Thor Philip Axel Jensen

Thor Philip Axel Jensen (3 December 1863 – 12 September 1947) was a Danish entrepreneur who moved to Iceland at an early age and became famous there for his business activities during the first half of the twentieth century: he all but introduced big business, and even modern capitalism, to the country.

The girl was called Margrét Þorbjörg Kristjánsdóttir; she and Thor fell in love, and remained together for over sixty years, having twelve children.

Fishing at this time in Iceland was in transition from being 'a secondary occupation for farmers' to being 'an industry in its own right'.

[2] Guðmundur gave Thor the use of his premises on the corner of Austurstræti and Veltusund in Reykjavík, and both he and Þórður invested 500 krónur to start the company.

[5] According to his autobiography, he aspired to own all the lands supposedly claimed on Snæfellsnes by the ninth-century settler Bjǫrn the Easterner, so as to follow in the footsteps of the landnámsmenn.

Thus in 1914, he bought Bjarnarhöfn, along with various uninhabited plots and islands: Guðnýjarstaðir, Efrakot, Neðrakot, Hrútey, Hafnareyjar, and the inhabited Ármýrar, for 18,000 krónur.

In the following years, he bought the neighbouring Fjarðarhorn, Árnabotn, Hraunsfjörð, Selvelli, Seljahraun and Kothraun.

His grandchildren include Elina Hallgrímsson, Margrét Þóra Hallgrímsson, wife of Björgólfur Guðmundsson and mother of Björgólfur Thor Björgólfsson; and the author Thor Vilhjálmsson, whose son Guðmundur Andri Thorsson is also a noted author.

For the most part, the period of the greatest power, wealth, and influence of the Thorsararnir had run its course by the 1970s, though the descendants of Thor and Margrét now number several hundred.