[3] The census was assembled and organized by two Icelanders, Árni Magnússon, who had just been appointed a professor at the University of Copenhagen, and Páll Vídalín, sheriff and vice-lawman.
They were commissioned in 1702 by King Frederick IV of Denmark to perform a complete survey of Iceland, then a Danish possession, in order to inventory its economic resources and propose improvements; this included the census as well as the Jarðabók or land register.
Árni's draft of this letter made in the spring states the census task as:to assemble a true accounting of all families in that country, from the best to the lowest person, in which shall be specified and explained the husband's and the wife's name, their children, and friends' names who at their home, also all servantmen, servant youths servantwomen and girls, in summa no one omitted great and small, young and old, who are to be found in the whole country, wherewith the large number of poor at each location must be precisely observed and described.
The census report was presented in the Althing in June 1703 and then sent by Árni and Páll to Copenhagen, where it was largely ignored until 1777, when the king's representative, Skúli Magnússon, decided to use it to derive a land survey.
Research shows that men fared worse in famines,[11] partly because they carried a heavier burden of physical work.
In addition, infant mortality was higher than it would have been because Icelandic mothers, even more than other European countries at the time, customarily did not breastfeed their babies.