”Ennen & nyt”, Vol. 1: The Papers of the Nordic Conference on the History of Ideas, Helsinki 2001 1 Handwritten books in the 19 th Century Iceland David Olafsson * I. Introduction – 19 th -century Iceland. In the 19 th century, Iceland was a large but sparsely populated region in the Danish kingdom. According to a census made in the year 1801 the population was just shy of 50,000, as the nation was just recovering after the great eruption of Skaftareldar in 1783-84 and the famine that followed. 1 Iceland was almost exclusively rural: there were no cities or towns, and Copenhagen served as the political and cultural capital of the country. A few seamen lived in small and unstable fishing villages, but these villages were little more than few shacks and did not have the function of an urban area. From the early ages there had been two schools in the country, one located at each bishopric – in Skalholt in southern Iceland and Holar in the north – and their role was to educate priests. Around 1800 they were consolidated and transferred to Reykjavik, which later became the cultural and political center of the country. 2 Children were educated in their homes under the surveillance of priests, but the first elementary schools were not founded until the latter part of 19 th century. Before the year 1907 it was an exception if children enjoyed constant teaching with a professional teacher. 3 A large majority of the Icelandic people were farmers, peasants or servants, and the farmers only practiced fishing as secondary occupation. Approximately 90% of farmers were tenants, but the number of farms had remained virtually unchanged for centuries. 4 When the population grew, more and more people had to settle for the status of farm laborer for their whole life, but in the last quarter of the 19 th century more and more of them moved to the coast, and the small fishing villages grew into towns. * David Olafsson is a doctoral student at the University of Reykjavik. davidol@akademia.is 1 Gunnarsson 1987: 20. 2 Thorsteinsson og Jonsson 1991: 255. 3 Thorsteinsson og Jonsson 1991: 314 and Magnusson 1997: 76–79.