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Steinkjer
Steinkjer is a municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is part of the Innherad region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Steinkjer which is located on the inner part of the Trondheimsfjord. The town is also th ...
,
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...
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, occupation = Aga Khan Professor of Iranian Studies (Emeritus) at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
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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 ...
, thesis_title = The Paikuli Inscription: Restoration and Interpretation. Pt.1: Restored Text and Translation (109 pp.). Pt.2: Introduction
and Commentary
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, thesis_year = 1981
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Iranian Studies
Iranian studies ( fa, ايرانشناسی '), also referred to as Iranology and Iranistics, is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the research and study of the civilization, history, literature, art and culture of Iranian peoples. It ...
,
Linguistics
Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...
, notable_works = ''The Spirit of Zoroastrianism''
''An Introduction to Old Persian''
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Prods Oktor Skjaervo ( no, Prods Oktor Skjærvø) is Emeritus Professor of
Iranian Studies
Iranian studies ( fa, ايرانشناسی '), also referred to as Iranology and Iranistics, is an interdisciplinary field dealing with the research and study of the civilization, history, literature, art and culture of Iranian peoples. It ...
in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...
, where he succeeded
Richard Frye as
Aga Khan Professor of Iranian Studies.
Born in
Steinkjer
Steinkjer is a municipality in Trøndelag county, Norway. It is part of the Innherad region. The administrative centre of the municipality is the town of Steinkjer which is located on the inner part of the Trondheimsfjord. The town is also th ...
,
Norway
Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic country in Northern Europe, the mainland territory of which comprises the western and northernmost portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the ...
, Skjaervo is a
hyperpolyglot
Multilingualism is the use of more than one language, either by an individual speaker or by a group of speakers. It is believed that multilingual speakers outnumber monolingual speakers in the world's population. More than half of all E ...
, familiar with historical and living languages including Old Norse, Norwegian, English, French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Latin, Larestani,
Kumzari,
Bashkardi
Southern Bashkardi or Bashagerdi, or simply "Bashkardi", and also known as southern "Bashaka", is a Southwestern Iranian language spoken in the southeast of Iran in the provinces of Kerman, Sistan and Baluchestan, and Hormozgan. The language ...
,
Pashto
Pashto (,; , ) is an Eastern Iranian language in the Indo-European language family. It is known in historical Persian literature as Afghani ().
Spoken as a native language mostly by ethnic Pashtuns, it is one of the two official langua ...
,
Yidgha, Yaghnobi,
Munji, Old Khotanese,
Avestan,
Old Persian,
Pahlavi, Manichean Middle Persian,
Parthian Parthian may be:
Historical
* A demonym "of Parthia", a region of north-eastern of Greater Iran
* Parthian Empire (247 BC – 224 AD)
* Parthian language, a now-extinct Middle Iranian language
* Parthian shot, an archery skill famously employed by ...
,
Sogdian,
Khotanese,
New Persian
New Persian ( fa, فارسی نو), also known as Modern Persian () and Dari (), is the current stage of the Persian language spoken since the 8th to 9th centuries until now in Greater Iran and surroundings. It is conventionally divided into thr ...
,
Ossetic
Ossetian (, , ), commonly referred to as Ossetic and rarely as Ossete (), is an Eastern Iranian language that is spoken predominantly in Ossetia, a region situated on both sides of the Greater Caucasus. It is the native language of the Ossetia ...
,
Kurdish
Kurdish may refer to:
*Kurds or Kurdish people
*Kurdish languages
*Kurdish alphabets
*Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes:
**Southern Kurdistan
**Eastern Kurdistan
**Northern Kurdistan
**Western Kurdistan
See also
* Kurd (dis ...
,
Tokharian
The Tocharian (sometimes ''Tokharian'') languages ( or ), also known as ''Arśi-Kuči'', Agnean-Kuchean or Kuchean-Agnean, are an extinct branch of the Indo-European language family spoken by inhabitants of the Tarim Basin, the Tocharians. The l ...
, Vedic, and
Classical Sanskrit.
Education
In 1963 Skjaervo matriculated 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 ...
where he studied French, Latin, and Sanskrit, with a semester in 1965 at the Sorbonne in Paris. He earned his B.A. (candidatus magisterii) in 1970. In 1974 he completed his M.A. with the thesis, ''Undersøkelser til verbalsystemet i gammelpersisk og vestlig middeliransk'' (''Investigations into the verbal systems of Old Persian and Western Middle Iranian''), on which he subsequently based his “Remarks on the Old Persian Verbal System.” He then completed his Ph.D. in 1981 from the University of Oslo with the dissertation, ''The Paikuli Inscription, Restoration and Interpretation. Pt.1: Restored Text and Translation (109 pp.). Pt2: Introduction and Commentary''.
Chairs and Committees
Skjaervo served in a number of academic positions at Harvard including:
* Chair, Committee for Inner Asian and Altaic Studies, 1993–2000
* Chair, Department of Sanskrit, 1995–1996
* Chair, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilisations, 2002–2006 and 2009
He has also been invited as:
* Guest lecturer, Eötvös Loránd Tudomány University, Budapest, 1997
* Guest lecturer, Université de la Sorbonne, Paris
* Guest lecturer, Università di Studi di Roma, La Sapienza
* Visiting professor, Collège de France, Paris, May–June 2000
Skjaervo is also a Consulting Editor for ''
Encyclopædia Iranica
''Encyclopædia Iranica'' is a project whose goal is to create a comprehensive and authoritative English language encyclopedia about the history, culture, and civilization of Iranian peoples from prehistory to modern times.
Scope
The ''Encyc ...
''.
Encyclopædia Iranica Consulting Editors
Retrieved 2020-29-06.
Selected books
Skjaervo has published widely in a number of languages:
English
*
*
*
*
*
*
Norwegian
*
*
References
External links
Faculty member page
Harvard University
Profile
on the Consulting Editors page of the Encyclopædia Iranica
''Encyclopædia Iranica'' is a project whose goal is to create a comprehensive and authoritative English language encyclopedia about the history, culture, and civilization of Iranian peoples from prehistory to modern times.
Scope
The ''Encyc ...
Official Academia.edu
Curriculum Vitae
of Prods Oktor Skjaervo
Complete list of publications
from homepage of Prods Oktor Skjaervo
Prods Oktor Skjaervo’s textbooks
hosted online at Harvard University, on:
*
Old Avestan
*
Young Avestan
*
Old Persian
*
Manichaean Sogdian
*
Introduction to Zoroastrianism
*
Introductions to Manicheism
American people of Norwegian descent
Iranologists
Harvard University faculty
Living people
1944 births
People from Steinkjer
Zoroastrian studies scholars
Linguists of Iranian languages
Linguists of Persian
{{US-academic-bio-stub