Jónas Hallgrímsson (Steinstaðir 1807 – Copenhagen 1845), natural scientist by education and profession, is the single most influential poet of modern Icelandic literature. “His work transformed the literary sensibility of his countrymen, reshaped the language of their poetry and prose, opened their eyes to the beauty of their land and its natural features, and accelerated their determination to achieve political independence” (Ringler 2002:3). Along with the other members of the group associated with the Copenhagen-based periodical Fjölnir (issued 1835-39 and 1843-46), Jónas defined Icelandic National Romanticism for decades to come, and after his premature death became its poetical icon. When Iceland gained full independence from Denmark in 1918 and became a republic in 1944, Jónas’s poetry gradually lost some of its political and iconic status. But this also made it possible to reassess his contribution to Icelandic literature and culture on less nationalistic grounds than before, and recent decades have seen renewed interest in his poetry, both public and scholarly. Attention has especially been drawn to the final phase of Jónas’s poetical activity, when he moved away from nationalistic and medieval motifs towards a more personal kind of poetry, modern in diction and elegantly balanced between dark broodings and a Romantic irony, which shows the growing effect Heinrich Heine had on him.

Jónas burst into bloom as a poet when he left Iceland for Denmark to study at the University in Copenhagen (1832). He made his name with masterfully crafted panorama poems which reimagined the glory of Commonwealth Iceland and juxtaposed it with the present lethargy of the Icelandic nation (Ísland, 1835, and Gunnarshólmi, “Gunnar’s Holm”, 1837, the latter based on a famous incident described in the medieval Njáls saga). As he did so, Jónas introduced classical metres into Icelandic literature, such as the hexameter and the pentameter, along with Romantic (originally medieval and Renaissance) metres like the terza rima and the ottava rima, although the fornyrðislag, which Jónas based on the Old Norse Eddic poems, was always his favourite metre. Later on he was to introduce the sonnet and the triolet to his fellow-countrymen, using these metres with great virtuosity in poems full of longing for his Icelandic muse and his own native valley (Ég bið að heilsa!, “I send greetings!”, and Dalvísa, “Valley Song”, both written in Sorø on Sjælland, 1844), which he had to love from afar, feeling estranged as he did in Denmark during the last years of his life. Using another Eddic metre, ljóðaháttur, he wrote Ferðalok (“Journey’s End”, 1845), an elevated love poem, which also alludes to the end of Jónas’s life journey, as he seems to have been haunted by thoughts of impending doom.

Nature is always a prominent motif in Jónas’s poetry, especially its more pleasing aspects, but also sublime elements, as in his description of a volcanic eruption in the tour poem Fjallið Skjaldbreiður (“Mount Broadshield”, 1841). Hulduljóð (“Lay of Hulda”, 1841-45) is an ambitious but unfinished nature poem in the tradition of the pastoral elegy. It is dedicated to the memory of Eggert Ólafsson (1726–1768), natural scientist and poet, whom Jónas considered to be his great predecessor. His pronounced admiration for Eggert, a man of the Enlightenment, shows that Jónas’s interests were not exclusively Romantic, as is also evident in the Fjölnir group’s declaration that their periodical was committed to usefulness, beauty, truth and “that which is good and moral” (Fjölnir 1835:8-13), indicating Enlightenment values as well as Romantic ones. Nature, formerly a benign force and presence to the poet and the natural scientist, becomes hostile in Jónas’s late poems, written with a Heine-like twist of the traditional loco-descriptive genre (Annes og eyjar, “Capes and Islands”, 1844-45). This shift in Jónas’s world view has been seen to be part and parcel of a new trend in Scandinavian and Icelandic literature and sensibility, a turning away from National Romanticism and poetical Realism towards pessimism.

A versatile writer, Jónas wrote short stories (Grasaferð, “Gathering Highland Moss”, dating from around 1836 and considered to be the first short story written by an Icelander), Heine-style travel accounts (Salthólmsferð, 1836), fairy tales in the fashion of H.C. Andersen (Fífill og hunangsfluga, “The dandelion and the bee”), Gothic tales (Stúlkan í turninum, “The girl in the tower”) and mock-heroic pieces (Gamanbréf til kunningja, “The queen goes visiting”, a humorous description of Queen Victoria’s state visit to France in 1843). He was also a harsh critic; the 1837 attack in Fjölnir against the traditional poetical genre known as rímur constituted his own aesthetic manifesto. His poetry ranges from elegy (Bjarni Thoránensen, 1841, Jónas’s tribute to the first Icelandic Romantic) to convivial festive songs (Borðsálmur; “Table hymn”, 1839). He also tried his hand at translation (Horace, Schiller, Chamisso and especially Heine), sometimes rendering his originals so freely that they should rather be seen as independent variations on a given theme.