Þorsteinn Erlingsson

Þorsteinn Erlingsson ( born September 27, 1858 in Stóra Mörk, Rangárvallasýsla; † September 28, 1914 in Reykjavík ) was an Icelandic writer who wrote poems and songs especially.

Life

Þorsteinns parents were the farmer Erlingur Pálsson and his wife Thuridur Jónsdóttir. Because of the poverty of his parents, he grew up with his grandmother in Fljótshlíð. From 1877 to 1883 he attended a school in Reykjavík. Then he began to study law and Norse philology in Copenhagen, the study but not finished. He works as a journalist as well as a private teacher and wrote his first poems.

Þorsteinns work is influenced by the romance and the realism, whom he met in Denmark. As a socialist, he criticized the monarchy and capitalism, the Danish rule in Iceland as well as the church. Besides socialist songs, he also wrote poetry about Iceland's history and nature.

In 1896 he returned to Iceland, where his poetry was first published in 1897 under the title Þyrnar in book form. He worked in Seydisfjörður and Bíldudalur as a journalist. Around the turn of the millennium, he edited a newspaper. In 1903 he settled in Reykjavík, where he died in 1914 of pneumonia.

Posthumously published in 1928 Málleysingjar, a collection of short stories, and in 1958 collected works.

Þorsteinn also worked as a translator. Among other things, he transferred Rudolf Erich Raspe's Gulliver's Travels and Munchausen stories into Icelandic.

Works

• Þyrnar ( poems, 1897)
• Eiðurinn ( poems, 1913)
• Mállesyingjar (stories, 1928)
• Rit ( The Collected Works in 3 volumes, 1958)