Hannes Pétursson is a highly regarded Icelandic poet who was active for more than sixty years. He was born in Skagafjörður in the north of Iceland in 1931. As a young man he moved to Reykjavík to study in Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík where he finished his final exam in 1952. Then he went to Germany to do Germanic studies in Köln and Heidelberg for two years, and later completed a degree in Icelandic studies at the University of Iceland in 1959. The first poem by Hannes to be published in a major public platform was “Bláir eru dalir þínir” [“Blue are your valleys”] in the left-wing literary journal

Tímarit Máls og menningar

in 1951, when the poet was still 19 years old. Before that some poems had been published in the school journal in Menntaskólinn and one in the…

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Citation: Pálsson, Oddur. "Hannes Pétursson". The Literary Encyclopedia. First published 05 September 2024 [https://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=15274, accessed 01 November 2024.]

15274 Hannes Pétursson 1 Historical context notes are intended to give basic and preliminary information on a topic. In some cases they will be expanded into longer entries as the Literary Encyclopedia evolves.

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