ABSTRACT
Three years before Christian IV, of august memory, took over the kingdom of Denmark after his blessed father, King Frederik the Second (who died in 1588), the coronation taking place in Copenhagen on the 29th day of August, 1596, in his 20th year 1 , I was born into this world very early in the morning of the Sunday next after All Saints 2 , at Svarthamar on the Álftafjörð, in the parish of Eyri, in the county of Ísafjörð 3 , of honourable parents united in lawful wedlock, viz. Ólaf Jónsson and Ólöf Thorstein’s daughter. Ólaf’s father was Jón Thorgrímsson who was himself the son of Thorgrím Jónsson; this Thorgrím was a man of mark and widely known, though of no very great wealth: for a long time he had his establishment on Æðey in the parish of Snæ-fell, and he died at the age of eighty-four. The name of my father’s mother was Bríit, Thórð’s daughter, a pious woman.
