HALLGRMSSON, JNAS

born Nov. 16, 1807, Hraun, xnadalur, Ice. died May 25, 1845, Copenhagen one of the most popular of Iceland's Romantic poets. Entering the University of Copenhagen in 1829, Hallgrmsson studied law, science, and literature. In 1835, with other Icelandic students in Copenhagen, he founded the periodical Fjlnir (183547; The Many-Sided), in which he published much of his poetry and later his short stories, the first in Icelandic. He returned to Iceland in 1837 and engaged in scientific research for the Danish government until 1842, when he returned to Copenhagen. He is chiefly remembered for his lyrical poems describing Icelandic scenery. An admirer of the European Romantic poets, especially Heinrich Heine, he adapted and translated much foreign poetry into Icelandic. He was critical of the rmur, narrative poems in traditional, artificial form, composed in stereotyped meters and phrases, which had long been popular in Iceland, and he strove, as William Wordsworth did in England, to purify the language of poetry.