Daniel Willard Fiske was born in Ellisburgh, New York in 1831. He loved languages, especially Nordic ones, and studied at the universities in Copenhagen, Denmark and Uppsala, Sweden. In Copenhagen he met quite a few Icelanders, among them Jón Sigurðsson
AN AMERICAN IN ICELAND, 1879
“Now rises fair above the swelling sea The far-sought land, of long and keen desire, Whose olden story and whose golden speech Have winged for me such dear and tranced hours”