Stereoscope Photographic Prints from Iceland

About this collection

This collection from the Fiske Icelandic Collection, Cornell University Library, includes 213 stereoscopic printed images taken by the photographer Magnús Ólafsson (1862-1937) and his studio, Ljósmyndastofa Magnúsar Ólafssonar (Reykjavík). The images, largely landscapes, appear to date from before ca. 1918; a few bear caption dates of 1910 or 1911. (Þórunn Sigurðardóttir, Manuscript Material, Correspondence, and Graphic Material in the Fiske Icelandic Collection, Islandica 48 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 258.) Stereoscope pictures from Iceland have multiple appurtenances of a collection unified by time (ca. 1910-11 and assuredly pre-1918), theme, location, creator, medium, and format.

The physical collection remains in existence as a component of the Fiske Icelandic Collection in the Rare and Manuscript Collections of Cornell University Library. The collection is digitized in its entirety. The printed bibliographical reference for this collection, with a list of captions (in Icelandic), is Þórunn Sigurðardóttir, compiler, Manuscript Material, Correspondence, and Graphic Material in the Fiske Icelandic Collection, Islandica 48 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1994), 258. Halldór Hermannsson, first curator of the Fiske Icelandic Collection, would most likely have acquired the photographs, although a catalogue reference to them does not appear in the 1914 catalogue of the collection, nor in the supplements published in 1927 and 1943.

Historical context

In 2002 Gail Gifford Rudin ’56 and her husband, collector Stephen Rudin, donated their collection on the history of American slavery to Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections to augment Cornell’s deep collections on the Anti-Slavery movement. By building this collection, Mr. Rudin sought to document the structural systems by which slavery was intertwined in the common economic and social practices of everyday American life in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and with the goal of ensuring that this terrible and horrifying aspect of American history will be more fully revealed and understood.

Using the collection

Viewers may search the collection at a basic level utilizing known names of regions, settlements, population centers, or geographical or topographical entities in keyword queries. The response may, of course, be nil, or may yield multiple considerations. As the captions are all listed in Manuscript Material, Correspondence, and Graphic Material in the Fiske Icelandic Collection, having this guide available during viewing is optimal (or see Collection Sources for online guidance to the collection, especially the comprehensive container list in the EAD guide). The collection in its entirety is considered to be in the public domain.

For more information about the collection, contact the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections at rareref@cornell.edu.

More information

Collection steward

Patrick J. Stevens, curator, Fiske Icelandic Collection

Metadata creation

Cornell University Library Metadata Services

Funding

Cornell University Library Digital Preservation Fund, 2015

Credits

This collection overview was updated in December 2024 by Patrick J. Stevens, curator, Fiske Icelandic Collection.

Collection sources

• Stereoscope pictures from Iceland, 1910-1911