The first Faroe Islander to earn a doctoral degree, his thesis on the Norn language of Shetland was a major contribution to its historical preservation.

Jakob Jakobsen's parents were Hans Nicolai Jacobsen from Tórshavn, and Johanne Marie Hansdatter from Sandoy.

The original bookshop was in the old town, but H. N. Jacobsen moved the shop in 1918, to a central location further uptown, where it still stands today, retaining its traditional Faroese grass roof.

He was the first to point out some Celtic place-names in the Faroes, and is also responsible for the grammar section and texts-samples in the 1891 Færøsk Anthologi edited by V. U. Hammershaimb.

In 1985 The Shetland Folk Society, of which Graham was president at the time, succeeded in finding funds to reprint the two volume English edition in facsimile.

In Edinburgh he met Gilbert Goudie, and there he read "a valuable manuscript supplement" to Edmondston's work written by Thomas Barclay.

He arrived in Shetland in 1893[2] and during his field work there he interviewed a large number of Shetland dialect speakers and scholars, including Haldane Burgess, James Stout Angus, John Irvine, Robert Jamieson (1827-1899), James Inkster, John Nicolson, and Laurence Williamson.