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The Most Famous

PHILOSOPHERS from Iceland

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This page contains a list of the greatest Icelander Philosophers. The pantheon dataset contains 1,081 Philosophers, 1 of which were born in Iceland. This makes Iceland the birth place of the 72nd most number of Philosophers behind Indonesia and Sri Lanka.

Top 1

The following people are considered by Pantheon to be the most legendary Icelander Philosophers of all time. This list of famous Icelander Philosophers is sorted by HPI (Historical Popularity Index), a metric that aggregates information on a biography’s online popularity.

Photo of Ari Thorgilsson

1. Ari Thorgilsson (1067 - 1148)

With an HPI of 56.07, Ari Thorgilsson is the most famous Icelander Philosopher.  His biography has been translated into 30 different languages on wikipedia.

Ari Þorgilsson (1067–1148 AD; Old Norse: [ˈɑre ˈθorˌɡilsˌson]; Modern Icelandic: [ˈaːrɪ ˈθɔrˌcɪlsˌsɔːn]; also anglicized Ari Thorgilsson) was Iceland's most prominent medieval chronicler. He was the author of Íslendingabók, which details the histories of the various families who settled Iceland. He is typically referred to as Ari the Wise (Ari hinn fróði), and according to Snorri Sturluson was the first to write history in Old Norse. Ari was a part of the Haukdælir family clan and studied in the school in Haukadalur as a student of Teitur Ísleifsson (the son of Ísleifur Gissurarson, first bishop of Iceland). There he became acquainted with Classical education. His writings clearly indicate that he was familiar with Latin chronicler traditions, but at the same time he is widely regarded as excelling in the Icelandic oral storytelling tradition. It is believed that Ari later became a Christian priest in Staður by Ölduhryggur, now known as Staðastaður, but otherwise little is known about his life, despite the fact that he is one of the very few medieval writers who wrote down his family history. Íslendingabók is the only work that is absolutely proven to have been written by him, but he is accredited with numerous articles of knowledge and is believed to have had a major part in the writing of Landnámabók, which chronicles the settlement of Iceland. Ari was early on regarded as an important author. In Iceland's First Grammatical Treatise, written around 1160 AD, he is referred to with respect as an exceptional man, since the tradition of writing was not firmly established at the time.

Pantheon has 1 people classified as philosophers born between 1067 and 1067. Of these 1, none of them are still alive today. The most famous deceased philosophers include Ari Thorgilsson.

Deceased Philosophers

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