VIGFUSSON, GUDBRANDR (1828-1889), the fore most Scandinavian scholar of the 19th century, was born of a good Icelandic family in Breibafjord. In 1849 he came to Copen hagen university as a bursarius in the Regense college. He was, after his student course, appointed stipendiarius by the Arna Magnaean trustees, and worked for 14 years in the Arna-Magnaean library till, as he said, he knew every scrap of old vellum and of Icelandic written paper in that whole collection. During his Danish life he twice revisited Iceland (last in 1858), and made short tours in Norway and south Germany with friends. In 1866, after some months in London, he settled down in Oxford, which he made his home for the rest of his life. He held the office of reader in Scandinavian at the University of Oxford (a post created for him) from 1884 till his death. He was a jubilee doctor of Upsala, 1877, and received the Danish order of the Dannebrog in 1885. Vigfusson died of cancer and was buried in St. Sepulchre's cemetery, Oxford. His memory was remarkable ; if the whole of the Eddic poems had been lost he could have written them down from memory.
By his Ninatcil (written between Oct. 1854 and April 1855) he laid the foundations for the chronology of Icelandic history, in a series of conclusions that have not been displaced (save by his own additions and corrections), and that justly earned the praise of Jacob Grimm. His editions of Icelandic classics (1858-68), Biskopa Sogur, Bardar Saga, Forn Sogur (with Mobius), Eyrbyg gia Saga and Flateyar-bok (with Unger) opened a new era of Icelandic scholarship, and can only fitly be compared to the Rolls Series editions of chronicles by Dr. Stubbs for the interest and value of their prefaces and texts. Seven years of constant and severe toil (1866-73) were given to the Oxford Icelandic-English dictionary, incomparably the best guide to classic Icelandic, and a monumental example of single-handed work. His later series of editions (1874-85) included Orkneyinga and Thiconar Saga, the great and complex mass of Icelandic historical sagas, known as Sturlunga and the Corpus Poeticum Boreale, in which he edited the whole body of classic Scandinavian poetry.