Commentary:        Although the circumstances that occasioned this poem are not known, it has been speculated that "its origins can be traced to Jónas's summer expedition of 1842, since he seems not to have been particularly popular with many influential men in Iceland around that time" (4E198). Indeed, Páll Melsteð wrote Jón Sigurðsson in March 1843: "I'm inclined to think that various people here would have been just as happy if Jónas Hallgrímsson had died this past fall" (BPM40).

The poem might also, of course, reflect Jónas's uneasy relations with the Danes and his sense of being insufficiently valued by them — even, perhaps, betrayed to some extent by his Danish mentors J. G. Forchhamer and J. C. H. Reinhardt (see 2E138-9, 140-1).