JONSSON, HJALMAR

born 1796, Eyjafjrdur, Iceland died July 25, 1875, Breidumri in full Hjlmar Jnsson Fr Blu, also called Blu-hjlmar Icelandic folk poet who was noted for his mastery of the rmur form and for his brilliant use of satire. The illegitimate son of a servant girl and a farmhand, Jnsson had little formal education, but he soon became an avid reader of the sagas and Eddas. Miserably poor all his life, he was first a farmhand, then a small tenant farmer. Despite his poverty, he managed to gather a small library of Icelandic and Danish books and manuscripts. Jnsson was a scathing critic of bureaucracy and the church, and he used a rough invective that made some of his verse unprintable, though it remained in the oral tradition of Iceland long after he died. He had few friends, even among his neighbours. The first collection of his poems was not published until 1879. His collected poems were published in two volumes (1915, 1919) and his collected poems, rmur, and prose in four volumes (1949).