Jón Stefánsson

Who is Jón Stefánsson?

Dr Jón Stefánsson was a founder of the Viking Society and author. Coauthoring with W. G. Collingwood A pilgrimage to the saga-steads of Iceland and writing many other books, articles and contributions to periodicals.

Stefánsson was born in Grundarfjordur in 1862 and went on to study at Reykjavík Grammar School and then the University of Copenhagen. At Copenhagen he produced a doctoral thesis on Robert Browning. Shortly after he left Copenhagen for London where he was to spend much of the next 50 years. In October 1918 he married a widowed French Mauritian woman, Adrienne de Chazal. Shortly after their marriage they moved to Mauritius but Jon became ill and returned to Iceland and then back to London. In London he spent much of his time in the British Museum writing but he was also an acquaintance of a wide range of scholars including William Morris, William Paton Ker, James Bryce and Israel Gollancz. In London he worked for a few years as a lecturer in Icelandic and Danish at King's College.