Anders Uppström (29 June 1806 – 21 January 1865) was a
Swedish
Swedish or ' may refer to:
Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically:
* Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland
** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...
philologist, particularly known for his work on the
Codex Argenteus, the manuscript of Bishop
Wulfila's Gothic Bible translation held by the
Uppsala University Library.
Born into the family of a factory worker at
Hammarby bruk in
Gästrikland, Uppström had his education partly paid for by his father's employer
Tore Petré. After completing school in
Gävle
Gävle () is a city in Sweden, the seat of Gävle Municipality and the capital of Gävleborg County. It had 77,586 inhabitants in 2020, which makes it the 13th most populated city in Sweden. It is the oldest city in the historical Norrland (Swede ...
, he enrolled at
Uppsala University in 1824, and was awarded the highest degree at the Faculty of Philosophy, ''filosofie magister'', in 1833. He worked as a teacher of Greek and Hebrew at the
Uppsala Cathedral School between 1835 and 1859 (as ''kollega'' from 1834, ''förste adjunkt'' from 1845, and ''lektor'' — lecturer — from 1858). He was appointed
docent
The title of docent is conferred by some European universities to denote a specific academic appointment within a set structure of academic ranks at or below the full professor rank, similar to a British readership, a French " ''maître de conf ...
of the
Gothic language at the
University in 1850, and professor extraordinary of "Mesogothic and related languages" in 1859.
Uppström started studying Gothic in 1834 and became docent based on his dissertation, ''Aivaggeljo þairh Matþaiu eller Fragmenterna af Matthæi Evangelium på götiska jemte ordförklaring och ordböjningslära'', for which 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 ...
awarded him its
Royal Prize. In 1854, he published an edition of the parts of Wulfila's Gothic Bible translation that were known from the manuscript
Codex Argenteus. This codex had been kept in Uppsala since the late seventeenth century and is thought to have originated at the court of Ostrogothic king
Theodoric the Great (d. 526). His edition contained only the text from the 177 manuscript leaves then extant, ten leaves having mysteriously disappeared between 1821 and 1834. The ten missing leaves were recovered in 1857, returned to Uppström by an old library janitor on his deathbed. Uppström published a supplement to his previous edition, ''Decem Codicis argenteæ rediviva folia'' the same year.
A journey in 1860 to Rome,
Milan, and
Wolfenbüttel, financed by the sons of his childhood patron Petré, resulted in ''Fragmenta gothica selecta'' (1861) and another journey to the
Ambrosian Library in
Milan in 1863 to study the so-called Ambrosian Gothic manuscripts led to ''Codices gotici ambrosiani'', which was published posthumously by his son
Anders Erik Wilhelm Uppström in 1868.
Uppström also published works on comparative
Indo-European linguistics, Swedish dialects, and a variety of other topics.
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Uppstrom, Anders
1806 births
1865 deaths
People from Sandviken Municipality
Swedish philologists