قصة الكتاب :
32. The Life of the Icelander Jon Olafsson… Volume II: Life and Travels: Denmark,\r\nEngland, The Cape, Madagascar, Cormoro Is., Coromandel Coast, Tranquebar, St\r\nHelena, Ascension Is., Ireland, Iceland, 1618–1679. Edited by the late Sir Richard\r\nTemple and Lavinia Mary Anstey, 2nd series, 68, 1932 (1931).\r\nOlafsson’s autobiography has several strong claims on the reader’s attention. It provides\r\ninformation, in this second volume, about life in the early years of the Danish settlement in\r\nIndia at Tranquebar / Tharagambadi which, with Serampore / Srirampur, lasted until their\r\nsale to Britain in 1845. There is also a rare view of early modern Iceland (in the first volume)\r\na country which, with the ending of the age of the sagas at the beginning of the fourteenth\r\ncentury, had dropped out of the European world view. Further, Olafsson’s perspective is from\r\nthe lower deck. He was an assistant gunner from poor peasant stock, yet he had other\r\npublications to his credit: a poem; Icelandic translations of two Danish cycles of ballads; and\r\na Greenland chronicle. The editor thinks his direct style and literacy are evidence that in the\r\nearly seventeenth century, the sagas were still a living tradition. In the Introduction to the\r\nfirst volume, she discusses his life and background, and his reliability — impressive in\r\ngeneral, if tempered by vanity and a twenty-five year memory.