Guðni Jónsson

Guðni Jónsson (22 July 1901 – 4 March 1974) was an Icelandic professor of history and editor of Old Norse texts.

Life and career Guðni was born at Gamla-Hraun at Eyrarbakki into a poor family who had a total of 17 children. He was raised by relatives at Leirubakki until he was twelve, worked two seasons as a fisherman and then was taken in by his married sister in Reykjavík, enabling him to attend evening school there. He then attended the University of Iceland, first in theology and then in the faculty of Old Norse studies. He completed a master's degree in Icelandic studies in 1930 with a thesis on Landnámabók, comparing the manuscripts with each other and with other texts. His doctoral thesis, published in 1952, was in genealogy and history: Bólstaðir og búendur í Stokkseyrarhreppi.

He began a career as a teacher at a primary school in the Vestmannaeyjar in winter 1926–27, taught evening school himself in Reykjavík in 1927–28, taught at the Commercial College of Iceland in 1928–29, and then taught at Reykvíking Middle School from 1928 until 1945, when he became headmaster. He edited the works of Brynjúlfur Jónsson and several other popular writers and published twelve volumes of popular histories and legends, Íslenzkir sagnaþættir og þjóðsögur, in 1940–57 and two volumes of Skyggni, studies of Icelandic folklore, in 1960 and 1962. He completed this edition with an index of names published in 1949, and continued until 1957 to publish editions of other texts, some of which, such as the Bishops' sagas, had only been previously available in 19th-century editions.