF DEATH | May 26, 1845 |
| Place of death | Copenhagen |