A descendant of Ólafur Ólafsson

When Konrad Maurer travelled Iceland in 1858, he had a guide with him whose name was Ólafur Ólafsson. I had wondered if there might be any descendants of this man, and if so, how they could be found. The universe sent me the answer without any efforts on my side: a man named Sigurður Guðmundsson contacted me on this blog after he had read about me in the newspaper. He is a great-great-grandchild of Ólafur Ólafsson.

Sigurður is Deputy Director General in the Ministry of Finance, Department of Revenue and Taxation. We met at his workplace, in the Ministry building, which also gave me the opportunity to say hello and shake hands with the Minister of Finance, Steingrímur J. Sigfússon, and the Minister of Education, Science and Culture, Katrín Jakobsdóttir, who is currently on maternity leave but happened to be in the building.

Of course I was keen to learn more about Ólafur Ólafsson: how did he come to be a guide for Konrad? One thing we know is that two years earlier, in 1856, he had already been a guide for another foreign traveller, the English Lord Dufferin (see image), whose book Letters from High Latitudes about this journey became an enormous success -- see this excerpt to get a good impression).

Not very much is known about Ólafur, but one thing is sure, in the days before roads and signposts (let alone GPS) he must have known Iceland's topography very well to know the best routes between any two points, when and where to cross the rivers, how to manage the most difficult section of the route, Sprengisandur, and so on. No image of Ólafur exists. As to his profession, Sigurður could tell me that Ólafur had later been a janitor at Reykjavik's oldest secondary school (see photo) and that his son had been a baker in Reykjavik. I hope to get some more information later; Sigurður has more material at home but must first find and translate it for me. Also, we might get further knowledge from two databases with genealogical information on just about any Icelander who ever lived (Íslendingabók.is and deCODE genetics).

It was a very special joy for me to shake hands with a man whose great-great-grandfather and mine had spent that adventurous journey of 1858 together.