Sigurður Jónsson (footballer)
Icelandic footballer
Sigurður Jónsson (born 27 September 1966 in Akranes), also known as The Icelandic Beast (and his son as The Icelandic Beast JR), is an Icelandic former footballer player and coach.
In 2008, he featured in a ten-man shortlist for Iceland's greatest footballer of all time.
Club career
Sigurður started his career at his hometown club IA Akranes before moving to English club Sheffield Wednesday in February 1985. He spent four years at Wednesday, including a brief spell on loan to Barnsley in 1986, playing 67 times for them. He made his English league debut against Leicester City in March 1985. He was signed by Arsenal in July 1989 for a fee of £475,000 and made his Arsenal debut at home against Manchester City on 14 October 1989. However his period at Arsenal was wrecked by injury and he made just ten appearances in all competitions for the London side, scoring once in the league against Queens Park Rangers in November 1989. He was part of the Arsenal side that won the old First Division in 1991 but only played in two matches, which was not enough to earn a winner's medal.
Sigurður announced his retirement in December 1991, having failed to appear in a competitive game for Arsenal since October 1990, due to a back injury. He came out of retirement to rejoin IA Akranes in 1992 and later played for Swedish club Örebro in the 1996 and 1997 Allsvenskan seasons.
“Sigurður Jónsson (footballer)” enters the record as icelandic footballer. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Sigurður, Jónsson and footballer can confirm, complicate or overturn.
Why this record matters
“Sigurður Jónsson (footballer)” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Sigurður, Jónsson and footballer provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 3, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q2539882. VIAF identifies the subject as 954152140018911100003. 1 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 2008, 1985 and 1986.
Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The source lead contains qualifying language; that uncertainty should survive quotation, summary and reuse. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.
- Establishing names and roles
- Building a first chronology
- Locating cited institutions
Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Sigurður Jónsson (footballer)”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Sigurður Jónsson (footballer) primary sources, Sigurður Jónsson (footballer) archive and Sigurður research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Sigurður Jónsson (footballer)”?
- How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
- Which claims depend on a single source or contested interpretation?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Sigurður Jónsson (footballer)” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.