Icelandic writer, born at Hof on the 17th of August 1819, and died at Reykjavik on the 13th of November 1888. He was educated at the college of Bessestad, at that time the only school in Iceland. He took rank as a thorough student of the history and literature of his country, and in 1849 was made custodian of the national library in Reykjavik; published a number of sketches and a volume of folk-tales, but is best known through his collection of Icelandic nursery tales, Islenzhar Thjódsögur og Æfintyri (2 vols., 1862–64).
