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 al ...

Stockholm University Stockholm University (SU) () is a public university, 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, social ...

(1928–1956). In 1947, he was honoured with seat 16 in the

Swedish Academy The Swedish Academy (), founded in 1786 by King Gustav III, is one of the Royal Academies of Sweden. Its 18 members, who are elected for life, comprise the highest Swedish language authority. Outside Scandinavia, it is best known as the body t ...

, which he held until his death. His earliest work concerned morphological problems in the

Germanic languages The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European languages, 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 spoke ...

Onomasiology Onomasiology (from ''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 lexicology, the s ...

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 as the Nordic folklore of the modern period. The ...

. He published parts of ''

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. established the ...

'', 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 () 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 (). The council asserts co ...

).Elias Wessén
(in Norwegian)

Store Norske Leksikon The ''Great Norwegian Encyclopedia'' (, abbreviated ''SNL'') is a Norwegian-language online encyclopedia. It has several subdivisions, including the Norsk biografisk leksikon. The online encyclopedia is among the most-read Norwegian publishe ...

, retrieved 16 March 2013

References

Further reading