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influencing the common people, particularly with legal enforcement.28
the main aims of the enlightenment were to eradicate superstition, to
educate the common people, to improve them morally, and to improve
their economic situation. Methods to reach these goals included the
provision of good role models and Christianity and the improvement of
reading and writing abilities and arithmetic, as well as the promotion of
the joy of reading.29 Considering the limits of the educational system,30
home schooling and tuition from the local vicars were considered to
yield the best results.31 the education of clergymen in general was not
satisfactory to the proponents of the enlightenment, and therefore the
improvement of the pastoral education and the publishing of didactic
literature and suitable children’s literature had priority.32 the general tenor
is that the enlightenment exerted only limited influence and that only a
small group of – often related – leaders of society were its proponents,
but that it became influential in later times, particularly during the age of
Romanticism.33 A certain, albeit vague, influence can also be seen in the
works of Gunnlaugur jónsson from skuggabjörg, as will be shown. the
enlightened – and pietistic – wish for educating the common people is
perhaps one of the aspects that facilitated Gunnlaugur’s scholarly work.
efforts to spread literacy, or at least reading skills, and the opinion that
we can learn from history, are surely factors that influence a peasant’s or
commoner’s zeal for personal education and scholarly research.
28 see Loftur Guttormsson, “fræðslumál,” in Upplýsingin á Íslandi: Tíu ritgerðir, ed. Ingi
sigurðsson (Reykjavík: Hið íslenzka bókmenntafélag, 1990), 178.
29 see Loftur Guttormsson, “fræðslumál,” 153–58, 164 and 174.
30 until the nineteenth century there were no schools in Iceland, except the Latin schools in
Hólar and skálholt and their respective successors in Reykjavík and Bessastaðir. Children
were taught at home or by their local parish priests. for a short overview, see, for example,
Gunnar karlsson, Iceland’s 1100 Years: History of a Marginal Society (London: C. Hurst,
2000), 169–72.
31 see Loftur Guttormsson, “fræðslumál,” 158–59.
32 see Loftur Guttormsson, “fræðslumál,” 171–72.
33 Concise overviews of various aspects of the enlightenment can be found in the arti-
cle collection Ingi sigurðsson, Upplýsingin á Íslandi: Tíu ritgerðir. older, but still valu-
able, is Þorkell jóhannesson, Saga Íslendinga, vol. 7, Tímabilið 1770–1830: Upplýsingaröld
(Reykjavík: Menntamálaráð and Þjóðvinafélag, 1950); a more recent, concise overview
is found in Gunnar karlsson, Iceland’s 1100 Years. the reasons behind the grass root-
movement of lay historians slightly later than Gunnlaugur are analysed in sigurður Gylfi
Magnússon and davíð ólafsson, “‘Barefoot Historians’”.
GunnLAuGuR jónsson fRoM skuGGABjÖRG