Njörður Njarðvík

Njörður P. Njarðvík was born in Ísafjörður, in the West-fjords Iceland, on June 30th 1936. He matriculated from the Akureyri secondary school in 1955, graduated from The University of Iceland with a cand mag. in Icelandic and Swedish in 1964 and recieved his Fil. dr. degree from Göteborgs Universitet in Sweden in 1993. Njörður is professor emeritus at The University of Iceland.

Njörður was a secondary school teacher in Reykjavík from 1956-63 and 1965-6, was a newspaper literature- and theatre critic from 1962-3 and teacher at the Icelandic School of Education from 1963-4. He managed the Skálholt publishing house from 1964-66. He then moved to Sweden where he lectured at Göteborgs Universitet from 1966-71. Njörður was a lecturer of Icelandic literature at The University of Iceland from 1971-77, an associate professor from 1977-93 and professor from 1993-2004.

Njörður sat on the board of The Fulbright Foundation in Iceland from 1964-6. He was president of Föreningen utländska lektorer in Sweden and on the board of Universitätslärbörbundet from 1968-71. He was president of The National Broadcasting Council from 1971-5 and at the same time president of The Swedish-Icelandic Society. Njörður sat on the board of The Writer’s Union of Iceland from 1976-84, served as the board’s vice-president from 1977-78 and president from 1978-84. He was on the nomination committee for the Nordic Literature Prize from 1978-82 and president of the committee from 1978-9. He was a member of The Board of Advisers for Encyclopaedia of World Literature from 1980-4. Njörður was a member of The National Theatre Council from 1982-4. He is the founder and president of SPES International Children’s Relief, which manages an orphenage in Togo capital city of Lomé.

Njörður was awarded the Reykjavík Council of Education’s Award for the best children’s book translation in 1986, and a recognition from the National Broadcasting Service’s Authors’ Fund in the same year. He received the Knight’s Cross of the Finnish Order of the Lion in 1987 and the Supreme Knight’s Cross of the same order in 1995. He was granted an honorary membership of Finlands Svenska Författereförening in 1992 and a lifetime member of Clare Hall College, University of Cambridge in 1995. He was made an honorary member of The Writer’s Union of Iceland in 2002. In 2006 he received an award from The Swedish-Icelandic Cultural Fund, and the same year he was awarded the Jónas Hallgrímsson Award for poetry.