Hallgrímsson was an Icelandic poet, author and naturalist. He was one of the founders of the Icelandic journal Fjölnir, which was first published in Copenhagen in 1835.
Background
Hallgrímsson was born on November 16, 1807 in Öxnadalur, Eyjafjörður, the son of Hallgrímur Þorsteinsson, a curate, and Rannveig Jónasdóttir. He was the third of their four children; his siblings were Þorsteinn (born 1800), Rannveig (born 1802) and Anna Margrét (born 1815). In 1816 Jónas' father drowned in a lake and Jónas was sent to live with his aunt.
Education
Hallgrímsson went to a school in Skagafjörður in 1821, where he was taught by the Reverend Einar H. Thorlacius. He studied there for two years, and won a scholarship to attend the school at Bessastaðir for a further six. In 1832 he went to the university of Copenhagen.
Career
Having obtained pecuniary assistance from the Danish government, Hallgrímsson travelled through all Iceland for scientific purposes in the years 1837-1842, and made many interesting geological observations. Most of his writings on geology are in Danish. His renown was, however, not acquired by his writings in that language, but by his Icelandic poems and short stories. He was well read in German literature, Heine and Schiller being his favourites, and the study of the German masters and the old classical writers of Iceland opened his eyes to the corrupt state of Icelandic poetry and showed him the way to make it better. The misuse of the Eddie metaphors made the lyrical and epical poetry of the day hardly intelligible, and, to make matters worse, the language of the poets was mixed up with words of German and Danish origin. The great Danish philologist and friend of Iceland, Rasmus Rask, and the poet Bjarni Thorarensen had done much to purify the language, but Jonas Hallgrimsson completed their work by his poems and tales, in a purer language than ever had been written in Iceland since the days of Snorri Sturlason. The excesses of Icelandic poetry were specially seen in the so-called rimur, ballads of heroes, &c. , which were fiercely attacked by Jonas Hallgrimsson, who at last succeeded in converting the educated to his view. Most of the principal poems, tales and essays'of Jonas Hali- grimsson appeared in the periodical Fjolnir, which he began publishing at Copenhagen in 1833, together with Konra Gislason, a well-known philologist, and the patriotic Thomas Saemund's son. Fjolnir had in the beginning a hard struggle against old prejudices, but as the years went by its influence becameenormous; and when it at last ceased, its programme and spirit still lived in Ay Ftlagsrit and other patriotic periodicals which took its place. Jonas Hallgrimsson, who died in 1844, is the father of a separate school in Icelandic lyric poetry. He introduced foreign thoughts and metres, but at the same time revived the metres of the Icelandic classical poets. Although his poetical works are all comprised in one small volume, he strikes every string of the old harp of Iceland.