Cyril Jackson

Cyril Jackson (born 1908 in northern England, died 1982 in Eastbourne) was an expert in the poetry of Matthías Jochumsson and a BBC broadcaster.

Education Jackson took a bachelor's degree in English at the University of Leeds from 1926-29, where his studies included Old Norse, in a class of five or six, under E. V. Gordon.

These studies inspired Jackson to visit Iceland following his degree. Through his friend Sigurður Nordal, Gordon learned that the head teacher of Menntaskólinn á Akureyri, Sigurður Guðmundsson, was in need of an Englishman to teach at the school, and accordingly dispatched Jackson. In July 1929, aged twenty-one, Jackson arrived in Iceland, staying first with the education minister Ásgeir Ásgeirsson. Jackson then proceeded to Munkaþverá í Eyjafirði to improve his Icelandic over the summer. Then, lodging in Akureyri with the geologist Steinþór Sigurðsson, he began teaching that October. Many of his students were older than he was. Jackson returned to England. In 1931 he took a master's degree at Leeds; his two-volume thesis was "A Collected Edition of the Hitherto Uncollected and Unpublished Poems of Matthías Jochumsson". He proceeded to a doctoral degree at the University of Manchester, where Gordon then worked, on Matthías Jochumsson's poetry, a topic suggested by Sigurður Nordal. Jackson was noted for his own facility with Icelandic verse, both for the quantity he knew by heart, and for his ability to compose it.

Career By the completion of his doctoral thesis, Jackson was more interested in working with people than books and became an English teacher in a state-school. From 1936 to 1940 he was the Educational Officer for the BBC's educational radio broadcasting in north-west England. and arranging for Icelandic journalists to visit Britain. During that time he met Ester (or in some sources Esther) Hallgrímsson, The two married in June 1942 in Hallgrímskirkja, in a ceremony officiated by Friðrik. He was made a Member of the Order of the British Empire for his service.

Jackson and Ester had a daughter, Anna, who also went on to work for the BBC, and a son, Richard.