Knut Bergsland (7 March 1914 – 9 July 1998) was a Norwegian linguist. Working as a professor at the

University of Oslo The University of Oslo ( no, Universitetet i Oslo; la, Universitas Osloensis) is a public research university located in Oslo, Norway. It is the highest ranked and oldest university in Norway. It is consistently ranked among the top universit ...

from 1947 to 1981, he did groundbreaking research in Uralic (especially

Sami Acronyms * SAMI, ''Synchronized Accessible Media Interchange'', a closed-captioning format developed by Microsoft * Saudi Arabian Military Industries, a government-owned defence company * South African Malaria Initiative, a virtual expertise ...

) and

Eskaleut languages The Eskaleut (), Eskimo–Aleut or Inuit–Yupik–Unangan languages are a language family native to the northern portions of the North American continent and a small part of northeastern Asia. Languages in the family are indigenous to parts of w ...

Career

He was born in

Kristiania Oslo ( , , or ; sma, Oslove) is the capital and most populous city of Norway. It constitutes both a county and a municipality. The municipality of Oslo had a population of in 2022, while the city's greater urban area had a population of ...

as a son of engineer Einar Christian Bergsland (1883–1945) and Henriette Louise Krogh Raabe (1883–1958). He was the brother of sports administrator Einar Bergsland. He finished his secondary education in 1932, and enrolled at the

. He also studied at the

École des Hautes Études École may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing in région Île-de-France * École, Savoi ...

and the Institut Catholique from 1935 to 1936. He graduated with the cand.philol. degree in 1940, having specialized in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

, but now concentrated more on the Sami languages. His first linguistic work was a grammar of the

Southern Sámi Southern or South Sámi (, no, sørsamisk, sv, sydsamiska) is the southwesternmost of the Sámi languages, and is spoken in Norway and Sweden. It is an endangered language; the strongholds of this language are the municipalities of Snåsa, ...

language, released as ''Røros-lappisk grammatikk'' in 1946. This work earned him the dr.philos. degree, and it is still the reference grammar of this language. In 1947 Bergsland was appointed professor in

Finno-Ugric languages Finno-Ugric ( or ; ''Fenno-Ugric'') or Finno-Ugrian (''Fenno-Ugrian''), is a traditional grouping of all languages in the Uralic language family except the Samoyedic languages. Its formerly commonly accepted status as a subfamily of Uralic is ...

at the University of Oslo, succeeding Konrad Nielsen. He continued his work on Sami languages, and also did important research in

, firstly a historical grammar of Kalaallisut (or Western Greenlandic), and then a dictionary and reference grammar of

Aleut The Aleuts ( ; russian: Алеуты, Aleuty) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleut people and the islands are politically divided between the ...

. His interest in these languages arose during two stays as a visiting scholar; respectively at the

University of Copenhagen The University of Copenhagen ( da, Københavns Universitet, KU) is a prestigious public research university in Copenhagen, Denmark. Founded in 1479, the University of Copenhagen is the second-oldest university in Scandinavia after Uppsala Unive ...

in 1948 and the Indiana University at Bloomington in 1949–1950. He continued studying Aleut after retiring as a professor in 1981. Bergsland's professorship was vacant until 1987, when

Ole Henrik Magga Ole Henrik Magga (born 12 August 1947) is a Sami people, Sámi linguistics, linguist, professor and politician from Kautokeino, Norway. As a linguist As a linguist, Magga is best known for his work on syntax. His master's thesis at the Unive ...

replaced him. Bergsland's final works were ''Aleut dictionary – Unangam tunudgusii'' (1994), ''Aleut Grammar'' (1997) and ''Ancient Aleut Personal Names'' (1998). He died in July 1998. Bergsland held an

honorary degree An honorary degree is an academic degree for which a university (or other degree-awarding institution) has waived all of the usual requirements. It is also known by the Latin phrases ''honoris causa'' ("for the sake of the honour") or ''ad hon ...

at the

University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki ( fi, Helsingin yliopisto, sv, Helsingfors universitet, abbreviated UH) is a public research university located in Helsinki, Finland since 1829, but founded in the city of Turku (in Swedish ''Åbo'') in 1640 as the ...

References

1914 births 1998 deaths Linguists from Norway Linguists of Sámi Finno-Ugrists Norwegian Latinists University of Oslo faculty Paleolinguists Linguists of Eskimo–Uralic languages Linguists of Eskaleut languages Aleut language 20th-century linguists Eskimologists Greenlandic language {{cultural-anthropologist-stub