Jóhann Sigurjónsson was an Iceland

Iceland

Iceland , described as the Republic of Iceland, is a Nordic and European island country in the North Atlantic Ocean, on the Mid-Atlantic Ridge. Iceland also refers to the main island of the country, which contains almost all the population and almost all the land area. The country has a population...

ic playwright and poet. Atypically, Jóhann wrote plays and poetry in both his native Icelandic

Icelandic language

Icelandic is a North Germanic language, the main language of Iceland. Its closest relative is Faroese.Icelandic is an Indo-European language belonging to the North Germanic or Nordic branch of the Germanic languages. Historically, it was the westernmost of the Indo-European languages prior to the...

 and in Danish

Danish language

Danish is a North Germanic language spoken by around six million people, principally in the country of Denmark. It is also spoken by 50,000 Germans of Danish ethnicity in the northern parts of Schleswig-Holstein, Germany, where it holds the status of minority language...

.

Jóhann was the son of an Icelandic farmer and was born in Laxamýri, Iceland. In 1899 he emigrated to Denmark to study at The Royal Danish Veterinary and Agricultural University, but abandoned his studies in 1902 to devote himself to literature. During this period, he came under the influence of the Danish writer Georg Brandes

Georg Brandes

Georg Morris Cohen Brandes was a Danish critic and scholar who had great influence on Scandinavian and European literature from the 1870s through the turn of the 20th century. He is seen as the theorist behind the "Modern Breakthrough" of Scandinavian culture...

 and the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Nietzsche

Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was a 19th-century German philosopher, poet, composer and classical philologist...

.

He is probably best known for his play Fjalla-Eyvindur

Fjalla-Eyvindur

Fjalla-Eyvindur was an Icelandic outlaw. He and his wife Halla are reported to have fled into the remote highlands of Iceland after 1760. They lived in the wilderness for twenty years...

(Danish: Bjærg-Ejvind og hans hustru, English: Eyvindur of the Mountains), which was first published in 1911. The play was a success in Germany

Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

 and Scandinavia

Scandinavia

Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

 and was also produced in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

. It was cinematised by Victor Sjöström

Victor Sjöström

Victor Sjöström was a Swedish actor, screenwriter, and film director.- Biography:Born in Silbodal, in the Värmland region of Sweden, he was only a year old when his father, Olof Adolf Sjöström, moved the family to Brooklyn, New York. His mother died when he was seven years old in 1886...

 in 1918 as The Outlaw and His Wife

The Outlaw and His Wife

The Outlaw and His Wife is a 1918 Swedish silent film directed by Victor Sjöström, based on a play from 1911 by Jóhann Sigurjónsson. It tells the story of Eyvind of the Hills, an 18th century Icelandic outlaw....

. The play is based on an Icelandic folk tale about a notorious outlaw.

He also wrote a Nietzchean-Faust

Faust

Faust is the protagonist of a classic German legend; a highly successful scholar, but also dissatisfied with his life, and so makes a deal with the devil, exchanging his soul for unlimited knowledge and worldly pleasures. Faust's tale is the basis for many literary, artistic, cinematic, and musical...

ian tragedy called Galdra-Loftur (Danish: Ønsket, English: The Wish or Loftur the Sorcerer). It tells the story of an ambitious young scholar who dabbles in sorcery to acquire knowledge and power.

Jóhann died of tuberculosis

Tuberculosis

Tuberculosis, MTB, or TB is a common, and in many cases lethal, infectious disease caused by various strains of mycobacteria, usually Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Tuberculosis usually attacks the lungs but can also affect other parts of the body...

 in Copenhagen

Copenhagen

Copenhagen is the capital and largest city of Denmark, with an urban population of 1,199,224 and a metropolitan population of 1,930,260 . With the completion of the transnational Øresund Bridge in 2000, Copenhagen has become the centre of the increasingly integrating Øresund Region...

 at the age of 39.

External links

• The WIsh or Galdra-Loftur, by Jóhann Sigurjónsson English translation from Danish and Icelandic by Einar Haugen
  Einar Haugen
  Einar Ingvald Haugen was an American linguist, author and Professor at University of Wisconsin–Madison and Harvard University.-Biography:Haugen was born in Sioux City, Iowa to Norwegians from the town of Oppdal in Norway. When he was a young child, the family moved back to Oppdal for a few years,...