During the pre-Reformation period, Bible translations were fragmentary and appeared in homilies with commentaries. The Reformation motivated Oddur Gottskálksson’s translation of the New Testament, which was published in Copenhagen in 1540, the first book to be printed in the Icelandic language. The first full translation of the Bible to be printed, the Guðbrandsbiblía, appeared in 1584. Since then, various editions or new and revised translations have appeared in Icelandic, mostly published by Det kongelige Vajsenhus Forlag, the printing house of the Royal Orphanage School, which still retains the rights to publishing the Bible and the Psalms in Denmark.

In 1813 an edition was sponsored by the British and Foreign Bible Society, and distributed by a Scottish representative of the society, Ebenezer Henderson. It was, in essence, a reprint of the Vajsenhus-Bible, but omitting Luther’s introductions and the Apocrypha. Marred as this was by many unfortunate misprints, a fresh translation was initiated by the Icelandic Bible Society (itself instigated by Henderson); the New Testament appeared in 1827 and the complete Bible in 1841. This Bible was greatly influenced by Romantic ideas of linguistic purism and probably contributed greatly to the purging of Icelandic of Danish influence.

Further Bible editions, improved for uniformity, but often greeted with criticism, appeared over the century following 1841: 1859/1866; 1906/1908 (again funded by the British and Foreign Bible Society, but rejected and recalled); and 1912 (under the imprint of the Icelandic Bible Society; the Apocrypha following in 1931).

The translation and publication of ancient classics was subdued, partly because the Icelandic reading public, during the Romantic period and after, derived sufficient classic canonicity from their native sagas and Eddic poetry; scholars concentrated on editing and publishing those texts rather than the ancient Greek and Latin classics. However, one of the translators engaged in the 1841 Bible, Sveinbjörn Egilsson, also translated the Iliad and the Odyssey, still the standard translations, and, indeed, the only full translations in Icelandic. They were in prose; a verse translation, in the old Icelandic metre of fornyrðislag, was finished after his death by his son, the poet and critic Benedikt Sveinbjarnarson Gröndal (1826–1907). Sveinbjörn Egilsson’s translations of Homer were republished more than once in the 20th century.

The translation of modern world classics into Icelandic has also been fragmentary, piecemeal and tardy. Mention should be made, however, of Matthías Jochumsson’s translation of four Shakespeare plays, Byron’s Manfred and Tegnér. Helgi Hálfdanarson (1911–2009) was Iceland’s major 20th-century translator; he translated all of Shakespeare’s plays in verse, most of the Greek tragedies and a number of works by Racine, Corneille and Calderón, in addition to verse dramas by the Portuguese Julio Dantas and the Norwegian Henrik Ibsen.