In addition, he supplemented his small salary[4] by working as secretary to the Bishop and as a teacher and custodian of the library at the Latin School, which had moved to Reykjavík.

The two only resumed collecting after Konrad Maurer, the German legal historian and scholar of Icelandic literature, toured the country in 1858 and encouraged them.

[4] It was published in 2 volumes in 1862 and 1864 in Leipzig with Maurer's help,[7] as Íslenzkar Þjóðsögur og Æfintýri (Icelandic Folktales and Legends), comprising over 1300 pages.

[9] Jón Árnason also wrote biographies of Martin Luther (1852), Charlemagne (1853), and Sveinbjörn Egilsson.

[1] The survey of Icelandic folklore and early modern scholarship about elves (álfar) in the introduction to Jón's Íslenzkar þjóðsögur og æfintýri provided the framework for J. R. R. Tolkien's conception of elves in his fantasy fiction.