Jakob Aall

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Jakob Aall (27 July 1773 - 4 August 1844) was a Norwegian historian and statesman.

He was born in Porsgrund, Norway and while studying divinity at Copenhagen he became interested in the pursuit of natural science. In 1797 he set out to make the tour of the scientific schools of Leipsic, Kiel, and Göttingen. In Germany he became acquainted with the great geologist Abraham Gottlob Werner. In 1799, having spent the winter at the celebrated academy of mines in Freiberg, he returned to Norway and invested his patrimony in the purchase of the immense iron-works of Naes, in the Arendal ore region.

In 1814 he took a prominent part in the framing of the free constitution of Norway, and for 14 years (1816–30) he was a leading member of the Storthing, the Norwegian National Assembly. In 1832–36 he published, in three volumes, entitled Present and Past, a redaction of his own numerous magazine articles on the history of the antiquities of Norway. In 1838–39 his standard translation of Snorre Sturleson's Heimskringla appeared. His Reminisciences (1844–45) is a repository of data concerning the contemporaneous history of the Scandinavian peninsula.

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The original version of this article was taken directly from the New Americanized Encyclopædia Britannica (Twentieth Century Edition), The Saalfield Publishing Company, Akron, Ohio, 1903.