On the title-page of this book stand two names. That of Sigfús Blöndal stands in the place of honour, and this is fight, for the giant labour of gathering the widely scattered sources of information and attempting to make a coherent story out of them was his in the first instance. As he is not as well known to the English-speaking world as he should be, it is proper to give a brief summary of his life and career here.

Sigfús Benedikt Bjarnarson Blöndal was born on 2 October 1874 at Hjallaland in Vatnsdalur in Northern Iceland, the son of Björn Blöndal, the farmer there, a man of a well-connected family, and his wife Guðrún, also born of a family of parsons and officials. In 1883 Björn Blöndal moved to Reykjavik, and Sigfús entered the Latin School there in 1886. The family had to struggle for their existence against poverty and grievous loss, for Björn was drowned at sea in a gale in 1887, but friends came to their help, and found the means to see Sigfús through the Latin School course, which he accomplished with distinction, being dimitted at the top of the School in 1892. He sailed to Copenhagen the same autumn, and read for the degree of candidatus magisterii in Latin, Greek and English, taking his degree in 1898.