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11.00 - 18.00 all days of the week

Opened in 2002, the museum was designed by List & Saga, a company that specializes in the field of exhibition and museum design.

At a young age the Icelander Árni Magnússon (1663-1730) went to study in Copenhagen, and later he became a professor at the University of Copenhagen. He collected an immense number of books, including vellum manuscripts. The majority of his manuscripts were Icelandic, from all periods of Icelandic literary history, starting in the 12th century (before Árni’s time the king of Denmark and other dignitaries had collected medieval Icelandic manuscripts). The great fire in Copenhagen in 1728 destroyed a large percentage of Árni Magnússon’s printed books, as well as a great many manuscripts, especially younger ones.


On his deathbed Árni Magnússon willed all of his possessions to the University of Copenhagen, at that time the only university for all of the countries and territories in the Danish kingdom, including Iceland. In the Árni Magnússon Collection in Copenhagen a great deal of scholarly work has been done in the field of Icelandic studies, especially since 1956, when a special research institute, Det Arnamagnæanske Institut (now Den Arnamagnaeanske Samling), took over the collection under the supervision of Professor Jón Helgason (1899-1986).

The Árni Magnússon Institute in Iceland is an academic research institution that houses the manuscripts and documents that the Danish government delivered to the Icelanders according to an agreement made between Denmark and Iceland in 1971, concerning the return of Icelandic manuscripts from Danish libraries. The Institute also keeps other resources on Icelandic culture: other manuscripts that it has acquired, as well as recordings of folkloric material. By law the Institute has been given the task of advancing the study of Icelandic language, literature, and the history of the Icelandic nation from its origins until the present day.

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