He graduated from Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík in 1883 and went to Copenhagen to study law.
He never finished law school[1] but during his time in Copenhagen his poems became known in Iceland.
He returned to his home country in 1895 and died of pneumonia in Reykjavík in 1914.
[2] While much of his poetry attacked the ruling classes and the church he also composed popular ditties and poems on nature reminiscent of romanticism.
Other well-known poems include: Þorsteinn's volume of poetry, Þyrnar ("Thorns"), was first published in 1897 although many of the poems had been published before individually.