Elias Wessén (15 April 1889 – 30 January 1981) was a prominent Swedish linguist and a professor of

Scandinavian languages The North Germanic languages make up one of the three branches of the Germanic languages—a sub-family of the Indo-European languages—along with the West Germanic languages and the extinct East Germanic languages. The language group is also r ...

Stockholm University Stockholm University ( sv, Stockholms universitet) is a public research university in Stockholm, Sweden, founded as a college in 1878, with university status since 1960. With over 33,000 students at four different faculties: law, humanities, so ...

(1928–1956). In 1947, he was honoured with one of the 18 seats at the

Swedish Academy The Swedish Academy ( sv, Svenska Akademien), founded in 1786 by King Gustav III of Sweden, Gustav III, is one of the Swedish Royal Academies, Royal Academies of Sweden. Its 18 members, who are elected for life, comprise the highest Swedish lang ...

(which for instance awards the

Nobel Prize in Literature ) , image = Nobel Prize.png , caption = , awarded_for = Outstanding contributions in literature , presenter = Swedish Academy , holder = Annie Ernaux (2022) , location = Stockholm, Sweden , year = 1901 , ...

). His earliest work concerned morphological problems in the

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, Engli ...

Onomasiology Onomasiology (from el, ὀνομάζω ''onomāzο'' 'to name', which in turn is from ὄνομα ''onoma'' 'name') is a branch of linguistics concerned with the question "how do you express X?" It is in fact most commonly understood as a branch of ...

and

Norse mythology Norse, Nordic, or Scandinavian mythology is the body of myths belonging to the North Germanic peoples, stemming from Old Norse religion and continuing after the Christianization of Scandinavia, and into the Nordic folklore of the modern period ...

. He published parts of ''

Sveriges runinskrifter Sveriges runinskrifter (English: "Sweden's rune inscriptions", ) is a multi-volume catalog of rune inscriptions found in various Swedish provinces. The earliest volume of this ongoing series dates to 1900, and, by 1981, 15 volumes had been published ...

'', editions of medieval texts and together with Åke Holmbäck, a translation of the Swedish medieval province laws (with commentaries). He published several reference works, such as ''Svensk språkhistoria'' in three tomes, and a grammar for modern Swedish ''Vårt svenska språk''. In 1944, he initiated ''Nämnden för svensk språkvård'' (nowadays ''Språkrådet'', the

Swedish Language Council The Language Council of Sweden ( sv, Språkrådet) is the primary regulatory body for the advancement and cultivation of the Swedish language. The council is a department of the Swedish government's Institute for Language and Folklore ( sv, Insti ...

).Elias Wessén
(in

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe *Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway *Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including the ...

)

Store Norske Leksikon The ''Great Norwegian Encyclopedia'' ( no, Store Norske Leksikon, abbreviated ''SNL''), is a Norwegian-language online encyclopedia. The online encyclopedia is among the most-read Norwegian published sites, with more than two million unique vis ...

, retrieved 16 March 2013

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Further reading