Pétur Þorsteinsson
Encyclopedia
Lutheranism
Lutheranism is a major branch of Western Christianity that identifies with the theology of Martin Luther, a German reformer. Luther's efforts to reform the theology and practice of the church launched the Protestant Reformation...
church.
He published the Pétrísk-Íslensk Orðabók (Petrish-Icelandic dictionary), a list of self-made neologisms that has received much attention in 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...
. In 2004 he became president of the High Icelandic
High Icelandic
High Icelandic or Hyper Icelandic is a type of linguistic purism started by the Belgian Jozef Braekmans, aimed at removing loan words from the modern Icelandic language. Its vocabulary is described by its creator as an "ultra-purist" compilation of already existing Icelandic neologisms, and other...
Language Movement (Háfrónska málhreyfingin), a movement that endeavours to build a variant of 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...
that is free of loan-words
Loanword
A loanword is a word borrowed from a donor language and incorporated into a recipient language. By contrast, a calque or loan translation is a related concept where the meaning or idiom is borrowed rather than the lexical item itself. The word loanword is itself a calque of the German Lehnwort,...
.
He lives in Reykjavík
Reykjavík
Reykjavík is the capital and largest city in Iceland.Its latitude at 64°08' N makes it the world's northernmost capital of a sovereign state. It is located in southwestern Iceland, on the southern shore of Faxaflói Bay...
with his daughter Ásta Pétursdóttir.