Konráð Gíslason

In his early years he was instructed in Danish, arithmetic and Latin by pastor Jón Konráðsson and his daughter, but otherwise received no formal schooling, herding sheep on his father's farm.

At the age of 17 Konráð travelled south to seek employment in the fisheries, and worked in Álftanes over the summer as a manual labourer for Hallgrímur Scheving, a teacher at the Bessastaðir school.

Soon Hallgrímur called on his young employee to assist him in philological analysis of medieval Icelandic texts and taught him Latin.

In 1839 he received a grant from the Arnamagnæan Institute and spent the following years working on a Danish-Icelandic dictionary alongside research into the Icelandic language.

In 1846 he was granted a teaching position at the Learned School of Reykjavik, which he later declined, having been promised a lectureship in Nordic philology at the University of Copenhagen.

[citation needed] In his will, Konráð stipulated that all his property, including his books and medieval manuscripts, should be donated to the Arnamagnæan Institute.