Grímur Jónsson Thorkelín (8 October 1752 – 4 March 1829) was an Icelandic–Danish-Norwegian scholar, who became the National Archivist of Norway and Denmark and Professor of Antiquities at Østfold University College.
In 1786, he travelled to England in order to search for documents relating to medieval Danish-English contacts and Anglo-Saxon manuscripts with Viking influence.
In 1787, he hired British Museum employee James Matthews to transcribe the sole extant manuscript of the Old English epic poem Beowulf and made another copy himself.
During the Battle of Copenhagen (1807) his house was burned and demolished due to fire, and the text (on which he had spent 20 years) was lost.
The Thorkelín transcriptions are now an important textual source for Beowulf, as the original manuscript's margins have suffered from deterioration and vandalism throughout the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries.