Árni Magnússon (13 November 1663–7 January 1730) was an Icelandic scholar and collector of manuscripts. Also widely known by his Danish name Arne Magnussen, Árni went to Denmark to study at the University of Copenhagen where he became an assistant of Royal Antiquarian Thomas Bertolin for six years. He subsequently went to Germany, remaining there for two years and, upon his return to Denmark in 1697, was made the secretary of the Royal Danish Archives. At age 48, he became a professor of history at the university. He then went to Iceland, living there for ten years before returning to Copenhagen where he spent the remaining years of his life as a professor and librarian. He devoted most of his life to collecting and documenting medieval Icelandic manuscripts. His collection, the largest at the time of its creation, is known as the Arnamagnæan Codex. He was depicted on the now obsolete 100 Icelandic króna banknote. The character Arnas Arnæus in Nobel prize-winner Halldór Kiljan Laxness's novel Iceland's Bell (Íslandsklukkan) is based on him. Educational institutions in both Copenhagen and Reykjavik are named after him. The Árni Magnússon Institute in Reykjavík preserves and conducts studies on the manuscripts he collected, amongst them Flateyjarbók.
