Israel Ruong (1903

Arjeplog Arjeplog (; Pite Sami: ) is a locality and the seat of Arjeplog Municipality in Norrbotten County, province of Lapland, Sweden with 1,977 inhabitants in 2010. It is a popular winter test site for the Asian and European car industries and feature ...

, Sweden −1986) was a Swedish-

Sámi The Sámi ( ; also spelled Sami or Saami) are a Finno-Ugric-speaking people inhabiting the region of Sápmi (formerly known as Lapland), which today encompasses large northern parts of Norway, Sweden, Finland, and of the Murmansk Oblast, Ru ...

linguist, politician and professor of

Sámi languages Sámi languages ( ), in English also rendered as Sami and Saami, are a group of Uralic languages spoken by the Sámi people in Northern Europe (in parts of northern Finland, Norway, Sweden, and extreme northwestern Russia). There are, dependin ...

and culture at the

University of Uppsala Uppsala University ( sv, Uppsala universitet) is a public research university in Uppsala, Sweden. Founded in 1477, it is the oldest university in Sweden and the Nordic countries still in operation. The university rose to significance during ...

in Sweden. Israel Ruong spoke Pite Sámi as his mother tongue. His parents were catechists, who lived on the shores of Lake Labbas in the Sámi village of Harrok. His parents and a number of his siblings succumbed to the

Spanish flu The 1918–1920 influenza pandemic, commonly known by the misnomer Spanish flu or as the Great Influenza epidemic, was an exceptionally deadly global influenza pandemic caused by the H1N1 influenza A virus. The earliest documented case wa ...

that rampaged through Arjeplog in 1920. His upbringing in Harrok is described in detail in his article "Harrok-ett samiskt nybygge i Pite Lappmark", which was published in the

Festschrift In academia, a ''Festschrift'' (; plural, ''Festschriften'' ) is a book honoring a respected person, especially an academic, and presented during their lifetime. It generally takes the form of an edited volume, containing contributions from the h ...

for Asbjørn Nesheim entitled ''Kultur på karrig jord : festskrift til Asbjørn Nesheim''. He received his training to become a teacher in Luleå, after which he went on to work as a teacher in the nomad school in

Jukkasjärvi Jukkasjärvi (; Sami: ''Čohkkiras'') is a locality situated in Kiruna Municipality, Norrbotten County, Sweden with 548 inhabitants in 2010. It is situated at 321 meters elevation. The name is of Northern Sami origin, where ''Čohkkirasjávri'' ...

. In 1943, he defended his dissertation entitled ''Lappische Verbalableitung dargestellt auf Grundlage des Pitelappischen.'' From 1947 to 1967, he served as the inspector for nomad schools in Sweden. Ruong served as associate professor in Sámi languages and Ethnology at the University of Uppsala from 1949 to 1969, at which point in time he was promoted to professor. As a linguist, Ruong worked on various aspects of the Sámi languages, especially on their

morphology Morphology, from the Greek and meaning "study of shape", may refer to: Disciplines * Morphology (archaeology), study of the shapes or forms of artifacts * Morphology (astronomy), study of the shape of astronomical objects such as nebulae, galaxies ...

. Together with

Knut Bergsland Knut Bergsland (7 March 1914 – 9 July 1998) was a Norwegian linguist. Working as a professor at the University of Oslo from 1947 to 1981, he did groundbreaking research in Uralic (especially Sami) and Eskaleut languages. Career He was born in K ...

, he created the Bergsland-Ruong orthography for Northern Sámi in 1948. Thanks to the new orthography, Ruong was able to publish schoolbooks in Sámi. In 1970, he published a grammar book in Northern Sámi called ''Min sámegiella''. Ruong was also involved in Sámi politics and was one of the founding members of the (SSR) in 1950. He served as head of the SSR from 1959 to 1967. In addition to his political and educational work, Ruong also served as the editor-in-chief of the Sámi newspaper ''

Samefolket ('The Sámi People') is a Sámi news magazine published from Jåhkåmåhkke, Sweden. Its motto is "" (The Sámi Culture and Society Magazine). Having published regularly since 1918, is considered one of the oldest indigenous periodicals in the ...

'' from 1960 to 1973. In 1983, the Israel Ruong Scholarship ( se, Israel Ruong stipeanda) was established by the Nordic Sámi Institute. Since 2007 it is awarded every other year to a researcher that works in one or more of the fields that Ruong himself was interested in.

Brief bibliography

* ''Lappische Verbalableitung dargestellt auf Grundlage des Pitelappischen'' (1943) * ''Studier i lapsk kultur i Pite lappmark och angränsande områden'' (1944) * ''Formlära'' (1957) * ''Niilas ja su sii'da'' (1965) * ''Dovdagat ja bargot'' (1967) * ''Samerna'' (1969) * ''Min sámegiella'' (1970) * ''Index till samefolkets egen tidning-Samefolket 1918–1973 (1985)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ruong, Israel Linguists from Sweden Linguists of Sámi Pite Sámi-speaking people Swedish Sámi politicians Swedish Sámi people Uppsala University faculty 1903 births 1986 deaths Burials at Uppsala old cemetery Swedish Sámi academics 20th-century linguists