At the beginning of the 19th century, Iceland had virtually no literary infrastructure or literary institutions. The only higher educational establishment in this sparsely populated country without cities or towns was the Latin School. The country had no university, public library, or bookstore, and secular publication was very limited. In the late 18th century, some attempts were made to establish literary societies among intellectuals and university students living in Copenhagen. The main purpose of these societies was to publish periodicals, not to hold meetings to discuss literary works or research.

Among the first literary societies to be established in Iceland itself were the subscription libraries or reading societies (bókasafns- og lestrarfélög). The oldest were founded in the late 18th century and had the aim of collecting and circulating books, especially foreign literature, among its subscribing members, mainly officials and clergymen. In some of these societies, books were sold to members once they had circulated among them. Other societies gradually became a sort of public library. The first extensive library in Iceland, Landsbókasafn Íslands (The National Library of Iceland), was founded in Reykjavík in 1818. One of its main initiatives was Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag (The Icelandic Literary Society), founded in 1816 and still in existence.

The establishment of Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag was one of the first signs of cultural nationalism in Iceland. According to its earliest statutes, its purpose was “to support and maintain the Icelandic language and literature, and the civilization and honour of the Icelandic nation, by the publication of books or by other means as circumstances permit”. The society was not the first to express the importance of the Icelandic language for the population, to urge for linguistic purism or protectionism, or refer to medieval Icelandic culture as the pride of the nation; its novelty lay in its popular encouragement to cultivate the nation’s language and literature in order to become an active participant in contemporary European culture. As Finnur Magnússon argued in the 1822-23 issues of Íslensk sagnablöð, Icelandic authors should take inspiration not only from medieval Icelandic literature, but also from other historicist authors elsewhere, like Walter Scott and, in Denmark, Bernhard S. Ingemann.

For most of the 19th century, Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag was active both in Reykjavík and Copenhagen, and under the leadership of Jón Sigurðsson (1811–1879), who served as president of the Copenhagen division from 1851 to 1879, became Iceland’s most powerful educational and publishing society. For the most part, the society enjoyed widespread support; in 1859, for instance, 780 people from all classes of society (1.2% of the entire population) were paying membership fees. In addition to its publishing activity, the society participated in an ambitious project initiated in 1838 by Jónas Hallgrímsson to collect “all available documents, both old and new, describing Iceland or its various districts, and prepare for publication a new and accurate description of Iceland”. The society also subsidized Jónas Hallgrímsson’s extensive geographical survey of Iceland for the next three and a half years.

Another Icelandic literary society of importance was the exclusive debating club Kvöldfélagið (The Evening Society), which operated in Reykjavík from 1861 to 1874. The society consisted of selected intellectuals and merchants and had as its main aim the encouragement of Icelandic cultural life, especially literature and the fine arts. Its main innovation was its regular debates in which members read from their own works and discussed literature and the issues of the day, both domestic and foreign. These included public education, an Icelandic university, the death penalty, Darwin’s theories, women’s rights, religious freedom, Nihilism, and communism. The society also supported its members’ publications, theatre life, and playwriting.

One of the society’s members was the artist Sigurður Guðmundsson, the main initiator, in 1863, of Íslenskt forngripasafn (“The Icelandic antiquarian collection”), the designer of the Icelandic national costume and the father of the modern Icelandic theatre. Sigurður urged young writers to write Icelandic plays based on the Icelandic folklore collected by another member, Jón Árnason, and Icelandic saga literature, the main purpose being to strengthen the audience’s sense of national identity.