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Tómas Guðmundsson

Icelandic poet (1901–1983)

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionSep 12, 2026
Entity authorityQ3482196 ↗
Source-derived summary

Tómas Guðmundsson (6 January 1901 – 14 November 1983) was an Icelandic writer. He was known as Reykjavík's poet (Reykjavíkurskáldið, skáld Reykjavíkur).

Tómas's parents were Steinunn Þorsteinsdóttir and Guðmundur Ögmundsson, living at Efri-Brú in Grímsnes. He soon got in touch with literature and poetry. He read Icelandic sagas, Jónas Hallgrímsson's poems and more. He also started to write his own poetry at a young age.

Career

He moved to Reykjavík and studied at Menntaskólinn í Reykjavík, there he got in touch with many authors, including Halldór Laxness (they formed a close friendship during the M.R. years), Guðmundur G. Hagalín and Davíð Stefánsson. Tómas graduated from M.R. in 1921.

He then studied law at Háskóli Íslands and graduated in 1926. During that time he got in touch with even more authors, including Jón Thoroddsen junior.

Editorial summary

Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Tómas Guðmundsson” is icelandic poet (1901–1983). The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Tómas, Guðmundsson and Icelandic, not as a finished interpretation.

Editorial reviewA productive starting point for separating a subject’s documented career from later reputation and commemoration. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1901, 1983, 1921, 1926—that can be checked directly. The authority record carries competing date values—1901-01-06, 1901-01-01—which should remain separate until their references and qualifiers are resolved. For this dossier, Tómas, Guðmundsson and Icelandic is the immediate research focus.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

The phrase “icelandic poet (1901–1983)” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 12, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q3482196. VIAF identifies the subject as 76356928. The Library of Congress control number is n78095454. 3 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1901, 1983, 1921 and 1926.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. 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.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
Verify next

Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Tómas Guðmundsson”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Tómas Guðmundsson primary sources, Tómas Guðmundsson archive and Tómas research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Tómas Guðmundsson”?
  2. Which primary records establish identity, chronology and institutional ties?
  3. How has the subject’s reputation changed across later accounts?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Tómas Guðmundsson” 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.