Ritmennt - 01.01.2003, Qupperneq 163

RITMENNT
Abstracts
Einar H. Guðmundsson: Björn Gunnlaugsson og
náttúruspekin í Njólu. Ritmennt 8 (2003), pp.
9-78.
Björn Gunnlaugsson (1788-1876) was the lead-
ing mathematician and astronomer in nineteenth
century Iceland and the first professional teacher
of science and mathematics in the country.
Through teaching and writing his influence on
contemporary Icelandic culture was considerable.
Today he is mainly known as a cartographer and
the author of the first detailed map of the interior
of Iceland. Of his other works, the poem Njóla
(Night), first published in 1842, is probably the
best known. The poem is primarily a statement of
the author's religious and moral beliefs and is
written in the spirit of natural theology and
romantic natural philosophy. Intermingled with
the rnain message is an interesting overview of
the astronomy and cosmological ideas of the early
nineteenth century. Njóla also presents the first
detailed theory of matter by an Icelandic author, a
dynamical theory in which matter is composed
of force centers rather than atoms, an idea that
can be partly traced back to Boskovic and Kant. In
general, Gunnlaugsson's natural philosophy owes
much to Kant and his many disciples, for example
the romantic natural philosopher H.C. 0rsted
who was one of Gunnlaugsson's teachers at the
University of Copenhagen.
Svanhildur Gunnarsdóttir: Þýddir reyfarar á ís-
lenskum bókamarkaði um miðja 18. öld. Rit-
mennt 8 (2003), pp. 79-92.
The first novels to be printed in Iceland were
two works of narrative fiction in the translation
of the Rev. Þorsteinn Ketilsson (1688-1754) pub-
lished in one volurne in 1756 under the title: Þess
svenska Gústavs Landkrons og þess engelska
Bertholds fábreytilegii Robinsons eður lífs og ævi
sögur (The Swedish Gustav Landkron's and the
English Berthold's simple Robinsons or lives and
biographies). The novels were translated from the
Danish and both of them are of German origin,
published in Germany at the beginning of the
18th century, and belong to a literary genre of
narrative fiction known as Robinsonaden, which
flourished in Western Europe in the first half of
the 18th century, often written in imitation of -
or related to - Robinson Crusoe (first published in
1719) by Daniel Defoe. A characteristic of these
Icelandic translations, Berthold's life in particu-
lar, is that the translator and publisher strives to
cut out rnuch of the preaching and moralizing of
the original text in order to make the adven-
turous narration and the entertaining value the
more appealing to the reader.
Hrafn Sveinbjarnarson: Vökumaður, hvað líður
nóttinni? Ritmennt 8 (2003), pp. 93-128.
The night-watches in Copenhagen and the
towns of Norway of the 13th century, the watch-
es of the tower (stöpulsvakt) and the walking-
watch (gangvakt) are connected to the watches by
night and day in the cities of antiquity. A mention
is made of the different traditions of watches in
Iceland before urbanization in the late 18th cen-
tury, i.e. property watches, watches over the de-
ceased, the ship-watch and the watches over the
small strongholds in Iceland, which are reminis-
cent of the tradition of the old watches of the
tower. With urbaniszation in Reykjavík new pro-
fessions emerge, one of them a new walking-
watch. The oldest instructions for the watchmen
in Reykjavík are published in the article: The
instructions of 1778, when the watchmen were
employed by the wool-factory, and the instruc-
tions of 1792 by the town judge (bæjarfógeti) of
Reykjavík, the watchmen thereby becoming a
kind of policemen, the first in Iceland. The pur-
pose of the watchmen was fire-watch and secur-
ity-watch, to call and ring the hour with the
church bell, and sing the appropriate text to the
hour. Later they should also keep the lights of the
town. The public watchmen in Reykjavík were
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